One of the biggest weaknesses of coworking in its current form is its propensity for letting work become too big a part of the experience. It’s so easy for people in a coworking space, even one with a great community, to arrive at the office, put on headphones, work all day, then go straight home without really talking to anyone.
While this might be fine, it might be an indicator that there are opportunities being missed. After all, we go to a coworking space to benefit from more than just the nice environment, right?
I used to try to solve these challenges with social activities, but I’ve found (especially in NY) that people are just “too busy” for most of that.
What to do, then? The answer, perhaps, lies in organizing around the work itself in a more intentional way.
We all work, and most of us work for ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have overlapping responsibilities! We might all do our own books, but what if we worked on our respective bookkeeping together at a coordinated time? What if we designated blocks of time to focus on particular kinds of work, like make & manager time?
If we do that, we can be more productive by being more social.
We’ve experimented with this extensively over the years, most recently with Work Sprints, and so far the results have been very encouraging. (I’ll also be continuing to experiment, along with my partner Amy, with the Dynamic Coworking Meetup in Boulder.)
Active Coworking, then, takes what we’ve learned to a new level.
Take a particular aspect of your work-life that you want to focus on as an example. If you’re managing everything yourself, it’s up to you to find the time to work on he particular thing. If you’re feeling blocked or wanting to avoid this thing for whatever reason, however, there’s nobody but you to keep you in line.
Rife with opportunities for problems, no?
With Active Coworking, you’d find or join a group of members who would gather to tackle that particular thing together. In doing so, you’d work to make hard things easy and painful things fun. At they very least, you’d have people to commiserate with!
These people might meet at a regular time, say weekly or monthly, to talk about the topic and then immediately get to work on it for a block of time that’s been allocated in advance.
This way, you know you’ve got it on your calendar, and others will be counting on you to be there.
Over the next few months, we’ll continue our efforts at the current and new version of New Work City. If you’d like to try your hand at starting an Actuve Coworking program with us, we’d love to have you along! Let us know you’re interested or contact us at programming [at] nwc.co.
Don't just build another office rental place. Join a group of people who are doing more to help build transformative cultures.
Share resources, get help with your most burning needs, and thrive alongside awesome people like yourself.