Dear readers,
When I was young, I couldn’t study, or finish homework, or pack my suitcase. I would panic around the house. My sister or my friend would ask if I need help and I’d say oh god YESSSS.
They’d wait for me to tell them what to do, maybe dictate a passage or stack my sweaters, but instead I’d just beg them please just stay in this room with me. You can do whatever you want, but stay here until I finish this task that feels impossible to my brain.
Puzzled at my request, they’d see their mere presence work like magic on me. Once I was done with the task I was anxious about for many hours or even days, I’d mutter many thankyous to their very blank face.
I didn’t know exactly how this magic helped me, but I knew that sometimes, even studying next to my snoring parents was easier than studying alone.
When I grew up, I got better at asking friends, roommates, and sometimes, even strangers (there are websites that help you find them) to be my quiet companions.
The more I wanted to leave traditional workplaces, work from home, and write consistently - the more this form of working started to help me.
And today, I’m writing this very essay in the presence of 13 other people. Yes. 13! They are on a Zoom call in the neighboring window, working on their own creative projects, and their presence is helping me put one word next to another here, instead of hopping from one YouTube video to the next.
You may know this term or you may not. Either ways, you’ve experienced it. You’ve worked while somebody else worked in the same room, and it has felt slightly (or significantly) easier than working alone.
You might have seen people getting together to read in parks, or a YouTuber stream a live ‘Study with me’ session. You might have asked a friend to be there with you as you booked expensive flight tickets, or stayed on campus until midnight so your classmate can finish the assignment.
Technically, each of these tasks can be done alone. It is not a couch that needs two people to lift it. But somehow, the mental load of the work decreases the moment there is another body around.
Of course, it’s not just about any body. It is about a context. If your boss stares at you, the task at hand will become harder, not easier.
But if it’s a friend or colleague or even a stranger with whom you have a shared interest or intention, body doubling doubles your capacity to carry out boring or challenging tasks.
If the other person is focused on their own difficult task, the magic multiplies. Not only is there an exchange of motivation, you can safely assume that you are not being judged or evaluated.
Body doubling can be done in person, or online. With one or many people. It may not always be described as body doubling, but if you keep reading, you’ll find out why I insist on using the phrase.
If you’re wired like me, meaning if you are some kind of neurodivergent, this strange magic matters WAY more to you than others.
When I was first wondering if I had ADHD, the following words by Gabor Maté in his seminal book Scattered Minds simply sealed the deal:
“…many children with ADD are capable of focused work in the presence of an adult who is keeping them company and paying attention to them.”
As these words hurled a hundred memories at me, he explained:
“The warmth and satisfaction of positive contact with the adult is often just as good as a psychostimulant in supplying the child’s prefrontal cortex with dopamine.”
My autistic friends tell me about the five neurodivergent love languages and one of them is Parallel Play. While it is usually used to describe the developmental state when toddlers play alongside each other, Parallel Play is also a powerful way in which teens and adults find quiet and creative togetherness.
The neurotypical adults around me are capable of separating work time and social time: their motto being work hard and party harder.
But us neurospicy ones need to mix the two. We want to work in the presence of friends, or friendly strangers, to feel companionship or accountability while completing a task that’s hard to even imagine doing alone.
And we also like to use the social time with friends to learn or play something.
Beyond a point, we want our friendships to go beyond conversation and into shared experiences of parallel play, mutual growth, and shared accomplishment.
I’m so much in awe of body doubling, I could’ve gone deep into the science of it - which I’ve learned - is not super strong - but I’m focusing on better questions:
What makes a body doubling session good? What can I do when there’s nobody to help me with their presence? Why is it gaining popularity in the world, and in my heart?
We can blame it on the increase in remote working, but there is deeper reason.
When the world is full of competition and disconnection, overwhelm and distraction, hyper independence and isolation: body doubling provides space for humility. We must admit we need each other, to do small or big tasks. There is a vulnerability that people exchange, and it becomes power.
In this attention economy, we ask each other to stand guard to our attention. We keep our vices and devices aside, so we can do something that needs to be done.
For me, body doubling is not just a productivity hack, or an accommodation for being neurodivergent. It is the overlapping Venn diagram between two things I love most: friendship and work.
Even when I have body doubled with strangers, I have felt amazed at the soft belonging I felt, simultaneously connected with them and with my work.
