My experience with CreativeWorkHour (CWH)

Although Creative Work Hour (CWH) launched in July 2021, I didn't hear of it until sometime in 2022, when @alessandrawhite came into a Discord server I frequent. The principle behind it is simple: gather with others to work quietly on your own stuff. Even though you're sitting "side by side" (virtually speaking, in this case), you're not talking to each other, just working next to each other. There's usually some music playing softly in the background to lull everyone into a productive state. At the end of an hour or so, everyone takes a moment to "check-in" on how they did during that hour. That's it, nothing fancy. Sit together, work quietly & independently, and focus.

𝘈 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵 "𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵" 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘞𝘏 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦:
"Creative Work Hour is a daily online community space that's dedicated to bringing your ideas to life. We provide a gentle environment where you can quietly work alongside others to distill your focus into productivity."

Some people have taken to calling this technique "body doubling," ^[1] but I hate that term. It's ambiguous and sounds stupid to me. The alternative term "parallel working" is much more descriptive and accurate. Why not use that term with less ambiguity...?!?!? 😐 Anyway... It is reported that the technique seems especially beneficial to people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) ^[1], although non-ADHD individuals might respond positively to it as well.

^{~ photo by Artem Podrez on pexels.com • edit by thekittygirl ~}

Even after hearing about Creative Work Hour, I hesitated trying it for a long time. Why?

Ability to focus...

When a task is really, really important and must be done, I don't think my tendency to procrastinate is worse than most other people's tendencies. Sure, I might wait until April 1^st to begin filling out my tax forms (especially when I have to pay, rather than getting a refund), but they are definitely in the mail before the deadline on the 15^th. School assignments were always presented on-time, not late. When I need to buckle-down and get something important done, I do it. Period.

Non critical tasks might slip, though. For example: if I'd like to publish a post here on Hive, but JaneDoe fell for a scam and needs help recovering her Hive account, I help her instead of writing my Hive post. I think we all do that to some extent or other, putting a non-critical task on hold when something more pressing appears, even if it is helping someone else through a tough time.

So, yeah, I don't generally have a problem buckling down and getting things done when it's necessary, so I didn't think Creative Work Hour would do that much for me.

Yet another app...

Also, Creative Work Hour takes place on Zoom™. I have so many apps already, do I really need to download yet another one...?!?!? 🙄 So, that's another app eating disk-space, taking up memory while it's running, perhaps embedding itself deep into my registry like some intrusive apps do, maybe mining and selling data it collects from my computer... 😖 So, yeah, I resisted downloading Zoom™ for a long time for all those reasons. That's not even to mention the counter-logic of downloading an app to connect to other people when none of us are talking; I mean, if I'm not going to talk to other people, I can accomplish that without an app... 😜

More reasons...

Then there's a bigger reason for my resistance: I was on a "metered" data connection when I learned about CWH, and after ꭗ-number of gigabytes of high-speed data is used, connections slow to a crawl. I could see streaming daily CWH video sessions with Zoom™ and blasting through a month's worth of data allotment in a week or two, leaving me with no reasonable-speed data for Hive, Discord, or anything else for the rest of the month. 😢

Lastly, I have thousands of hours (literally, 160 GB at last check) of music already stored on my computer and I can play any of it with my head down and work alone any time. So, why download an app, register an account to use it, then compromise my data connection mostly for background music...? So, that's why I hesitated peeking into CWH.

Still, I felt a little bit guilty for not (at the very least) briefly peeking into this CWH thing of which @alessandrawhite is so proud. 😕

The turning point...

Then, I was offered a good deal on an unlimited 5G Home Internet option with my cellphone carrier at a good price. It is a "no contract" plan with "no installation fee" (unlike the usual contracts & fees that most broadband carriers impose). So, I decided to try it. Instead of turning my phone into a "router" via hotspotting and connecting my laptop to the data signal as I had been doing, this 5G Home Internet service works off a dedicated router on-loan from the carrier and provides unlimited WiFi. So far, it's working well, and my data connection is no longer metered. Sure, it's a little slower than cable or fiber Internet, but it's a helluva lot cheaper, has no contract, and it does what I need. So, I decided to bite the bullet and download the Zoom™ app and visit the CWH space.

Zoom™ing, we're Zoom™ing...

