I’ve found that body-doubling is one of the only things that reliably helps me stay focused—but I’ll be honest, I’m embarrassed to admit it in a professional setting. It feels weird to say, “Hey, I need another human nearby just to answer emails,” even though it works better than any app I’ve ever tried. I’ve been thinking about suggesting a virtual coworking session at work, but I don’t know how to frame it without sounding incapable. Has anyone found a way to normalize tools like this in professional environments?

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We normalize coffee breaks, open offices, and Slack ping chaos—but not body-doubling? That’s wild. If it works, it should be standard, not stigmatized.

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There are online streamers who do body doubling online, if you're able to hit YouTube at work. I've tried that, and it's been somewhat helpful.

I have also made close enough connections with select colleagues where we can schedule an hour or more for body doubling. Usually it's another neurospicy person, but not always.

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I like throwing on a movie I know really well so I don't have to focus on it. There are some podcasts like that. Or find a friend who does that too and call em

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Blackadder works great for me there hahaha

I've participated in virtual co-working sessions. I think they attract us neurodivergents.

If you're on FB or Discord, there may be some that you can join.

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What does body doubling mean?

It's where another person is present with you (typically physically but can also be virtual on video call), but you each work on your own tasks.

The presence of another person working nearby without engaging or distracting them helps ADHDers stay on task.

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Slack has a feature called huddle. So you don't need a scheduled meeting, and I prefer to keep it audio only so I don't need to be "camera conscious" throughout the call. Used to do it a lot more but yeah it works pretty well.

Sometimes I'll just post up a working meeting as an open invite and anyone can hop on to have a chat while we work. Hard to do that consistently though.

This 💯

Try flow.club.

FocusMate is a successful website that does this virtually. Co-working/co-studying helps us neurodivergent folks, but it sounds like it helps others, too.

Just call it co-working, and mention that it works because you don't want to waste other people's time, so you'll aim for minimal distractions.

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