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04 | Creating More Quiet Space
Welcome to Ever Better Today: the daily podcast for creating your optimal business, career, or overall life in ten minutes or less. I’m Lisa Conners Vogt, Executive and Leadership Coach and founder of Ever Better Coaching and Consulting. To learn more about me or my work, check out my work here. Let’s jump in!
Hi there, it's Coach Lisa, and you're listening to Ever Better Today: Episode 4. I’m sharing my thoughts on creating more quiet space in your workday along with tips on applying this to your life… all in ten minutes or less!
I think it's really important to create more quiet in your workday. When you have time to think uninterrupted, you come up with more strategic solutions. You come up with more creative ideas. You're just able to increase your productivity overall.
So what I'm going to do today is share five ways to create more quiet in your life. I know that these won't all work for you, but if there's one nugget… one idea in here that helps to increase your productivity, then I think it will have been worth the ten minutes of listening to this podcast. And on the off chance that something doesn't work for you, chances are you have a friend or a colleague who could benefit from one of these ideas.
So please share the information as it makes sense to you! The bottom line of these five ideas is that you should go somewhere different. Go somewhere different!
My first idea is to use a coworking space.
A coworking space, if you're not familiar with them, is a place where you can go and rent space on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. Every coworking company has flexible options that you can make work for you.
Or if it doesn't work for you, then you go and look at a different coworking space. There are four of them that I'm going to share with you today, and I have used three of the four.
WeWork: you've probably heard or read about WeWork. They tried to do an IPO, it didn't work out, and they did another IPO. So, they've been in the business news a lot in the past few years.
I really appreciate that they rolled out an on-demand option. There's actually an app where you can sign up for just a one-day pass; you won't have a private office, but you can go anywhere in the flexible workspace (the open workspace) and set up as you need to.
You can even have someone come and meet you. They are all over the world, so check them out if you haven't before.
Regus is the second one. Regus is actually a publicly-traded company that was around way before WeWork. It just didn't have the brand recognition in the United States that WeWork now does.
There are Regus offices all over the world, I found out. I'm actually recording this podcast from a Regus office in Bethesda, Maryland! I have a contract where I have ten days in an office, with a closed door, per month. And that works out great for me because I can come in and be super productive in those ten days.
And if I need additional coworking days, I might go to a WeWork. I might work from home, or I might go somewhere else and maybe work with a client. I have flexibility.
So Regus is another great option, especially if you're going to be traveling. In fact, I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and I was able to use two of my ten office days in Florida instead of Maryland.
So these days, it doesn't really matter where you are in terms of location. You just need to get in contact with that local office and make your reservation to make sure that there's a spot. So it's very, very flexible if you're a traveler.
The third coworking space is Industrious. I have not actually worked in an Industrious myself, but I've been to meetings there. And again, they're flexible spaces.
They are bright and sunny and well decorated; they have water, coffee, and tea just like these others do. And it's just another one for you to try out!
The fourth one is Tedge. In February 2021, I was living in Midtown Miami because I just wanted to travel somewhere else and work from a different place. That is called a work-cation!
So Tedge is a local coworking space based out of Miami, and I was able to get a dedicated office space for a month. It was perfect.
Now, there is a cost to all of these options for sure. But for me, I definitely see a return on investment because my productivity is really increased when I go somewhere.
And it's an office space, and I'm paying for it. I just get to work without all the distractions that I have at home.
Pre-COVID, it was very interesting. I was working in a lot of coworking spaces. I found that there were people who had one day per week, or one day every two weeks, that they could work from home or telework. And what they did was they worked out of a coworking space.
So they had the work from home option, but they didn't want to work from home. They went to a coworking space… really interesting! And I think that people are probably still doing this during the COVID era.
Number two to create quiet in your workday: go to another office in your office.
This is something I've actually done when I was in the corporate world and was working In an office. People knew where to find me. They knew where my office was. They knew where my workspace was.
So I was in an office that was big enough to have multiple floors. It had some cubicles, it had some work areas that were not assigned, and they were open. I would actually go hide in another cubicle or another office for a couple of hours when I had something that I really needed to go heads down and work on.
Now, before doing that, I probably set up my calendar so that there was a work block, and it showed that I was in a meeting so people wouldn't think that I had gone missing. Or maybe I would have told a colleague, “I'm going to floor three,” so that they would know where to find me in case something came up.
But that's a great thing to do: to go to another office if you can. If your office has meeting rooms that you can reserve or that you can just pop into, go into a meeting room! Put a sign on the door, and if you need to, say, “meeting in progress.” Pretend you're on speakerphone if you need to! Do what you need to do to create that extra little bit of quiet in your existing office.
Option number three: check out your local library.
I'm recording this in Montgomery County, Maryland, and I have reserved their collaboration spaces and their meeting rooms. This is free, and I've actually met with clients in my local library. These are great rooms where you can close the door.
There were some windows, and there was plenty of parking. You can reserve for one or more hours, and it's your private little space in the library. Go check out your local library, and while you're there, check out a book!
Number four on my list is a hotel lobby.
Believe it or not, people hold meetings in hotel lobbies all the time! They have great Wi-Fi there.
And so the hotel needs to be big enough that it has an expansive lobby. You're able to go there and it doesn't look odd that you're having a meeting.
But I actually know of several executive coaches who regularly hold meetings in hotel lobbies. Check it out if there's a big hotel that you tend to walk by or that you hear of on a regular basis! You might just want to go in there and sit down for a little bit… maybe do some reading, respond to some emails, and just see how that works for you.
And number five: a community building like a church, temple, or some other sort of meeting space.
Several years ago, I had a work-from-home day, a teleworking day, but there was so much going on at my home. I just needed to find a quiet space.
So I actually went to a church that was close to me, and I was able to work in a room from the church. I had Wi-Fi, I had quiet… it did take me a little bit of conversation in order to figure out that space and set it up for myself, but I was able to do it!
So if you belong to a church, temple, synagogue, some other religious institution, or some community group that has a building, don't rule out that they have a lot of space there and there's not a lot going on during the week.
I'm actually going to throw in a bonus one! If you have a friend who's going out of town for a day, a week, or an extended period of time, you might be able to go over to their home and work from there. Now, you'd have to set up your Wi-Fi, and all the conditions need to be met in order for you to work there. But that can be a good option!
I hope this episode helps you to optimize one thing or to elevate one thought in your life, because
small changes add up to major shifts.
So keep listening, and let me know what's changing for you. In order to do that, you can send me an email at lisa@everbetteru.com or check out my work here and click the link to send me a note.
I'd love to hear from you and learn about how the ideas I just shared apply to your life or business! And if you know someone that might benefit from this information, do them a favor and share the podcast.
That's it for today. Join me tomorrow for another episode of Ever Better Today!