Coming to a cafe, we often notice young people with laptops at the neighboring tables: they have clearly settled here for a long time and are in no hurry to go anywhere. They feel at home here, hold telephone conversations, meetings in a cafe, and then, after saying goodbye to their interlocutors, they return to work on a laptop. What makes them prefer the space of a cafe to homeliness?
Behavioral psychologist Ronald Brautigam of the University of Michigan calls this type of behavior “cofelancing,” a word that crosses freelancing with coffee. In fact, this is how freelancers who work for themselves or remotely from the office spend their days.
There are many reasons why it is more convenient and easier for a freelancer to work in a cafe than at home. The first is a lack of motivation. When we work from home, we often get distracted. Even when reading articles and studying the material for the upcoming work, we spend much more time on it than the task itself requires – we can go too deep into the topic or expand its context by wandering through the links.
Even if you understand that the work is worth it, it is not easy to be distracted from such activities: on the one hand, it seems to be part of the work, on the other hand, if there are no hard deadlines, no one pushes you. Laziness can be added to this, not to mention everyday circumstances, if, for example, a freelancer has someone to distract him from work. In a word, if a person has a “free schedule”, he somehow faces motivational problems.
Not all cafes are loyal to such customers.
A cafe as a limited and public space, but at the same time aimed at providing a service, turns out to be a kind of compromise for a freelancer. Of the obvious advantages, there is good wi-fi and good coffee – a drink that, in our view, is inextricably linked with the stimulation of brain activity.
Of course, the surrounding strangers can interfere with their conversations, but at the same time, if the atmosphere of the cafe allows you to feel your private space in it, this turns out to be a kind of incentive, prompting us to focus on work issues.
“This is precisely due to the need to secure and strengthen their private space in a public place,” explains Ronald Brautigam.
The problem is that not all cafes are loyal to customers who are engaged in co-working in their establishment – an autonomous workflow. In the West, they constantly come up with tricks to discourage such visitors: for example, refusing soft chairs or additional outlets in the establishment. Some café owners have taken more drastic measures by banning laptops and tablets.
Coffeelancing appeared relatively recently in Russia, but experts are already beginning to note a similar trend: cafe owners are trying to limit the opportunities for working within the walls of the institution. Co-working spaces and hackerspaces are gradually becoming an alternative – places where freelancers come to work and at the same time exchange professional knowledge with colleagues. In addition, it solves the problem of working loneliness, when you do not have enough colleagues around who are passionate about the profession.
Whatever one may say, live communication is an important factor that improves performance and makes the workflow rich.