‘Solipsism’ is a Four-Letter Word
The dynamic of sitting at a desk is pretty weird if you think about it. You stare at a screen, closed off from your coworkers: high priestess or priest of the temple of your own thoughts. Solipsism in office-casual clothing. (A solipsistic view of the world states that you can only know your own mental state. It’s comfortable, but ultimately prevents you from reaching any sort of social potential.)
And so you remain in your idea-cocoon, at least until someone interrupts you. Whoah. This person is now looming over you, with that expression on his or her face. What is that, expectation? Hesitation? Impatience? A hint of pleading? It can feel suffocating, if not a bit threatening.
When you’re the one doing the interrupting, the encounter is just as weird. You fear you’ve broken your colleague’s flow, perhaps derailed their brain-train. This scene sums up the awkward dynamic perfectly:
Come to think of it, there’s something very Office Space about this Darth Vader meditation-chamber scene: regimented environments are pretty much the same no matter what galaxy you’re in. Even startups can end up falling into this trap: those big open-plan tables seem laid-back because there are no beige cubicle walls involved, but they can be just as fixed.
The Anti-Cubicle
Solipsism has several antonyms (or cures): teamwork, empathy, and community are but a few. The physical structure of our workplaces can influence how we work when alone, and how we treat each other as a cohort. You can’t force community to happen, but you can definitely give it room to grow. “Solipsism” is a four-letter word, at least in terms of what it’ll do to your ability to function as part of a healthy team. Don’t blame yourself, though: chances are your work environment is imposing those restrictions upon your imagination.
The work environment can also provide the cure. A lounge is purpose-built for conversations to happen by turning me-space into we-space. We practice what we preach: the wantoo team uses headphones as our meditation chambers in the wantoo Lounge; Tippett and Danny prefer big noise-cancelling cans; while Dave, Erinc and I just use the ones that came with our phones. Those earphones go on and come off all the time as we shift between shared-idea mode and private work — all while occupying a collective space. It’s working pretty well for us: we’re smashing deadlines as we build our latest tool, which we’ll unveil soon.
Next, we’ll look at a lounge-born idea that changed the world of small-screen entertainment forever.
