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This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it’s wild how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many large corporations are doing now.
They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow forcing everyone to spend hours commuting isn’t.
It’s the worst of both worlds.
> They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but somehow forcing everyone to spend hours commuting isn’t.
Sure, this is pretty much exactly what I'd expect from companies; wasting the employee's time doesn't matter, but wasting the _company's_ time is anathema. In the absence of something to push back against it, companies will always make decisions like this. We're only a bit over a century and a few repealed regulations from another Triangle Shirtwaist Factory after all.
My employer was very quick to force return to office after covid lockdowns. Like they were willing to pour millions into subdividing offices into closets so people could isolate at work even, but the county health department gave them a stern look and they ended up scraping that and waiting another year to force RTO.
But they actually put their money where their mouth is. Ad-hoc conversations in the hallway, going to chat in person, etc were all encouraged. Holding a meeting over Teams when everyone was in office became almost a taboo. Even team building activities and events saw an increase in frequency.
It's about maintaining a feeling of control, it's not about collaboration. Thats just the lie they tell to RTO.
Ive worked in:
1) collaborative in office
2) uncollaborative in office
3) collaborative wfh
4) uncollaborative wfh
Personally i found 4 to be the most tortuous (because of ADHD), but 2 isnt much better.
1 and 3 i think are roughly equally good while you're there but wfh has so many ancillary benefits like not commuting that it wins overall.
After experiencing 4 and before I experienced 3 I actually desperately wanted to RTO.
I think a collaborative environment is only quite tangentially related to inhabiting the same space, though. It's more about culture, trust and shared goals.
The commute isn’t paid, so who cares. Let them drive 4 hours a day. But don’t you dare stealing a few minutes in idle talk, because yes, not being valuable every second you are on company premises is stealing. You should feel bad. Now put on your headphones and work through your task list, you miserable ant.
As much as I dislike the isolation of WFH, particularly since leaving the job I had pre-2020 that began in office and started doing fractional work at fully remote companies, I keep reminding myself that offices aren’t what they used to be.
Also, the kind of relationships I had in office as a 25 year old grinding it out on a sales floor aren’t going to be the ones I’d find as a 35 year old in revenue operations.
That sounds awful. I go to the office to chat with everyone, it's incredible how much work gets done when you can just walk over to someone and debug or rubbery ducky in real time.
Working in an open office on cool stuff with legitimate friends was the best work experience I've ever had by far. Most days it didn't even feel like work. Now I wfh full time with people who are just coworkers and I'm miserable.
I pretty sure that Teams has tanked productivity in some offices. It used to be that arranging a meeting required finding a physical space. Now some people are spending their days in back-to-back teams meetings and never get any actual work done.
I work far more effectively remotely in isolation.
The article is specifically about those with ADD/ADHD, not a generalization.
An online application of this principle is Focusmate, where you schedule calls with essentially random strangers and just work together. There's very little chit chat and it's not some weird front for a hookup scheme. I've been amazed at how well it works for me. I can't really explain why, after all the other person can't see my screen so I could just be doom scrolling YouTube the whole time, but for some reason I don't. I don't use it all the time, but when I need to get something unappealing done I still use it. I've also used it for exercise, and I've had partners use it for all sorts of weird things that they had been procrastinating. I highly recommend it, I thought it would be far weirder than it turned out to be, and it's really useful.
I may have ADHD, I never went for a diagnosis and found body doubling useful at times, especially when I was in school some decades ago, back then I had no name for it. However, I find white noise very helpful with staying on the task and with increased focus. My company moved, about a year ago, into a very cramped office that is also extremely noisy. This exasperated me, I would get drained of energy in a couple of hours and my focus was being severy affected. I even considered quitting and looking for something else. As a last resort I started listening to white noise. I’ve been using white noise (white+brown+pink) for about a year now and find that it helps not only with cancelling out the noise but with focus and staying on task in general. I even use it at home at times. I know this may not be useful for everybody but I’m sure it could help out some of you. I use https://noises.online/ and mix all the types of white noise at the same time for maximim coverage but any type of white noise generator would do. To me it feels like being close to a waterfall. At first my ears hurt a bit after a few hours of white noise but got used to it after a while.
I’m sure this works for some people. Personally I loathe social interaction of any kind, and mixing that with engineering gets me to my mental/emotional limits much faster.
On my own I can work about 2 hours on and 10 mins off, sometimes for 10+ hours total. If I have a 2 hour collab coding call, that’s about all I’ll do that’s productive that day. I’l literally have to spend the rest of that day mentally recovering from the stress of the call.
