The novelty of working from home is starting to wear off slightly, if only because I do not have a properly defined zone in which to work. I love being able to work in my onesies all day, to chuck dinner in the oven in between calls and pop the Insanity DVD in at lunch time to get me up and moving. But working at the kitchen counter or, most likely, on my bed is playing havoc with my back. The choice is now between squeezing a desk somewhere in the house and joining one of the many co-working collectives popping up throughout the city, and in fact globally throughout the world.
Making the most of cooworking spaces is great as it allows small businesses and entrepreneurs full office facilities, such as desk space, super fast internet, printing facilities, meeting rooms and in some cases, full virtual office support, but without the overheads of owning your own offices. Some coworking facilities even offer discounts or added perks if you are a charitable organisation or work in certain fields such as tech. There is a lovely coworking space in South London called Third Door with on site nursery facilities which would have been an immense help to me a couple of years ago!
There are added incentives to many of the coworking clubs too, such as The Hub in Islington which such as regular networking events, talks from leading entrepreneurs, workshops to hone in or learn a completely new skill, and on a more basic level, the chance to talk to other human beings, say hello to someone other than the radio who rudely never answers back.
Many of the coworking clubs have special memberships that allow you to work in their partner institutions all around the world, (if not at least the country) which means you can always find somewhere to plug in your MacBook and get some work done, no matter where you are based on any given day. In terms of aesthetics, costs and the variety of enhancing events and services on offer, I think one of the most intriguing is the Club, Like Minds which has a one off membership fee and yearly £600 membership price.
Prices vary for spaces in London, but the majority seem to range from £250- £350 per month for 24/7 access, though many also have the opportunity to use facilities on a pay-as-you-go basis or tiered memberships if you literally only need a desk or stool crash out on, but none of the added extras such as meeting rooms or phone answering services. In the case of wanting something very streamlined, WhiteSpace have a range of basic, plug and play, no frills options.
I visited an amazing coworking hub in Chicago called 1871 recently where you could choose to have dedicated office space, desks or chill out across a variety of different zones on anything from a table and chairs to a giant bean bag. They were able to get top innovators from companies such as Microsoft and Google to come in and run workshops, they also run classes and schemes for the wider community such as coding clubs within the facility.
The world of coworking spaces is becoming more and more popular and in my opinion, is definitely the way forward!
Spaces like that always inspire me to work hard. I’m a huge fan of co-working environment simply because it helps me not to procrastinate. When at home, I often find myself in the bath or in the kitchen or on the sofa just lying and pretending I have no work haha
Most of the time I love working from home … no commute!! … but definitely not great for back health, I do most of my work on the sofa. And definitely times when some “office buzz” would be nice.
Working from home is fab! I worked from Google Campus, quite a bit when I a WAHM, it seemed to make my day more structured and forced me to focus! At home, sometimes the TV, washing machine, a friend popping for tea, etc would make me part ways with my PC!!
Office buzz is fab, as is someone else making the coffee!!