Boost Your Productivity with Co-working

Boost your productivity and stay connected with others through the power of co-working! In this episode of Practicing Connection, learn how structured co-working sessions can enhance focus, provide accountability, and create a sense of community—whether in person or virtually. Jessica shares a simple, step-by-step approach to implementing this practice, including the use of timed work intervals and background ambiance to boost motivation.

Transcript

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Coral: Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Coral. My co-host, Jessica, is here as well. Today, we'll be talking about boosting your productivity with coworking, and Jessica will be sharing a practice with us. Hi, Jessica. How are you?

Jessica: Great. Thank you. It's finally warmed up here a little bit. As we're recording, we just came out of a cold snap where I live. I'm very happy to be able to go outside for a little bit today. I do a lot of things at the beginning of the year related to closing out the year before and thinking ahead to this year.

One of the things that I did recently that has really, I don't know, boosted my feelings of warmth, maybe if I can think of-- if I can't think of any other way to describe it is I created what I'm calling my social calendar. At the end of 2024, I felt like I hadn't done enough socially with some of my friends, and I certainly hadn't seen certain friends as much as I would have liked.

After taking a look at my calendar for 2024, I realized that I actually had engaged more socially than I thought I had. It's just that I think maybe certain friends I maybe didn't see as much as I normally would. I actually decided to create a calendar to track and appreciate or cultivate some gratitude for these interactions because I didn't notice them during 2024, which means I wasn't being mindful about them. I did appreciate every single chance I had.

I also want to know if I'm not seeing certain friends as much as I would like, well, let's change that. I created this little calendar that I'm still working out the details on, but I'm trying to have at least a once weekly social interaction of some sort if I can. My goal is to try to make at least one of those be an evening out if I feel like doing that, because I don't know, I'm getting older and I enjoy being home at night. It's been fun.

Coral: That's awesome. That's such a great reflection. I feel like this ties into and is maybe just a delving into that one area that, but tacking off the Wheel of Life conversation we had a couple of weeks ago. This sounds like it felt like an area that you wanted to further nurture in 2025. That's sounds like such a great way to stay intentional and really hold space for those beautiful people in your life. I love that.

Jessica: Yes, thank you. How have you been lately?

Coral: I've been really great. I'm feeling energized with the new year. Just this week in particular, I'm feeling a spark for embracing change in the unknown. I was talking with a really dear friend here locally, well, she's local for now, the other day, and she was telling me that she is going to be moving from Tampa Bay, where she's lived for over 20 years, to Tulsa, Oklahoma. For anybody that's from Florida, it's like, that's way over there in the middle of the US.

Jessica: That's a big distance.

Coral: It's huge. It's like a huge shift from moving from the Gulf Coast to Florida. It is out of her typical flow, an unexpected thing from this person. She's totally leading into it. I'm really proud of her with this awesome possibilities mindset. What new hobbies can she cultivate? She's talking about the different experiences she'll have, different ways and opportunities of working professionally while also really holding on and caring for the things that she loves about her current life and her current lifestyle.

I was just thinking about how exciting this is for her, but how much I loved just that practice of holding onto the things. I think crossing the threshold into a new year, we can do this in any space that we're currently in. I was just thinking about how I can do this in my own life of perhaps cultivating new experiences I've been thinking about tackling without necessarily like taking a big geographic jump. That's the spark I've been reflecting on lately.

Jessica: I love that. One of my favorite things to do is try new things. I really love that idea. I think that's a really great practice. Maybe that's a future practicast doing that reflection and setting some time to actually try the things that you've got on your list. I love that. We'd love to hear what's been inspiring you.

Please share what's inspiring you by clicking the send us a text message at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you'll see a seven digit number and the words do not remove. Type your message after that and click send. Don't remove that number or we won't receive your message. To protect your privacy, we won't see your phone number and we can't text you back, but we'll share your feedback on a future episode. If you're listening on a computer, you can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. Let us know what's inspiring you now.

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Coral: Speaking of trying new things, this week's practice from my wonderful cohost, Jessica, this was a new practice for me. Jessica is going to be walking us through the practice of boosting your productivity with coworking. Jess, can you tell us a little bit more about the practice you'll be sharing and also why you chose it?

