Should I Use a Co-Working Space?

Why shared work spaces can bring out the best in self-employed people

Photo by Michael Warf on Unsplash

I’ve been self-employed for nearly ten years now. Over the years, I’ve learnt that for all the freedoms of self-employment, it can sometimes feel like an uprooted existence. A cycle of weeks without the anchors of defined working hours and office colleagues. In such circumstances, peculiar feelings of waywardness can arise, especially if your workload and income are as erratic as mine have been. In many ways it’s a paradoxical impulse: as if your freedoms can only be measured by seeking patterns of routine. The most obvious of these is a permanent workplace.

My first attempts to occupy a more scheduled existence was to take myself off to the range of coffee shops in my home town, if only to “make an appearance” in the world of the waking. Stroll into any coffee bar these days and you’ll find a wall of laptops, and behind them ranks of self-motivated freelancers searching for relief from the caverns of their home office or kitchen table.

In the coffee shop, precious is the space near to the plug sockets, whilst deflating is the sight of a room full of leisured idlers assuaging themselves with chatter and cake: families of decibel-hitting children, attention-snaring raconteurs, and all the other recreational drinkers of…