Phone a friend for productivity (or, how body-doubling saved my project)

For the past several months, I've been heads down on a project. It's been an intense period of focus, organizing my calendar to create pockets of time where I could get into flow to build a college course for my first semester students. It's been a creative exercise, a research exercise, and an exercise in discipline and time-management. The first phase was intensely creative, designing the course outline and producing half a semester of content. It was a push to the finish, where I found myself working evenings while on my family vacation to hit my first deadline. (Ugh!)

After delivering the first set of content, I intentionally took a break, giving myself a week to step away from the project and focus on other work and rest. The second phase ramped up slowly. After being deeply engaged for that first push, my creative resources were tapped out, even after my hiatus. Noticing this, I gave myself space to find my groove again. I scheduled time in my calendar and forgave myself if I couldn't sustain 4 or 6-hour work periods as I'd done in the first phase. After a couple of weeks of working and reflecting, it was clear I wasn't nearly as productive as in that first phase. I still had a deadline to hit, so it was time to try something new.

Coincidentally, my friend and fellow coach, Marta, returned from her wedding vacation and we restarted our twice-weekly body-doubling sessions after a month's hiatus. Two mornings a week, we join a video call and work independently together. Does that sound like a contradiction? As someone who's benefitted from the arrangement for several months, I assure you it's not.

Body-doubling is a practice that has come out of the ADHD community. There is little research on the concept, but it appears to work through the mechanism of "externalizing motivation [which] is a long-standing, evidence-based mechanism for managing ADHD", according to Billy Roberts, the clinical director of an ADHD-focused counselling practice in the US. By partnering with someone (or several folks) to participate in focused work time, the participants engage in a form of reciprocal accountability. While I don't identify as having ADHD, I have found body-doubling incredibly helpful.

In our sessions, Marta and I start by sharing our intentions for the work period, have a stretch break mid-way through, and in the final 5-minutes we do a check out to reflect on what we've accomplished during our 2 hours together. And we'll typically set an intention for the rest of the day before signing off. While in the past I'd focused on tasks related to building my coaching practice (like blogging!), I shifted focus in September to use the time for the second phase of my course development project. Counting on two 2-hour blocks each week to make progress was a gamechanger for me. I felt my confidence return while seeing the content come together again, checking off milestones each session - a lesson plan here, a slide deck there. When we finished our sessions, I typically took a short break, but made sure to set up my next task before leaving my desk in a strategy another friend calls "The Sarah-Beth Method".

I published the final modules of my course last month and celebrated immediately by shutting down my computer and (literally) running downstairs to watch a murder mystery show on my couch. The next couple of weeks found me catching up on the assignment grading I'd set aside during the final push of my project. Now here I am, in a body-doubling session, blogging and looking ahead at building out coaching content. It feels invigorating to have this time available for a different form of creative work, or even the administrative tasks that go into running my practice. Yup - body-doubling is even making me look forward to bookkeeping and troubleshooting my scheduling software.

I can't stop thinking about how impactful body-doubling could have been when I was managing a team. Meetings filled my calendar, and interruptions were frequent. Setting aside even an hour to work with another manager to get our administrative tasks done could've prevented so much overwhelm or tasks encroaching on my evenings.

What are the administrative tasks you can't seem to find time for? What projects are you struggling to make progress on because you can't get into flow? Consider giving body-doubling a try. Find a friend or colleague, or consider paying for a service that helps connect you to partners, and see if virtual or in-person body-doubling gives you the boost you need to make progress.

If you try body-doubling, I'd love to hear about your experience. Did it work for you? Are you looking for other options to help shift how you do your work or accomplish your goals? Let's chat! Book a discovery call to see if coaching can help you identify other new approaches and unblock the progress you're seeking.