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. This has become one of my favorite practices. It's also social. Since I'm so inspired by social things lately, that might be one of the reasons, but I call this practice coworking, and I started organizing these sessions during the pandemic as a way to have some more human interaction while remaining productive. They also ended up serving as a way to be together in community during this massive global event that was occurring all around us.

It's one of the techniques that stuck with me after we started emerging from our home offices, or in my case, I started emerging from my dining room. I might call it coworking, but I've found out over the past couple of years that what I started practicing over the pandemic with my colleagues is actually similar to a technique that has been beneficial to some people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, and it's often called body doubling.

There isn't a lot of research out there on this technique yet, but it has been written about and featured as a practice that supports productivity. I know that it was really helpful for me and for those colleagues who participated in these sessions from conversations with the colleagues and from my own experience. It provided a safe and supportive environment for accountability. Having someone there with whom you can safely share your successes and setbacks and frustrations and your overwhelm and who can encourage you to keep going or inspire you to try new ways of doing things was really-- it was just especially useful when I was procrastinating on a task or when I just needed a boost to my productivity.

I would actually pair these sessions up with other techniques also like the Pomodoro method, which is about tackling tasks in 25-minute intervals followed by 5-minute breaks. I did that in order to give us some guideposts to follow. You could have a collection of people show up in a room and everyone just says, "Hey, how's it going?" Then you could just all mute and start working or you can have a guidepost like the Pomodoro method. I chose to do the guideposts because I felt like it would be most helpful.

Since we couldn't go to coffee shops at the time, I would often find coffee shop sounds and scenes on YouTube and I would share my screen and the sounds and we would be literally listening to cappuccino being made or there'd be a little bit of light music in the background and some muffled voices in the background.

Soon, colleagues were also bringing their own favorite background sounds. There was one colleague who really loved having Tibetan throat singing in the background. We ended up even creating a spreadsheet so that those attending a session could spend a moment at the top of the session choosing what they wanted to for sounds and scenes. It became a thing, I guess.

Coral: I love that. What an innovative way to approach that season of life that we all walked through together. If someone wanted to execute this and implement this in their own collegial workspace or with a couple of friends, could you guide us through the practice step by step and share what that might look like?

Jessica: Yes. I still do this practice from time to time with colleagues. We do it a different way each time, but I'm going to give you the way that we practice most often. You could either sit in person with somebody or get onto a video conferencing call with the person or a group of people that you'll be co-working with.

At the top of your session together, you'd spend a few minutes with greetings and sharing what each of you plans to work on. We always did a little bit of a round robin. This is the accountability piece. Spend a few minutes sharing what each of you plans to work on during the first 25-minute session. The host should set a timer for 25 minutes then. Everyone else should mute their audio so that if you talk to yourself while you're working, not everyone has to hear it, and then just get to it.

When the timer goes off, the host would unmute and let everyone know that it's break time. I literally would just come on and say, "Break time," set a timer then for five minutes and make it clear that everyone can step away from their desk for five minutes, walk around, do whatever they need to do to take care of themselves. Optionally, you can all share whether you were able to complete the task you planned, you can celebrate successes or you can share some barriers you experienced before you take a break. Just make sure that doesn't take too long.

After the 5-minute break is up, repeat the steps, start another 25-minute session. In a 1-hour session, you can get through two 25-minute work sessions if you're really good with the time, starting with 2 to 3 minutes at the top of the hour to share what you plan to work on, then a 25-minute work session followed by a 5-minute break and 2 to 3 minutes to share what you plan to work on again, and then at the top of the hour, there would be a 5-minute break.

I have a couple of tips that I would share as you're doing this. I recommend scheduling these sessions based on how many work sessions you hope to have. How many of those 25-minute blocks of time you hope to have, and adding in a few minutes for the group to decide things like whether they want music that day and whether they-- any talking will be allowed during the work sessions. For a 1-hour session, I might recommend scheduling 1 hour and 10 or 15 minutes, so that you can have that little bit of cushion time for community and connection. Then I would also recommend keeping the group small to maximize psychological safety and time to share.

Coral: Those are such clear steps and such a great way to get started. Thanks for guiding us through those, Jess.

Jessica: Ah, you're so welcome. I love doing these sessions. They really are very helpful.

Coral: I'd imagine, so I can look forward to trying it myself. That's it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click on the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We'll see you next week. Until then, keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under Award Number 2023-48770-41333.

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