ADHD office space sharing - is it a good idea?

Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out and there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on, don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out, and there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please, please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on, don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Squirrel. What I'm about to describe is going to be slightly different for every person with adhd. Squirrel. But you can all resonate with the experience of getting a crap ton more work done when you're around other people. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, and this is business strategy for Weenie ADHDpreneurs. Squirrel. Now, there are two flavors of this. There's the ADHD flavor of silence. Everyone must be quiet. It's like the library setting where everyone is hushed and you can't really decipher what things are being said. And then there's the I don't give a fuck, let's play some music version of this. You can be in the loudest environment. You could even be in a bar at happy hour, and everyone's like speaking loudly and bumping into each other and there's music in the background, all that stuff, and you could get a crap ton of work done. There's something funny that happens for ADHD people. We do really good work when we're around other people. You can call it mirroring. You can call it parallel work. There's something that happens to our brains when we see other people in our area and we feel like we're cocooned by them a little bit. For us to just go in and focus on whatever we need to do. I firmly believe that this is one of the reasons that I was so shitty in high school. But once I got to college, I became an A student because I was in a triple. I had two roommates in this room in bunk beds, and to do my homework, I had to do it with them around or I had to go to the library where there were a ton of other people there. I was constantly surrounded by people, and I got so much more work done because of that. Part of this, I think, is because the ADHD brain loves to know that if they have a really incredible idea, they can Turn to someone and talk through it. There's a safety net almost of having other brains available to you if you need to talk through a problem or if you have an idea and you need to brainstorm it, that you can access them at any moment. There's also that sensation of, oh, cool, they're working on something. I better be working, too. Especially when the environment is supposed to be quiet. So one of the reasons people with ADHD and entrepreneurs with ADHD lean away from coworking is because they've usually had a really experience when they worked for a corporate overlord who decided they wanted to have an open office space. And let me tell you my experience with this. So I worked for Cisco Systems in San Francisco. I sold Internet security. I found it very boring, which is probably why I really struggled with this. When I was hired, there was this open workspace that was very industrial. We were all spread out. You kind of had like. Like too much distance from your other people, the other people in the workspace, to even hear what they were saying. But they were there and they were working. And so in those six months that I was in this version of the shared workspace for that job, I thrived. I got so much done. I had my counterpart to my work far enough away from me that I couldn't necessarily hear everything he was saying, but close enough that if I had a question or if I wanted to share something funny, I could bounce over to him and tell him that whatever it was. Likewise, you could kind of hear raucous laughter from the frat boys in the corner, but you couldn't really hear what they were laughing about. But if you ever needed a break from the task you were doing, you knew that you could always go over and take a break with them because they didn't do a whole lot of work. I think one of the reasons that this works is a. You couldn't decipher what other people were thinking, right? Because as someone with adhd, we're not crazy. I just want to preface this with that. We're not crazy, but we kind of have like a whole cacophony of voices in our heads. If I'm mid conversation with you, sometimes I'll just get an idea in the other part of my brain and I'll have to be like, hold on, hold on. I have to pause this conversation that I'm having with you, this other human being, to have this other conversation with this voice in my head to talk through this idea that I might bring to you. I might not. This happens to us already in the course of our day, in our own minds, when we're in an environment where we're not only hearing what's going on in our own head, but we're also being able to hear all the conversations that are happening around us and we're able to decipher what each and every one of them are saying. That gets really overwhelming. Those conversations can override whatever it is that we are trying to focus on. It's almost like trying to read a book. When you have the radio on or when you have the TV on, you can hear it really well. Like whatever is happening on that TV will start infiltrating your brain. You're going to be paying attention to it rather than the words on the page. So for people with adhd, this is really hard to tune out. We literally just don't have the ability to tune out stuff like that. So when I worked at Cisco, we were in this industrial space for about six months, but then they wanted to renovate it because it was industrial and kind of shitty. And so they moved us into this new portion of the building that they had just put so much money into renovating it. But they made everyone really close. There are literally aisles of desks that were facing each other and you were back to back with someone else who was constantly on the phone because we were in sales. And I found it so hard to focus on what I was doing with all these voices and conversations happening around me. Also, all the people that were around me were also used to being in the more spread out environment where they could make as much noise as they wanted and it didn't impact anyone. And some of these people were a little unaware about how they impacted other people. My productivity went from exceptional to pretty mediocre in that space, which made me often try to seek out like an empty conference room to do my work. And I would do pretty good work there, but not as good as the original space. So if you're a business owner and you have employees and you have this kind of setup, if you have anyone who has ADHD on your team, you're going to want to have some flexibility about where they can work. You're going to want to plan your workspaces so that there's enough space for someone to do work around other people, but in a way that they can't really hear what other people are talking about. Okay. It's going to make your workplace that much kinder. Now, like I said, there are two flavors of this. There's working around other People and having everything be perfectly quiet, and that's the only way you're productive. Or there's working around people and being okay with noise. They do not cross over. If you are the flavor of ADHD that you cannot handle big noises, that is going to completely cripple you when you're in a co working space. And likewise, if you're used to big noises and you thrive in that kind of environment, you're going to find the silence deafening. It's going to be really hard for you to focus when you can't do that. Headphones are a godsend for this kind of person because you're not going to bother other people around you, but you're going to get that noise. So after I left Cisco and I decided to go out on my own, I was kind of traumatized in this shared workspace because I had just experienced what it felt like to be a sardine in a tin can with a bunch of people talking around me. And it didn't work well for me. So I tried to work by myself. I tried to set up a little corner in my apartment and get work done that way, and it just didn't work. What helped me was actually renting a small office a couple blocks away from my apartment so that I could show up, have other people in sight who are also working in their offices, but really get down to business and focus on what I needed to do. One of the things that I hear from my clients so often, especially when they're in the very early stages of growing their business, is that they want to partner with someone else. And it's actually something that I very strongly discourage in the business sense. Right. Because when you're partnering with someone that early in your business, you don't have an established personal brand yet you don't have a clear brand way of explaining how you personally are useful to the world. And here you are trying to align with someone else who probably doesn't have any of that either. What are you going to create together? It's probably going to be super fluffy. It's probably going to be very confusing. And the people who would be drawn to you are probably not going to be drawn to your partner legally. This is all. This can also be really messy and. And usually just doesn't work. Usually when you have this inclination to partner up with someone, it's because you just feel really insecure about what you have to offer. You feel like you need this other person to give you credibility, to be able to go out there and get started and Let me tell you now, you do not need that. But that's different from having a creative partner. One of the best things that I did early on in my business is I partnered with my friend Kelsey, who is an incredible life coach out of Santa Cruz, California. If you need a life coach, I. I highly recommend her. She also does yoga training and all that jazz. But what we did together was we would brainstorm. She would come to my office and we would brainstorm a bunch of stuff. We found out that this worked together after we had a failed business partnership together. We tried to start a program together and no one signed up for it. So as someone with adhd, if you're starting a business and you need someone to bounce ideas off, find that creative partner, but don't worry about starting a business with them. The other element that you want to be aware of is what kind of work you do really well in shared workspaces and what kind of work you really do need isolation for. For me, it's super simple. Like, my coaching has to be when I'm alone. I want my clients to know that what they tell me is confidential. And also sometimes we can talk about some really weird. And I don't need people giving me the weird side eye.

