There is a task you have been avoiding for three months, and it takes twenty minutes
You know how to do it, and you know it is not hard. The hard part is starting.
Body doubling means working on your own task while someone else works on theirs, on the same call, with no obligation to talk. Nobody helps you and nobody checks on you. Another person quietly present changes what your brain treats as possible, and for many people, especially neurodivergent people, that presence is the difference between starting and not starting.
How a session runs
By default, a session lasts one hour. The first ten minutes are for arriving, saying hello if you want to, and writing your objective in the chat. Then quiet work, with a five-minute stretch break at the halfway point, and at the end you write what happened to your task. For longer sessions there is a stretch break every fifty minutes. Whoever proposes a session can vary any of this and says so when they propose it.
How you take part
Camera on or off. Mic muted unless you are speaking. You can write instead of talking, or do neither and simply work. You choose your level of engagement each time, and it can be different every session.
Any task counts: work, admin, laundry, emails, the thing that has been waiting three months.
The few rules we have
- Anyone can propose a session, spontaneous or scheduled. Whoever proposes it hosts it and shares the link, on whichever platform they prefer.
- Leave early whenever you need to, and give a heads up in the chat.
- No advice unless someone asks for it. If a person says their task is going badly, that is information rather than a request for help.
- Not finishing counts as a normal outcome. The closing note is a record of what happened, and nothing more.
- What people say here stays here.
- If nobody joins, the proposer works anyway or cancels, and both are fine.
Details
- Price: free
- Where: online, organised through a WhatsApp group
- When: a recurring weekly session, plus spontaneous ones called the same day