So far, Zoom™ seems to be a fairly decent app. It is, as I suspected beforehand, rather "data hungry" and quite often does not like the speed of my 5G connection. Zoom™ was definitely built with only super-fast broadband users in mind. It often tells me "Your connection is unstable" when everything else I'm doing online is working smoothly. I can even stream a movie from Netflix™ with less complaints than Zoom™ gives. So, WTF, Zoom™? 😒

There are some features I wish Zoom™ had, such as the ability to adjust the volume of one quiet-talker without raising the volume of the entire room. Or, better yet, provide automatic "volume balancing" capability like some music playing apps have so we don't even have to adjust that one quiet person. That would make checkins and checkouts a bit nicer. But all-in-all, yeah, it's a fairly decent app.

And then there are animals...

To my knowledge, I don't have ADHD. Or, at least no one has ever suggested I might have it, so I've never been tested for it. Maybe I have, I dunno. But, I think even non-ADHD people are sometimes distracted by things that aren't so pressing. Two of them come to mind, which we sometimes discuss in CWH:

• chasing squirrels: This is when something completely unrelated to our task presents itself and we divert attention to it instead of our task. An example of this might be: While I am working on a task, I hear something that sounds like a car door slamming in my driveway. So, I get up to peek out the window and see if someone is there. No one is there, it must have been next door, instead. While peeking outside, though, I see I forgot to bring my pruning sheers back into the garage, so I go outside to retrieve them and end up straightening the garage instead of working on my original task. Or: retrieving some background music for my task, then reading the liner notes for the album rather than working. Squirrel! 😂
• rabbit holes: This is when something necessary to the task leads us to something deeply related, which leads to something else, also related or tangential. An example of this might be reading the Wikipedia article about "parallel working" which mentions ADHD, then clicking into the article on ADHD, from there clicking into the article on "Emotional dysregulation" then clicking further articles such as the brain's "frontal lobe" --> "dopamine" --> "thalamus" --> "limbic system" --> "neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean" and before ya know it, you're reading about his hometown of Phelps, New York... Rabbit Hole! 🐰

I chase the occasional squirrel, but OMG, I live in rabbit holes because of my thirst for knowledge and insatiable curiosity about everything! 🤣 Even if we don't have remedies for the animals we encounter, we can commiserate, at the very least. 😁

So, the bottom line about CWH...

Oddly, attending daily CWH sessions for the past three months seems to have helped a bit, although I'm not exactly sure why... 🤔 Maybe it is the "accountability" factor. CWH isn't a hardcore stickler for berating us into doing what we said we were gonna do during the hour, and squirrels will, indeed, be chased sometimes. But, there might be an undercurrent of embarrassment in having to report that we did nothing constructive during the time. Perhaps that is what encourages focus and productivity, I dunno.

When I came onto the blockchain, I was posting every day. Then, a family member's chaotic life impacted my posting streak tremendously and I slowed to two or three posts each week, maximum. As the chaos intensified in her life and spilled over into mine, I also found myself voluntarily answering Hive questions in many Discord servers, trying to "pay forward" some of the help I'd received on Hive in learning things. Increased work in the LadiesOfHive community also impacted my own posting, but I felt (and still feel) that LadiesOfHive is a definitely a worthwhile endeavor. My own posting patterns dwindled dramatically from all of this and I've tried to get the flow back ever since.

Creative Work Hour has, apparently, helped somewhat by enabling me to get at least one post published each week again! There have been a couple of weeks that I might could have even done two posts, but I don't wanna push it and jinx things. Hopefully, it can gradually increase, but for now I will be happy if the current trend holds.

Also, prior to the start of CWH each day, we have a 15-minute "Cuppa Joe" hangout where everyone slowly wanders into the Zoom™ space, greets each other, and chats prior to the start of the CWH time. I don't have many real-life friends and none at all in my current location, so Discord and Hive are my social life. CuppaJoe and CWH have expanded my social circle a bit, even if some of the new contacts are more "acquaintances" than anything. But, I think I can count some of the CWH crew as "friends" so that is a good thing. 😊

So, yeah... returning to the rhythm of getting a Hive post published each week while adding a little brief social interaction each day is a big "win" for me. 💖

Think you want in...?

Check the @creativeworkhour account if you think CWH is something you wish to try, or hit up @alessandrawhite or @bitterirony on Discord. They can give you more details and guidance.