How to Cowork Remotely With Friends—or Strangers

Working from home is more common than it used to be. There are a lot of advantages, but also a few challenges, such as the need to stay motivated and on task when there are no colleagues around.

Some people are using strangers on the internet to connect with each other over a video call in a bid to tackle the problem.

It sounds like a strange solution, but it works better than you think. A low level of accountability is added. If you share your focus session with someone else, you are less likely to take a nap or watch too much TV.

It's a focusmate.

Focusmate is a service that connects you with another user on the same service so you can get things done. You can get unlimited sessions for $5 a month if you register an account on Focusmate.

If you tell Focusmate when there are free slots in your schedule, it will match you with someone at random. All you have to do is share the task you are working on with each other and you are done.

93 percent of people who've used the service say it helped their productivity, according to internal user surveys. If you want to see if it helps with your particular way of working, you can try it out for free.

Focusmate can be used if you have a camera and microphone on your device. It works with all browsers on the desktop and on the mobile devices.

There is life at spaces.

The video session that works in a similar way to Focusmate is one of the things Life At Spaces does. Ambient music, desktop spaces, and a to-do list tool are some of the other aids to productivity included here.