Head Strong
Focus Group
With more of us working remotely, often across multiple projects, the ability to stay focused has never been harder. Could a virtual co-working space help our distracted writer regain control?
Good Health Starts Up Top
The first rule of Flow Club is you do not talk during the portions of its co-working sessions that are designated for ‘muted deep work’. But in the few minutes at the start, my host, a psychotherapist in Toronto – a long way from where I am in Stocktonon-Tees – prompts me and my fellow co-worker, a programmer in the Netherlands, to share our goals aloud. I’ve deliberately thought up a goal that might sound impressive: ‘To read some scientific papers as research for the book I’m writing.’ So, I’m pleasantly surprised by my host’s more modest ambitions, including to ‘figure out his goals’ and ‘eat’. A latecomer from the Bay Area also eats on camera. But once immersed in my papers, I forget that my virtual co-workers are even (not) there. Afterwards, I receive a congratulatory email with a thumbs-up GIF.
Flow Club aims to help its users block out distractions and achieve ‘flow’, that exalted mental state in which you’re so focused that you lose track of time. As psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his 1990 book Flow, which popularised the term, ‘The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.’ The more we flow, his research found, the more satisfied we are with life; work, with its challenges and objectives, is ironically easier to enjoy than downtime.
Unfortunately, both our mental chatter and working environments can stand in the way of flow, which is easily interrupted. A video call with a gaggle of strangers might not sound like an obvious solution.
However, the steady stream of virtual co-working platforms, such as Flow Club, Flown and Caveday, over the past few years would suggest the meeting of a genuine need. As would the similar trend for ‘body doubling’ or ‘parallel working’. Strange as watching strangers work online might sound, this new practice is, as business magazine Forbes recently reported, really just the old strategy of working alongside others that used to take place in an office but has now migrated to Zoom and TikTok, as the lurch to remote work ‘leaves many people struggling to concentrate’.
Users of virtual co-working platforms, who pay the equivalent of a monthly gym membership (Flow Club is about £30), also get accountability. ‘It’s like going to the gym by yourself versus going to a workout class,’ explains the Flow Club website. Partly inspi
