I’m glad I was wrong

Last Friday I ended up getting my entire day’s to-do list done in just under two hours.

While I don’t enjoy being wrong (though I should be used to it by now ????), I’ll gladly admit that thinking this idea was going to be a waste of time turned out to be a severely misguided assumption.

This idea came up in a TABLE meeting a while back when a member mentioned attending some “virtual co-working” sessions.

If you’ve not done this before, essentially, everyone gets on a Zoom call and works silently on their own projects.

I honestly couldn’t see how this would be anything other than a distraction. To say I was skeptical would be putting it mildly.

But there were enough people in the group interested in the idea, that I scheduled a session for last Friday.

We ended up doing two 1-hour sessions (with a small break in-between), and by the end of it, I had knocked out everything on my to-do list for the entire day in just two hours!

And I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a fluke, or something that only worked for me… because after it was over, I got some great feedback from the other people who participated…

“I know I would have allowed all kinds of distractions derail me and this would have taken the better part of the day but I’m so relieved to be on the end of it all and it’s still morning.”

“I’m sure it’s all mindset but setting aside that time to work on my goals really helped me to get them done. Could I set aside that time by myself? Sure. But there’s something about the accountability that was super-helpful and it forced me to keep the appointment with myself.”

“I will use these in the future to do the things I don’t like to do, or have been putting off.”

It’s not like anyone could see what everyone else was actually working on (so we could have just been goofing off), but there was something about being “around” other people that kept us on-task, focused, and working diligently.

And now that I’ve experienced it — it makes a lot of sense. In a “traditional” work environment, you have a little bit of social pressure to work hard because co-workers (and the boss!) could pop by at any minute.

But for those of us working alone — we’re left completely to our own devices.

Had you asked me before, I would have told you that I do a great job of staying on task… but this co-working session proved to me that I probably don’t do as good of a job as I think I do.

If the opportunity presents itself, I would highly recommend giving this a shot — especially if you’re as skeptical as I was. I don’t think you need a big group… Just grab a couple friends (maybe some folks from the group) and schedule an hour.

There’s not a lot of risk in that, and if your experience is anything like ours, you’ll be glad you were wrong too!