All week, I am paralyzed with procrastination and social anxiety, but the minute I get into a formal or informal body doubling session, I begin to flow and connect.
Body doubling melts my fear and reminds me of the essence of humanity’s strongest asset: the capacity for cooperation. Interdependence. Solidarity in everyday moments.
The desire to focus
Body doubling with friends is always more fun than doing it with strangers on websites like Focusmate and Flown. But sometimes it helps to work with people with whom you share less of a history. It is the desire to focus that unites you.
A shared interest
In 2022, I wrote several essays in the company of London Writers' Salon’s Writer’s Hours; and with Aditi Rao’s Make Space Create Sessions. I’ve written with several lovely groups since then.
Working on the same thing together increases belonging and inspiration.
Timer
Apart from the intimacy created by a shared interest, we also need a timer. That endless thing, time, contained. So we can take our baby steps urgently, but patiently.
A spelled out intention
Before we begin, we need to tease out one task out of our many responsibilities and desires and spell it out. There is something healing about choosing where our focus will go and telling another human being about it.
Reporting back
After the timer ends, it helps to circle back and share what you got done. Celebrating the other person’s efforts helps us celebrate our own.
If you need to get something done, and have no time to set up a body doubling session, there are plenty of YouTube videos are made for exactly this purpose.
They show people working, reading, writing, journaling. Putting them on as you begin work is a way of simulating a body doubling session. I’m listing my favorites below.
I have also found a super strange alternative. I turn on the front camera and record myself doing the work. Thus, I have a body doubling session with myself.
For chores like cleaning the house and packing suitcases, I play podcasts. So many times the task finishes at the same time as the conversation.
I love body doubling so much, I unknowingly started a whole space just for that. I am so grateful that I can now offer the same magic that I received to my own community: writers and artists.
When me and my partner, Vimal Chitra decided to start CoCreateClub, a community for creative people, we agreed that creatives know enough about what to do, but don’t have enough time, space, and silence to actually do it.
Every morning, we set up a space where our creative kin can come and work on their small and big creative goals.
Because we are ourselves artists and creativity coaches, prior to the silent co-creating session, we offer strange exercises and prompts that regulate the nervous system and stir the creative spirit. Afterwards, we initiate conversations that celebrate our efforts and lives as creative people.
There is no life hack that deserves to be treated like gospel. While body doubling can help in a million tasks, there are some tasks that need to happen on the go, in solitude, or in the middle of traffic. Poems, to my great annoyance, hit me at the vegetable market more often than the most productive body doubling session.
We also need this magic more in some phases of our lives than others.
I hope you find your own body doubling spaces and possibilities, whenever you need them the most. Listing a few resources below.
I want to end with this: Why I insist on calling it body doubling and not silent co-working is that I want to remember it like a medicine’s name. My ADHD makes me forget even things that help me, and I want to remind myself how much this medicinal magic of quietly connecting with a human being empowers me.
Live Body Doubling for General Tasks:
Focusmate - three free sessions a week, scholarships available
Flown - 1 month free, and later: Fridays free, Videos free
Haven’t tried these personally: Flow Club, Caveday, Deepwrk, ND Hive
ThinkDivergent: text based body doubling - haven’t tried it but looks cool
Live Body Doubling for Writing and Creativity:
London Writers' Salon - Writers’ Hour
Mason Currey’s Worm Zoom
Africa Brooke’s Together Apart sessions
Freewrite Fridays by Rishabh Khaneja
and our own space: CoCreateClub
Videos:
My favourite: The most ambitious Study With Me crossover
Another favourite: Body Doubling for Creatives with Amie McNee
Animated videos with timers: look I’m focused
Study with me: Merve, Divseeksgrowth, Dr. Shabnam singh kanwar
Read with me: Brittany
Some more videos: Playlist
Apps:
Focus Friend - a cartoon creature knits socks as you finish your work - mostly free
Focus Traveller - an illustrated character treks a mountain as you finish your work - mostly free
Dubbii app - mostly paid - by Rich and Rox Pink
Let me know if body doubling has helped you? And if you know any other links or resources that might be helpful?
If you need body doubling to help you be consistent with your creativity, and a community that wants the same, do join Vimal Chitra and I at CoCreateClub in August.
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