Is a cafe a place to get serious work done or is it just the social aspect that helps the mind focus?
By day a mild mannered desk jockey working on the next big tech article or update and by night...doing more of the same. Anyway, some say I'm an enigma able to balance three or more jobs at once, but really it's just about clever time management, lots of coffee of course, and making sure the next review or blog lives up to the standards set by other esteemed tech publications.
It is no secret that coffee shops have became a sort of out of home and out of office...well...office, in a way. From students to business people, solace is to be found with a table nestled in an array and pattern of furniture with a coffee counter serving everything from lattes to sandwiches just a few metres away.
But the question is, how much serious work can really get done in a coffee shop or cafe? They are after all public spaces and apart from the aforementioned worker types the majority of patrons are ladies with prams or groups of people huddled around a table making conversation, most of the time very loudly.
In recent times on a visit to a Starbucks in East London in early June, the place was bustling on a weekday morning. The floorspace inside is a long rectangular shape with the counter towards the middle left of the shop as you enter. I observed at least a dozen or so people seated at various spots inside the cafe with laptops of various shapes and sizes at the ready. To counter this there were at least as many if not more people sitting by themselves, sometimes with a phone, others in groups of usually two conducting conversations as there sipped there varied assortment of beverages or munched on the food offerings.
The point is, it was busy and loud. How were the people on the laptops managing to get any work done? Admittedly, some of them might just having been browsing the web but other looked as if they were deep in some workflow or other as they typed away whilst looking earnestly into their screens eerily disconnected from their surroundings.
Not too far from here are three Costa Coffee shops, two inside as hopping centre and one on the street just outside. The latter I have not visited for a few months as there are some very strange and shady people in there sometimes. However, it’s a different story inside the shopping centre. The Costa on the ground floor is one of the newer additions with some nice décor and furnishings. The entrance is the opening width of the shop itself looking onto a baby and toddler play area which is almost always full and very, very noisy. This does not stop a number of worker types with their laptops appearing inside the cafe, perhaps not as many as the those in Starbucks, but nevertheless they are typing and browsing away here too. It’s a similar story with the Costa on the first floor of the shopping centre. A handful of laptop users as against the vast majority of visitors there for a meet up with friends.
Ultimately, it’s probably the kind of person you are that will decide if working in a coffee shop atmosphere is right for you with all that’s happening around and about. Can you keep focused with all the noise? Then again, if you prefer a quieter space, then there’s always a local library somewhere or even a small independent cafe with a few patrons that won’t break your concentration with their whispered dialogue!