Wish I could read it. The menu stays open on Firefox even if you hit the X.
My roommate comes in and talks, and while they're doing that I automatically start cleaning my room. I am a slob otherwise. But something about that, it gives me a chance to be away from "online" while also giving me a sort of mental "space"/distraction so I'm not focused/anxious/worried and seems to help me reduce my "executive dysfunction". I also have a tendency to place self-demands and so it makes me doing things I want to do (not like cleaning room but projects) more difficulty because I feel the pressure to do it, so I resist. Having someone in the room helps me relax that self-demand. I don't "should" I just "do".
I used to do a lot more socially and my computer was in the living room with the roomie, but I'm just in my room most of the time, and this is making me think - maybe I should go back to the living room with my computer (since she's out there too most days), maybe that will help me be more productive in programming/projects, etc...
I wfh pretty much 100%, and have inattentive adhd. I’ll occasionally go spend a day at a WeWork, either with other workmates, or by myself.
On days that I’m with workmates, I get nothing done. On days I’m by myself, sitting by strangers, I’m really productive. I can just lock in and chug through my work. It never made sense to me until I learned about body-doubling, kind of feels like what I was inadvertently doing on those solo days.
I just want to get to work from 10pm to 4am. Just me my music and the night highway / city /nature sounds. Anything is possible in that timeframe.
Too bad this is incompatible with the society. So we got to pay the context switching tax.
> What would chi have to do with a body double? The body double might be a chi balancer or protective barrier helping to contain and calm the energy in and around the person with ADHD.
Does the writer believe that, or are they pandering?
Website overrides browser scroll behavior, forcing laggy (i.e. animated) scroll.
As such, it's extremely irritating.
Archive version[0] does not have such problem.
Really interesting method. I've been calling a similar strategy the library effect. Whenever I work in an environment where other people are productive (or at least look productive) I can focus much better and get in the zone. It's now gotten to a point where I'm actively seeking desks with my screen exposed to the room, so people would be able to see me procrastinate, guilt tripping me to limit this sort of behavior.
I find coworking spaces with other people around hits on thos effect. You don’t even have to be near the people, just in the same area.
And on the flip side, it seems there is no remote way of getting the same feeling. Even having my business partner on Discord doesn’t really do it. He doesn’t feel like he is parallel working as much as TOO close in that case.
This article is clearly written to the word count and not the overall content. A painful read.
The podcast Science Vs just had an ADHD episode. They talk about body doubling and a bunch of other ADHD stuff.
Good episode. Recommend. Be aware that most folks who think they have ADHD really don't. Just like "OCD" and "migraines", people just like to throw labels on themselves.
> While there’s no research to prove its effectiveness [..]
> Originally published in 1996, this article was republished on February 20th, 2025.
I've been thinking about this for a while. Seeing paid services like Focusmate, Flow Club and Focus101 show the basic idea is attractive enough to make into a lifestyle sized business.
But my idea was a bit more. A lot of people are leaving religions for many reasons. One of the interesting parts of religion, from my perspective, is a community of people meeting at some cadence (e.g. once per week). At that time, they all make a public commitment to some set of values. It's like a shared affirmation.
This led me to wonder if this ritualistic activity is important in a psychological way that is effective outside of theistic or other dogmatic beliefs.
I was thinking of a service exactly like the ones mentioned, except it would also include some kind of intention setting. The word "prayer" is a little loaded and often brings to mind asking a God for some kind of favor. And "intention" is more like a stated goal.
It is interesting that in the modern world we feel comfortable stating/sharing intentions that are productivity related. But we don't share intentions that are more broadly ethical/moral in the same way that religions promoted.
If anyone has examples of services that do what Focusmate/Flow Club/etc. are doing but on a broader scale, let me know.
Yep, my sister makes fun of me that her mere presence makes me more productive. (when I shared an apartment with her in my early thirties) she'd sit in my room just chatting to me and I would tidy and clean without her doing anything, whereas I'd been meaning to do that for months.
I suggested the idea of a responsiblabuddy website today to my wife – if we're both in the same town I'd commit to coming to your house on Saturday and you'd commit to coming to mine on Sunday and I'd finally tidy my shed / weld those batteries / list those items on fb marketplace etc. Then I realised I'd need a responsabilabuddy to get me to start and finish the website!
There was a guy running a co-working space in Dublin (Ireland) who would open it up on the occasional Sunday for "Sideproject Sundays" which I found great for focus.
