The Case for Co-Working Over Coffee Shops
There’s a good chance you’ve heard the chatter around the digital nomad community: why pay for a place to work, when you can work from your bed for free?
Let’s skip the debate about being productive at home for now, and focus on those of you whom have already rebuked the home office concept. If you can’t work from your on-the-road home — either for productivity reasons, or straight-up not-having-a-home reasons, what are you to do?
If you’re like almost everyone else, your first thought was probably: I’m going to work in a coffee shop. And maybe you’ve tried it a few times. Maybe you even liked it. I did, too…for about a week. And then here’s what I found.
You need to move fast.
If you’re based in an area with a lot of remote workers (or college students…or hipsters…or…well, you get the point), then you’ll probably want to be waiting outside the coffee shop around ten minutes before it opens, so you can score a seat. And not to mention a seat by a power outlet. I’ve never been embarrassed to be first in line for happy hour — but being first in line for a mocha latte for eighteen days in a row somehow made me feel like a nuisance.
Your wallet will hurt.
Although coffee shops don’t have an entry fee, they are far from free if you want to be a respectful customer. With the limited amount of seats available, you’d be really costing them business by not spending some decent dough in exchange for using up such a large percentage of their real estate. I found myself spending upwards of $20/day just to avoid feeling like a squatter.
Sure, a coffee isn’t that expensive. But throw in the bagel for breakfast, the sandwich you bought for lunch to avoid going elsewhere and losing your seat…your afternoon tea…the cookie that you didn’t want but got tempted by…and you’re in to some serious cash.
I did become some form of master at extending the time I “purchased” for as long as possible; although I prefer iced coffee to hot, I’d buy hot because it came in an opaque cup rather than a clear one. Therefore, no one would know exactly when I was finished drinking it. And I learned to eat so slowly that I’d put my grandmother — who chewed each bite of food at least twenty times — to shame. But no matter how you slice it, this is definitely not a free OR cheap workspace unless you want to be a terrible person.
Using the restroom can cause panic attacks.
If you’re working remotely, chances are that you have a decent amount of money invested in technology. And like we mentioned above, you don’t want to be a bad customer when you’re sitting in this ubiquitous coffee shop — so you probably purchase a fair amount of beverages throughout the day. Eventually, the combination of those two things will cause a problem: who will watch your stuff while you use the restroom?
Of course, you could just believe in the inherent goodness of all civilization and leave your iPad and Beats headphones unattended. Or, you could pack it all up and bring it with you — and risk losing that prime outlet-adjacent seat you scored by waking up at 4:45am.
But I think the route that most of us go, however, is to choose a perfect stranger from the crowd and bestow them with the honor of protecting your possessions.
We all have our tried and true methods for selecting the lucky bystander. (Or maybe…byseater? Ha.) In general it makes sense to select someone who has more expensive equipment than you, because that gives them less of a reason to swipe your Surface. I also, as a rule, avoid people wearing baseball caps (too much facial obstruction for security camera footage) and tech-related shirts (too likely to be able to bypass my password and hack into the newly-stolen computer). So usually, I end up selecting a person who’s essentially me: a fairly young professional-ish yet casual-ish person who seems to be hard at work (but not so hard that they’ll miss it if someone bogarts my Apple Pencil).
And then we address our Chosen One — our perfectly-selected “computer nanny” — with the ultimate question: “Hey, can you watch my stuff?”
After rolling the dice on this about a dozen times over the course of a week, things got far too stressful for me and — when I found myself actually considering the purchase of some adult diapers — I decided that it just wasn’t worth it.
It’s hard to take calls.
If you’re in the kind of business where you rarely need to talk to anyone, then no worries. And obviously, if all your calls are scheduled ahead of time (or outbound), then you can easily plan to be in a quiet location.
However, if taking client calls is part of your business, this can get tricky when working from a public place. It’s possible, of course, to step outside — but then you a) don’t have time to find a perfect tech-sitter to watch your stuff before you answer, b) won’t have access to the information on your computer while speaking to said caller, and c) are at the mercy of whatever strip mall traffic or other boisterous noise you’re nearby.
