4.40 Why you should body double and how to do it well

Body doubling is where you get in a room or virtual space with another person, with the intention of getting something done in a way that is more productive or pleasant than doing it alone. Originally developed by the disabled community, and especially those with executive functioning challenges, body doubling can be live or online, synchronous or asynchronous, and can be for any tasks that you want support in getting done. In this episode I share some of the reasons this approach can be so effective and how you can make it work for you. I’ll also share some exciting news about new videos coming your way soon!

If you liked this episode, you should check out my existing study along video here. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we're talking about one of my favorite, favorite things, which is body doubling. Some of you may know it as co-working. Some of you may have heard of it in terms of kinda thesis boot camp sessions or shut up and write sessions that your universities might run. Some of you might have no idea what I'm talking about. Some of you might have been doing it for ages.

Whatever your situation is, this episode is gonna help you better understand what body doubling is for, why we think it's useful, and how to make it even more effective if you're using it already, or how to start in a way that's likely to be useful for you. And at the end, I have some fun news for you, so make sure you listen all the way till then. Let's go.

So what is body doubling? Body doubling is essentially arranging to do something in the same space as somebody else, either the same physical space or being kind of online at the same time together, with the purpose of kind of providing supportive companionship to each other to facilitate getting the task done and making it less unpleasant.

So you might not be working on the same things. You certainly might not be in the same physical space, although sometimes you can be, and it's not just about maximizing productivity. Sometimes people make it look like that online. But we're gonna talk more about that in a minute. It's not just about maximizing productivity, it's about getting stuff done in a kind of ambience or kind of environment that feels supportive and motivating and nice.

And it turns out, turns out my mum independently invented this. I'm not saying she invented it first, but she entirely independently invented this when I was an annoying child who wouldn't tidy their bedroom. As you can imagine, little enthusiastic Vikki didn't like being in her bedroom on her own methodically and carefully putting things away when she could be chattering and doing something much more fun. And Mum used to nag me to tidy my room, tidy your room, tidy your room. I wouldn't do it, and eventually she realized that nagging didn't work with a undiagnosed ADHD child, and what did work instead was putting situations in place that made it more fun and interesting for me to do it. So what she used to do was get my best friend, Anna, to come over, and tell Anna that she had to sit on my bed and talk to me, and that we could stay there as long as we wanted, but that I had to be tidying my room while we were chattering. And it's literally the only way I've ever tidied my room. I even make my husband do it now if I've got things to do. Having her there, and in this case chattering, it wasn't a quiet study with me environment. She was there and we were chattering to each other, distracted me enough from the boringness of the task, and the tidying actually gave me something to do, which meant that it was a kind of win-win. I wasn't just sitting still talking, which I also would have got fidgety doing, but I wasn't just tidying my room on my own and that was how my mum, for me, invented body doubling, and we never knew what it was actually called, but it was hugely, hugely useful while I was growing up.

Now, when I came across it first in a sort of work environment were live sessions that the universities used to run. So these would usually be writing groups of some sort. You'd arrange to go to a seminar room or whatever. You'd have blocks of time, so you'd do some sort of Pomodoro thing where, you know, you work for 50 minutes, break for 10. Sometimes there'd be, like, little discussions at the beginning and the end about what you were working on and things like that, and you sort of created a scholarly and motivating environment where you sat together. Now, where I think this all got really interesting was during the pandemic, when we were all kind of physically removed from each other one way or another and didn't have access to some of those things. And I think in many ways we haven't fully gone back to how things were before. And what people found then was that online environments also work very well. And at this stage I was part of Kristen Carder's Focused, coaching membership, which many of you will know was my sort of first foray into group coaching environments. And they had a member-led co-working group that ran pretty much 24 hours. It was amazing. So it was entirely just members. It wasn't formally organized or structured but we had a place where we could share Zoom links and, um, somebody would open up the Zoom room and you could just drop in and do it. And I used to use it all the time. I loved it. And even though we weren't in the same room, and often we weren't working on tasks that were quite similar, this was an ADHD group. So some of us were there, like, doing work or whatever, and other people were there doing their washing up and things like that, right? So you could use it for whatever we wanted. Even that just created a sense that you were in something communally, you weren't on your own, and made it much easier to start and then commit to working.

At its most online, there's also, you guys will probably have seen, a huge industry now of study with me videos online. Now, some of them are broadcast live, so they're kind of like a online co-working space. But many of them are watched as actual videos. And in fact, I have a couple that people use. And these are videos of somebody working essentially, and the ones that are a bit more high-tech than my old one used to be have, like, timers on the screen and all that kind of jazz. And some of them you can see the person, and other times you just kind of hear them typing and get some lo-fi music or whatever in the background.