Edit: there are no search results for "responsiblabuddy", I know I didn't come up with that term
This site (add.org) doesn't function on Firefox mobile.
Body doubles work especially well for tasks that involve changing visual context and sequencing.
As a child, I noticed that my brain worked differently when someone was in my room. I begged my mom to stay in my room so I could clean my room, but she didn't understand what the point was.
I have a family member who does this. But I think it's more because they've fallen down an internet rabbit hole which has basically removed all personal autonomy. They just do it because everyone else is doing it. It's just called working with someone else.
My most productive period within the last 12 months was when I rented a desk in a co-working space for the summer so that I could catch up with a friend who also went there.
To me it was less his mere presence and more the ability to immediately share any thoughts that would occur to me. Also air conditioning.
Same goes with chores - I would much rather have someone be in the same room while I e.g. do the dishes or cook.
I also noticed that if I don't have anyone close, I start talking to myself.
That sounds like a strong argument for working from the office and it is, but to me it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages. For one I could pull this off only because my commute was short thanks to it being vacation season, so traffic was way smaller than normal.
There are a bunch of “study with me” videos on YouTube that aim to do a similar thing, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ex_bNIFR1A
This is super interesting. I can only speak anecdotally but my older brother has ADD and he has already spent 4-5 weeks writing a powershell script to automate a trivial task at work.
But whenever I visit he makes huge breakthroughs and I notice that he really wants me to come visit, and he asks me more and more questions on IM and shares his thoughts and progress.
He has a hard time coming out and saying what he feels but I'm observing that he works better with me present.
What's funny though is that I'm the absolute opposite. When someone is present and only slightly focused on what I'm doing, I act as if I have ADD.
In my 40s and I’ve recently been diagnosed with inattentive adhd. TFA makes a lot of sense to me given I’m one of the rare people at my company who commutes to the office every day even though we are an in-person optional workplace. Whenever I’ve had to WFH, I’ve struggled massively to gain an initial focus. Although medication has helped tremendously, I still feel much more productive in an office setting.
Requiring another person is a major issue.
I wonder if a plushie can act as substitute.
Keep it on the corner of the desk when on task. Maybe have different plushies for different tasks.
Strangely I’ve found myself to be something like 400% more productive when pair programming.
I’ve not heard anyone mention this aspect of paired programming for people with ADHD, although as a colleague once mentioned I jump from one thing to another, but in the end I’ve done the loop.
What's unique about this? This is basically what every parent and teacher already does.
I love how something so low-tech like just sitting next to someone can short-circuit the ADHD chaos spiral. Like, no fancy app, no productivity hack, just a warm body in a chair nearby. It's kind of beautiful.
So did they just discover pair programming? :D
Also, I'm reading lots of comments that are pointing out that they don't like doing pair programming because they do it wrongly.
In the past I wrote an article about it: https://domenicoluciani.com/2022/07/22/misleading-pair-progr..., I hope it helps to clarify some concepts behind this way of working
Couldn't see anything but the menu
I don't necessarily need someone there all the time. But talking it out really helps when I need get over that hump and get going on some annoying problem.
I've also found it helps sometimes to have the TV on in the other room, on some mindless sports pundit show that I can half-listen to.
When I have some task I don't want to do, especially if it's something no one is expecting me to do right away but I still need to get it done, I go to Starbucks and don't leave until it's finished.
Focusmate is probably the most popular tool in this category. I don't like the other ones, I am more comfortable in a 1-1 video session rather than multiple people. It works really well when I want to force myself to get something done.
For the most comprehensive and effective solution, medication is still the go-to. Disregard any stigma and misguided fears around it and just get medicated.
This is why childs in Germany get a Schulbegleiter. A person that just goes with the child to school
Wow - I actually do this - did not know it had a name but pairing up with someone actually makes it easier (although loads of coders I know dislike working with others - so pair programming is an attempt to do this technique without knowing who has adhd or not?
Wow... I start reading the article, and just as I'm thinking, "This site might be helpful for finding tips on how to foc..."
...A popup slides into view in the lower right-hand corner.
That's when I closed the tab. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.focusmate.com/
I used this during the early pandemic and found it very useful
Not for my kid. Even sitting right next to her, she'll zone out and start doodling for hours unless we're on her every couple minutes.
Looks related to XP (Extreme Programming), but the problem is that you get tired and stressed way too fast to reap the benefits.
Yeah, nothing like an open office with random interruptions, noises, and movements to improve your focus.
What browsers does this site support? It is broken on Firefox mobile.