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The other thing that I know that I need isolation for is when I'm on camera, when I'm recording stuff because I can't have background noise. Now, things that I do really well with company around is creating different presentations. If I'm running a training on, say, your sacred money archetypes, creating a presentation while I'm literally at a bar with my sister next to me who's chatting up people a couple seats over, I'm enjoying my little soda with grapefruit juice because, you know, I don't want to be drunk. Creating this with people talking all around me. I find that such an inspiring space. The other area of work that I thrive in when I'm around a bunch of other people making noise is creating content, coming up with the content ideas, and part of this is just overhearing random things that people say. It doesn't actually even have to relate to your work to give you an idea. I could be sitting at a coffee shop working on creating LinkedIn posts for the next couple weeks and I could overhear someone talking about their pet parrot and how it keeps on their curtains. As someone with adhd, I can take that image and I can turn that into so many metaphors. That is like stories that you overhear like, that are like fertilizer for our creative brains. They just cause things to blossom. But of course, this is how my ADHD functions best in shared workspaces. You could be completely different. Now, some challenges with shared workspaces is that there are other humans there and you can't always control what other humans do. So we've all had that experience of trying to get into work, trying to get into flow, and really struggling because the person next to you keeps tapping on your shoulder to ask you a question.

Katie. Hey, Katie.

What do you want? Irwin, will you come here for a second?

I want to show you something.

No, Off.

Aw, what the hell? Come on, Katie.

