I think people overthink coworking.
They look at their home office, with the monitor exactly where they want it, the good chair, the slippers, the dog, the coffee maker twelve steps away, and think: Why would I give all this up to go work somewhere else?
You shouldn’t.
Keep your home office. Keep your giant monitor. Keep your specific little midday routines.
Coworking does not need to become your entire work life to be useful.
Most people at Cohere don’t come in five days a week. They come for a couple of half days. Maybe one full day. Maybe they wake up on a random day and realize they have been sitting alone in the same room for three days and would like to see another human being.
So they put on pants with a zipper. Btw, this is optional. The zipper, not the pants. Wear sweats. We don’t care. it’s not that deep.
Head to Old Town, get the nice coffee at Lima or Harbinger. Go heads down for a few hours. Catch up on the latest movie or book then call it a day. We’re not trying to recruit you into the Cult of Coworking.
That’s it.
I think coworking has sometimes done itself a disservice by presenting itself as a replacement for the office or the home office. Like you’re supposed to pick a team. HOME OFFICE vs. COWORKING: CHOOSE YOUR WORKPLACE.
Why?
Your home office is great for some things. Coworking is great for other things.
There are days when I want my perfect setup and nobody anywhere near me. There are also days when working alone at home starts to feel less like freedom and more like house arrest.
Coworking gives you somewhere else to go.
And I think we underestimate how nice it is to simply have somewhere else to go.
Remote work eliminated a lot of the annoying parts of going to work. The commute. The dress code. The fluorescent lights. Gary from procurement.
But it also eliminated some of the good stuff around work. Leaving the house with a purpose. Walking through town in the middle of the day. Becoming a regular somewhere. Running into someone you know. Eating lunch with another person instead of standing over the kitchen counter scrolling your phone.
You don’t need to restructure your life around coworking to get those things back.
Go for the morning.
Go because you have three Zoom calls and your family is home.
Go because you need to get something difficult done.
Go because it’s beautiful outside and you want an excuse to spend the day in Old Town.
Go because you’re lonely.
Go because you’re bored.
Then go home to your excellent monitor.
It’s really not that serious.