Enter co-working.
I’d heard about co-working spaces through some digital nomad social media groups but was really hesitant to try them out because hey…fledgling entrepreneur budget over here. But after dealing with all the stress-inducing nonsense of cafe-hopping in Thailand for a few weeks, it was either go back to a corporate desk job, or find a better way.
So…what IS co-working?
If you’re working remotely, I’m guessing you already know. However, for those of you who are new to the game: co-working is like study hall for grownups. Only with comfortable furniture. And unlimited coffee. And excellent wifi. And freedom to come and go.
Ok — maybe the study hall thing was a bad analogy. A better way to describe it might be: all the things you like about working remotely, combined with all the things you like about working in an office…and none of the parts that you hate.
But anyway — co-working spaces are workspaces (either shared or private) which you pay to use on either a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. You’re free to come and go as you please, and they also have lots of other amenities like coffee, snacks, stellar internet, and rooms to take conference calls. One of my favorite spots even had a massage chair.
Here’s how co-working saved my sanity.
There’s just So. Much. Space.
Of course, every space is different. However, co-working spaces — unlike coffee shops — are created for doing work. That means they contain lots of desk space, real chairs (not uncomfortable wooden stools), and…drumroll…like a billion of those coveted power outlets. Lots of them even have USB CHARGING PORTS, and POWER CONVERTERS. I know. I couldn’t believe it at first, either. But trust me…I confirmed that I wasn’t hallucinating.
Not waking up before dawn to stand in line for a seat…I mean…latte? Cross that one off the list.
TANSTAAFL is SO yesterday.
We’ve all heard it before: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Except in co-working spaces, that’s sort of wrong (at least when compared to coffee shops).
First of all, there’s unlimited (free!) coffee. Yes…unlimited. No more nursing my mocha for 3 hours while trying to appear like a good patron and also hoping the barista wouldn’t remember how long it had been since my last purchase.
Second of all, you can bring your own lunch. Save the $12 chicken pesto sandwich for your next date night, honey. Your street meat leftovers from last night will be just perfect when reheated in the communal microwave.
Third of all, I do know what you’re thinking: you have to pay for entry to a co-working space — so are you really saving money? Well, in my case, it was a resounding “yes”. I’ve now used seven co-working spaces in four different countries, and for every single one, the entry fee was well below the total of my coffee shop beverages and noshes.
(Disclaimer: I’m sure there are exceptions, and results depend on individual spending patterns.)
S.A.F.E.T.Y.
Safety. Oh how good it felt to get up to stretch my legs and not have to weigh out the pros and cons of losing my seat versus losing my computer.
Co-working spaces have staff with eagle eyes. They’re also full of serious professionals who have paid to be there, in that same place, day after day. So even if you do still have separation anxiety each time you step away from your laptop for five minutes, chances are that after a day or two, you’ll actually develop a connection with someone who can ensure its security in your absence.
Privacy is prevalent.
Many co-working spaces allow you, for a premium, to rent a private office. Others allow you to reserve conference rooms, or “Skype Rooms”, as they’re often affectionately called. There you’ll have access to not only privacy for meetings, but also whiteboards, projectors, extra computer monitors, and the like — all on a pay-for-what-you-need basis (and even sometimes for free).
And finally….
You’re not alone.
One of the hardest parts of being an entrepreneur is that, for all intents and purposes, you are alone. The marketing department? You. The IT department? You. Admin? You, you, you.
In a coffee shop, you’re unlikely to find like-minded people who are in similar situations to yourself. But in a co-working space? Insta-comrades.
If you want to know more about the collaborative and social aspects of it all, you can find some details in my piece about co-living spaces, here.
So here’s the bottom line: when you want to produce good work, you obviously use a program that’s DESIGNED to do that work. And when you want to get work DONE, then work in a place that’s designed for getting work done.
See ya at the water cooler!