Leave me alone. I'm trying to work here. One of the things that we have to train the people around us is that for us to, to get into a steady, focused state of work is we can't be interrupted. Now, this is completely hypocritical because as someone with adhd, we like to interrupt everyone around us all the time. Like, if we have an idea, if we're in this flow of work, we have this idea, we're going to want to turn to you and tell you the idea, but you're not allowed to do the same thing to us. And if I just called you out here, I'm sorry, but it's a good thing for you to be aware of, to make you a better person to cowork with. I once when I worked at Equinox, because I, I was just convinced, I was completely unaware that my manager and the AGM of the gym didn't want to hear every single funny thing that happened. So I was like, every time, like, I'd have a funny conversation with a prospective member or, or I'd get like a weird email. I would just like, stand up from my desk, I'd trot on back to their office and I'd be like, oh, my God, this thing just happened. Or I just had this idea and this. And that and the other thing. And I wasn't aware that I was doing this until they literally came into my office together. So sheepishly saying, hey, listen, we have to talk to you about something because you interrupt us a lot with stuff that we really don't need to hear. And I don't think you realize that you're actually, like, causing us to not be able to do more work. This was the most embarrassing feedback that I had ever gotten in my whole career, is that I was just interrupting people for stupid reasons. So as someone with adhd, you do have to be aware of your impact on others, but you also get to design with the people around you how they can respect your work, how they can respect your focus. Some fun ways you could do this is you could honestly just create a sign that you put up on your desk that says, like, if it's green, you can talk to me. If it's yellow, ask permission before you start talking. If it's red, do not approach. And then you just train people to look at it. You know, if someone comes up and it's red, you just point to the sign. If you are working next to the same people all the time, say you've. You've both bought a stationary desk or you're paying for a stationary membership. If you're paying a subscription to a shared workspace where you have the same desk every single day and you're next to two other people who have the same desks, you want to just design with them. Hey, listen, like, I'm very social. I love talking, but sometimes I'll be working on something and I can't be interrupted. And here's how you'll know, or I'm happy to tell you ahead of time. We can't assume everyone around us is going to be a perfect mind reader. I know that would be such a beautiful world if they were, it would make life so much easier, but it's just not a fair expectation of other people. You may not want to go and get a membership at like a co working space. You may not work in an office, and you may not want that all the time. But let me tell you, big projects, creative projects, projects that feel really triggering and hard to tackle on your own. They are so much easier to dive into when you're around other people. So this is why it's so important to have some business besties, people who also work for themselves in similar capacities, who also benefit from working alongside you. One of the best things that you can do to tackle these kinds of projects is to create kind of a club where you get together and you cowork all the time, but not all the time, but like sporadically throughout the month. This, this is one of the reasons in the Weenie ADHDpreneur community on Mighty networks that every month we have a three hour coworking session. And it's three hours because doing just an hour, you're not even going to have enough time to get into focus. When you have ADHD, you're going to spend the first 30 minutes trying to get organized with your thoughts and then you're going to spend those last 30 minutes like freaking out that it's about to be over in 30 minutes and you're going to get interrupted. I love those little spurts. And also I can never really get anything significant done in them. If you're curious about this membership, you can go to weenicast.com members I host this once a month. It's a three hour coworking time. It's done on Zoom, which surprisingly is very effective. You know, most of us are so used to working around other human beings in our actual physical space, but even being in a virtual environment with other humans who are also focusing on work can give you that same feeling of focus. But if you don't want to join my membership, know that you can fully create this for yourself. The other element of this that makes it effective is that if you're co working with other people, you have this expectation that they are going to have something to show for it at the end of the time. And as someone with adhd, you, you've been through enough experiences where other people have accomplished what they wanted to accomplish and you did not that working alongside other people, even if you're working on completely unrelated things, is enough of a fire under your ass to get you to actually go through it and actually work on the thing. Let's not undermine the power of some shame and guilt from our past. I hope you appreciate that I have put more effort into my appearance, the promo videos you do, because there are a couple that I was like, oh my God, I look like such a scrub. I didn't have the time that morning. I didn't make the time to like, actually care. Care, care, care, care.

Join the weeniecast hyper focus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls, turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals, and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses and more.

Register now to get in front of.

The line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month, it's.

Time to elevate your entrepreneurial game.

Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast.com com hyperfocus all one word.

That's Weeniecast.

Com Hyperfocus.