And they structure the time and give a sense of a sort of working ambiance. So body doubling covers all of these different things. It can be synchronous, it can be asynchronous, it can be in person, it can be online. But it's creating a sense that you're not the only person working, that other people are working too, that it's a sort of productive mood, and feels more pleasant than slogging it out 

now, I found a really interesting article online written by Tessa Eagle and her colleagues at University of California, Santa Cruz, about where body doubling comes from, why it's effective, what people get out of it. And one of the things that they make really clear, and that I want to emphasize here, is that this is a practice that has largely come out of a disabled community. So this has largely been started by people with ADHD and autism and other neurodivergences that make executive functioning or concentration or persistent action feel really, really challenging. And I think it's a really good example of something that has been devised and developed by disabled communities, but that actually is universally useful. Now, it may be that if you're not neurodivergent, you have less need for it many of the times, but everybody puts stuff off. Everybody has tasks that feel a bit daunting, and I think it is a really, really good example where we can acknowledge the innovation and contributions of the disabled communities that have developed these sorts of approaches and, at the same time, recognize that they're actually super useful for everybody

Now, why does it work? It's a weird one, 'cause it sort of feels like it shouldn't. And one of the first things when you ask people why it works, that people say, is that it gives a sense of accountability. Now, I find accountability a really weird concept in this kind of context, because usually you're body doubling with people who have no actual authority over you, seniority over you, where you don't actually necessarily even care about their perceptions of you very much.

Indeed, if you're watching a study with me video, the person can't even see you. So there's not a lot of actual accountability. But somehow it creates a sense that you want to be working. And I say want to be, rather than should be, on purpose. The reason I think body doubling works is not so much about accountability to somebody else, but intentionality with yourself. That when you attend, sign in for, switch on any sort of body doubling experience, you are telling yourself, "Okay, I do actually intend to do this task, and I want some support." So you're doing two things.

You're identifying that you do want to be working, and you're identifying that you probably need some support with it. And both of those things will help you to do your work more effectively, even above and beyond the support that's actually provided by having people there. Just having chosen intentionally and acknowledging that this is feeling difficult for you is a huge step to starting, and body doubling provides a structure for that

Dr. Eagle's work and my own observations also talk about things like companionship. So it's not so much about accountability in the sense that I will feel guilty if I don't get anything done, 'cause frankly, in these sessions, they can't really see what you're doing. Even if you're live, they can't really see what you're doing, right? There's no actual accountability, but that sense of companionship, that sense that you're not the only person working in the world, that other people are working and that are cheering you on. They're not judging you. They're not sitting there going, "Ooh, I wonder if she's gonna hit her goals."

They're kind of hoping that by them being there, you'll get your stuff done, and that by you being there they will get their stuff done. So both ways round, that sort of mutual companionship, we're in this together, isn't this difficult, but we're doing it kind of a vibe. That can really, really help you get going on difficult tasks, persist with boring tasks, start scary tasks, and all these other things

sessions often also include some sort of external structure. Now, technically, body doubling could be going to a cafe where you have other people in the room that just gives you a sense that there is a world and you're not alone and things like that. But it's not true body doubling in the sense of having some sort of structure in there.

Most live sessions or sessions online will have, some sort of time structure, so they use a Pomodoro or something like that, which then means that you're not required to monitor your own time. 'Cause we all know that doing some work and then having a break, doing some work and having a break is a effective way of working. But when we're left to our own devices, it's really easy to get to the end of the work block and sort of go, "Ooh, I just wanna finish this bit that I'm on," and then end up missing your break. Or getting to the end of something with 15 minutes to go and going, "Oh, it's not really worth starting anything now."

We know that it's much harder to stick to those structures when we're just doing it for ourselves, whereas when we're in something, where it's a bit more communal, a bit more structured, we're much more likely to actually stick to those time blocks. And if we're choosing sessions that have sensible time blocks, then that can be a really, really good way of being intentional and making sure that you get your rests and you get your chunks of time done

Now, how can you make your body doubling more effective? I think the first suggestion I would make here is know yourself. Because we want a body doubling environment which brings out the best in you, which enables you to raise to the version of you that you want to be and that's plausible for you and things like that, but that doesn't require you to be something that you're not, or that will be really painful to adhere to.

Let me give you an example. If you're somebody who likes to fidget a lot while you work, for example, maybe you're ... You know, you have some physical hyperactivities or that sort of thing, or you just like fiddling things, you like clicking your pens, you like walking around when you're thinking, all of these sorts of things.

And you're like, "Right. What I need to do, I need to go to a live body doubling session and somewhere you actually sit down and do this work," it might work. That might be really effective for you. But if you're sort of, um ... What's the word? If you're suppressing your natural tendencies and things that actually in many ways help you to concentrate, then you may not find that as effective.

