Day 13: Trying Hoffice for the first time

This blogpost is written at a Hoffice. It's a Swedish concept where you work in other people's homes during a day. Now the idea has spread to many countries.

So at the moment I'm sitting on a mattress on the floor in an apartment, which happens to be across the street from where I live, with my laptop. There are four of us here today. We work in 45 minutes blocks. After 43 minutes the host lets an alarm go off, telling us we have two more minutes to work. Then after two minutes we take a break for 15 minutes or so.

In the break you're supposed to tell the others what you have accomplished so far. And in the beginning of each block tell them what you're going to do. Like "I'm going to read an article." or "I'm going to do some research on this." I guess, "I'm going to spend 20 minutes facebooking isn't an option", even though one of the participants said "I think I might take a nap".

During one pause we did some stretching, and now we went out for a walk in the, almost, snow storm. And then we had a lunch break eating the food we brought. The conversation was mostly about permaculture, fermentation, composting and communal living. One of the benefits of trying new things is meeting people with other interests than your own.

I'm not sure I'm getting more done than I would at home. Sitting quiet in a room with other people is a bit distracting and normally I listen to music while I work. But I like working in 45 minutes block and taking the pauses in between. And it's nice to meet other people for a change if you're used to working at home. I'm a pretty open minded person but I think the pause activities that Hoffice suggests, like playing or dancing might seem a bit silly to a lot of people. So to summarize, I think it's a nice concept, which would fit a lot of freelancers, and has the potential of attracting even more people if they don't have to dance during the breaks.