Spaces That Hold Us
The gym, the library, the school, the office — these are spaces that help us succeed in spite of ourselves. We know we’ll exercise if we just drag ourselves to the gym. We know we’ll get more done if we commute to the office. We resist because inertia is real, but once we pry ourselves off the couch and into one of these spaces, the doing becomes easier.
It’s quite magical if you think about it. You can go from hours of listlessness to suddenly doing hard things just by entering the right environment. Of course, it doesn’t always work because we are complicated creatures, but I can’t think of many non-chemical ways that reliably unlock the doing. Our goal at Flow Club is to build one of these environments online, and to make it easy to step into. You can stay on your couch and be transported to a place where you can't help but thrive.
What makes a space is much more than its physical features. Entering a space is becoming part of something bigger than yourself. In my neighborhood, a church parking lot transforms into a gym for an hour at 5:30pm — when the leaders bring out kettlebells and regulars show up in gear ready to work out. Deciding to join them is deciding that, for the next hour, you want to be part of the group and do what they do.
You can almost hear it. “Working out is what we do!” The spaces worth showing up to all have something to say, and they say it through each person who shows up.
What if there were something like a workout class or a gym or an office, but for the daily work of becoming the person we want to be? That would surely make the work a little easier. Even though we all have different goals, the process of getting there looks remarkably similar. It takes willpower. It takes putting one foot in front of another, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. And it’s all work we do alone. Flow Club is where you find company for that kind of work. A place that screams, “Doing the work is what we do!”
How Flow Club Holds You
People often ask me how coworking with strangers online can possibly make you more productive. “Wouldn’t that be distracting?” The answer, mostly, is no. There are rules and norms to keep the space quiet and respectful, so you can focus on what you’re there to do.
But the real question is probably how and why the arrangement works at all. Why would doing tasks next to strangers in a Zoom meeting make you do it any better? It feels ridiculous.
That’s because Flow Club is much more than “just a Zoom meeting.” The mechanism begins before you show up to a session. You see a vibrant community of dedicated people on our calendar. You get to know the hosts and what they're working toward. You learn the structure and what's expected of you. You book a session, mark it on your calendar, and plan what you aim to accomplish. Every step primes you, so that by the time you show up and meet others coming from the same journey, Flow Club is no longer “just a Zoom meeting” — it's where you make good on your promise to yourself.
When a session begins, Flow Clubbers perform a simple ritual to step into the time together. The host asks, “What are you working on?” and we briefly share our intentions — to write an email, to review expenses, to tidy up the house, or just to read a book after a long day. Anything you need to make time for, goes. The space quickly fills up with promises made to ourselves, and off we go to keep them for the rest of the session. We keep our cameras on as much as we can to create a supportive presence, acting as a “body double” or a calming “anchor” for each other so we don’t drift off.
At the end of a session, we gather again to briefly share our progress. We don’t know each other, and we don’t know what any of us is working through, so there’s no judgment and no fear of judgment even when we fall short. In fact, after doing this for a while, you realize that life is messy, and we spend most of our time failing and picking ourselves back up. That’s why in Flow Club, we always celebrate each other for having shown up at all. We believe a space where you can always find the support and motivation to try again is the most valuable space humans can co-create. That’s the space we create together, every time we show up to Flow Club.
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