Founder Story
Greetings,
I am the creator of this place. I live in the north of Germany with roots in the Philippines and without Covid-19, I would probably sit in a library or a co‑working space right now to work on a completely different project. I am basically unable to focus on any mental task for longer than 5 minutes without having people around me and my entire life is a constant struggle around that fact.
My main problem is the lack of self-control, which amongst other things, leads to problems getting up and staying awake, as well as focusing whiteout pressure. My entire live is me trying one thing after another to transform myself into a different person - 15 years straight, while losing jobs, friends and pretty much every relationship. The inability to just do what I planned for at least one day gave me the feeling of being cuffed to a chair. The head full of ideas and motivation while being unable to move in the real world. Sometimes, this made me so depressed I just stared at the wall for 2 weeks in a row sitting on the couch, 100% certain the universe does not want me to make it out of this reality.
Screaming at yourself after you failed to follow a simple routine for the thousandth time will just make you hate yourself. And that is not a good state to be in. After years of depression and on the verge of giving up, I started to change my mindset. Instead of trying to become like someone else, I tried to accept my personality as it is, looking at the positive sides of my chaotic but creative mind. Instead of forcing myself to be different, I started to change the situation in which I am, changing the environment. I began to think in compensations and workarounds, rather than fixing myself.
Having the focus on "I am who I am, but I still need to function within this society", I found workarounds for almost every problem over the course of the last three years. I know that I would immediately fall back into my old habits without them but like my old boss once sad "temporary solutions stand the longest". After years, those workarounds can slowly re-program your hard-wired habits but even if they fail to, you have already won.
The first workaround I found, that transformed my life big time, was a technical setup that prevented me from oversleeping. And I am not talking about barcode scanning alarm apps or super loud setups. If you have no self-control that will not work long term. After the third time I just put the phone under my pillow and continued to sleep until the battery died. I will write an entire article just for that because I think that my system is waterproof.
But in this little post I am here to show you my focus workaround. If you did not know already, if you cannot by any means focus alone (like me), visit your local university, public library or if available a dedicated co‑working space. I drove 120km every day to a university library in another city to work. It was worth it; that was my workaround. Expensive in terms of gas but effective. But then Covid happened! All libraries and universities closed. The last year was my worst, no doubt. I missed every deadline and lost all freelancer gigs. I knew I needed to find an additional, alternative workaround.
I present:
CoworkAlone