In praise of the stranger in my workspace

Through my time of being self employed, one of the biggest struggles I faced was completing tasks, both getting started and staying on task. I would start my day with so many good intentions, and more often than not, get to the end of the day utterly mystified as to why nothing had been ticked off my list.

Understanding that I have ADHD helped me understand this. Procrastination and poor focus are two of the most understood traits of the condition.

But understanding WHY, while it did allow me to be a little more forgiving of myself, didn’t help to solve the problem. It sometimes felt like something I would never be able to overcome, a life sentence with no hope of parole.

I learned, through a couple of Zoom co-working sessions, that I worked really well in a virtual co-working space environment. I set up a small accountability group through LinkedIn, and we enjoyed a few sessions together. In these sessions, I was hyper-focused and productive — the motivation of knowing that I would have to explain myself at the end of the session, and that there were people there who wanted me to achieve my goals, and would hold me accountable, really helped.

The moments of connection at the start and end of the session satisfied my extrovert need for other people to energise me and fulfiled my core value of…