How to Run a Successful and Productive Online Co-Working Session

With more and more people working from home, plenty of folks are missing the daily interaction that an office provided them. One thing I’ve been doing with my Patreon community is daily co-working sessions. People have found them productive as well as a chance to socialize briefly without getting too distracted. They started as co-writing sessions, but I have found people use them for all sorts of work, including editing, transcribing, getting social media posts ready, and answering e-mail.

The Format Used by the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers

My community is primarily speculative fiction writers, editors, and readers, so most of us are writing or editing, but other work has including writing social media posts, journaling, graphic design, and transcribing dictation.

Here’s the format that I use, which employs a paid Zoom account. You certainly could replicate this with a variety of platforms.

I announce the session’s date/time ahead of time and then post the link a few minutes beforehand. I do this privately, and would urge people not to post such links privately. One of the new phenomena of social isolation is a thing called zoombombing, which underscores a constant of online life: some people are jerks.

Once the session starts, we go around and say what we’re working on, then everyone mutes and I set a timer for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, I announce time. Everyone checks in, saying…