Work from home essentials: coffee shop working
How would we manage without coffee shop working?
Working from home is all very well, but it does demand a change of scene from time to time, and that’s where coffee shop working fits the bill so well.
I love coffee shops and I find that having one close by is a great advantage when you’re working from home. It provides a venue for all sorts of occasions – somewhere to go just for a change of scene, for a treat when you’ve completed something difficult, for a different environment in which to get your creative juices flowing, and to meet people either to discuss work or have a good old chat.
Coffee shop working provides the choice of hooking up to the internet for a concentrated spell of work, or deliberately leaving the laptop at home for a distraction-free time for reading or brainstorming ideas.
One of our regular destinations for all of those reasons, Divas in Frome is in the same building at the bottom end of town as Black Swan Arts, the highly browsable SEED shop, and some artists’ workshops. And the library is just round the corner if you want a quieter place to work, currently without wifi.
The counter display of colourful and healthy food at Divas makes you want to start at one side and work your way across to the other, ditto the cakes ranged across the top. We highly recommend the bacon sandwiches with chilli jam, and the slices of chocolate cake are large enough to satisfy the most demanding of chocoholics!
You can sit outside in the pretty courtyard if the weather’s good, and browse the local and national papers while slurping the excellent coffee.
How do you tackle coffee shop working? Do you have certain tasks you save for a coffee shop environment, or do you just enjoy being in company and watching (and maybe listening to!) the other customers? All coffee shop working stories welcome!
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Great article. We know working from home can get old pretty quickly and local coffee shops are a great alternative for the change of scenery and contact with other humans. However, once you step out of your local (i.e. meetings out of town) spot it can be challenging to figure out which coffee shops offer wifi, power outlets, a good vibe for work, and of course, great coffee. That’s why we created http://coffices.co
I do certain tasks in coffee shops – I call them artist’s dates (nod to Julia Cameron) and go to relax and rebalance my mind. Often I find blog posts are a pleasant by product as they just flow out of my hand 🙂
It’s amazing how being in a different environment frees up the mind for new ideas and writing them down!
I use them for meetings, and freeing mental blocks.
I find I have to be very careful about timing if I want to meet someone in a coffee shop, Jonathan. Too early and you risk other customers hearing too much of the conversation, and at other times the din might be too great, or the place is stuffed full of buggies. But hit it right and it works really well.