How has the co-working space worked for you as far as social pressure goes? Being the only person from my company in a co-working space hasn't worked well for me, but I've mostly only used the hacker dojo, which is perhaps a little bit too social for what I need?

As far as I can tell, I need people that are working on the same project as I am. I need that feeling that I'm betraying or failing those people if I'm not working on the thing I'm supposed to be working on. (why don't I get this with remote work? I should. it's irrational, but those feelings seem to only "work" in person.)

On a more rational level, I can, and will say "Hey, I'm distracted. Can someone put me back on track?" and that seems to work better in person than doing the same in IRC.

I speak to people in "the office" via Skype regularly throughout the day.

I have a daily 10 minute team stand-up via conference call (our team has a good microphone in the main office).

My code check-ins are there for everyone to see. If there was a lack of them, it would be pretty obvious that I was not pulling my weight.

The people in my co-working space are heads down busy. I go for lunch with some of them, but other than that, there isn't that much chit-chat whilst we sit at our desks and work.

That's not to say that I'm never distracted or procrastinating. However, the cause of my procrastination is the same regardless of environment. Whether it is my old corporate cube environment (surrounded by by co-workers), my co-working space (surrounded by random people working), and my home office (surrounded by my cat) the root cause is that the work is uninteresting and uninspiring. A change of project is the best way to change that. A new feature rather than support another. A walk around the block and some fresh air a short term fix.

>That's not to say that I'm never distracted or procrastinating. However, the cause of my procrastination is the same regardless of environment. Whether it is my old corporate cube environment (surrounded by by co-workers), my co-working space (surrounded by random people working), and my home office (surrounded by my cat) the root cause is that the work is uninteresting and uninspiring. A change of project is the best way to change that. A new feature rather than support another. A walk around the block and some fresh air a short term fix.

Yeah, for me? that usually doesn't work. I mean, I switch tasks and goals often, but that doesn't help me focus, usually, at least not long enough to accomplish something. Work is one of those things that is less immediately satisfying than, say, hacker news, games, or a billion other distractions, but work is vastly more satisfying when I accomplish something. For me? it takes a lot of effort and tricks to get myself to focus long enough to finish something, but when I do? it's incredibly rewarding. Maybe I need to break up my tasks into smaller chunks? But a lot of my work is support-type work, where it's already in smallish chunks.

But... yeah. I suppose other people are better able to focus on that further-out reward than I am. Maybe it's just me? Maybe it's that I'm coming down off of a long period of being less than productive?

Either way, I think that personally, I'm way better off showing up.