Or it might be effective in terms of getting work done, but you're spending so much time and energy sort of trying to prevent yourself doing the things that might annoy other people, it might not be a good fit. Whereas if you know that that's what you're like, doing an online body doubling session might work much better because you can either be fiddling with things off screen, like you guys can't see that I'm usually holding my pen or fiddling with something down here.

You'll either be fiddling with things off screen, or you can often even turn your camera off so that you get the benefit of being able to see other people, but you're able to be a bit more fidgety and walk around, or you can put yourself on mute and talk out loud to yourself, for example. So knowing yourself and knowing what sorts of situations are most likely to be helpful for you and to raise you to your best level without expecting yourself to be something that you're not

The second thing is choosing body double sessions or setting up body double sessions that use time blocks that broadly work for you. So I'm a big fan of a 50/10 Pomodoro, especially if I'm doing things that take a bit of getting into. But if I'm doing things that are more administrative, more boring, more that I'm scared of or any of those things, then a 25/5 can work really well. So what I'm talking about there is working 25 minutes, having a five-minute break. Other people may well have sessions where it's two, three hours and then a break. Okay? I can't do that. Someone needs to tell me to stop working so that I go have a break. So finding body double sessions that have broadly timings that work for you can be much more effective than just signing up for whatever without really knowing what you're signing up for.

I think flexible body doubling is also super useful. Now, it can be useful to have a whole day set aside. Often universities will organize thesis boot camp or something like that, where it's a whole day set aside. And that sort of fixed structure, where you feel an obligation to stay for the whole thing, can be really useful if you've got stuff that you absolutely have to smash through.

I remember going on a writing retreat once that was like that, and I was away for, like, two or three days, and the only thing I had to do was this piece of writing. It was actually my principal fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. So those of you, people in the UK might know what that is. It's a teaching kind of recognition thing. It's the highest level they do, and you have to produce this huge piece of cross-referenced writing about your teaching experience and teaching philosophy and all this stuff, and it was one of those things where you have to demonstrate, your kind of competence against, like, different criteria across different scales, it was like a 4D puzzle and it was one of those things that if you don't do it all in one go, it just, your brain gets in a knot. And so for that, kind of forcing, in the nicest possible way, for me to stay in it for all of that time, worked really, really well.

Other times, though, it's actually more useful to be able to go, "You know what? Three hours was enough. I need- I can slot out now." And having it, to have that sort of flexibility. So thinking for you what works best, and not just works in terms of productivity, but works in terms of respecting your energy levels and your health and any other commitments that you need to take into account.

I also want you to think about who you body double with. And I think this is a really careful balance, 'cause I have tried to body double with friends before. Now, body doubling with friends for me works brilliantly if I'm doing something that's so mindless I can talk while I'm doing it. So body doubling for tidying my bedroom or getting the laundry done or whatever, perfection with my friends. Love it. But body doubling with my friends for actual written work, where we were working on independent things, for me, much less effective.

Maybe that's just 'cause I'm a chatterbox and my friends tend to be chatterboxes. We often ended up talking about useful and interesting things, but not necessarily doing as much as we intended. So be honest with yourself about whether your friends are the right people to do this with. It may not be. If you do do it with your friends, one thing I would highly recommend is that one of you takes responsibility for being the convener, so the person who sets it up, the person who runs the times, and things like that. Because again, otherwise, when it's just friends, it's easy to be like, "Oh, I can't really do today. Can you do next week?" "Yeah, let's just do next week. That's fine." Those things can become much easier when it's somebody who you know knows and loves you anyway than if it's someone that you know less well.

At the other extreme, I do think total strangers can be useful sometimes. So if you Google online coworking communities, you will be able to find lots of free and some paid organizations where you will find body doubling, and you go on, and you get matched up with one other person who's working, or you go into, like, a Discord channel with 10 other people that are working, and things like that.

And that can create that environment as though you've walked into a library, basically, and there's a bunch of people you don't know there, but it kind of creates a working environment. And that can work really, really well. I personally find that that is sometimes effective but not always. Because for me strangers working there creates a bit of a working ambiance, which is nice, but it doesn't necessarily help me feel that same we're all in it together vibe.

One of the things we know from motivational psychology is that relatedness is really important. Feeling part of something is really important, and I'm not convinced that a room of absolute strangers, whether online or in real life, is quite the same relatedness as people that you've got a bit of a shared sense of community with.

For me, the sweet spot is people that you know, people who share similar values and priorities to you, that you care about to some extent, but who you're not besties with so you're not gonna get chatty, chat, chat. And you might say, "Where do I find these people?" Now, for many of you, those people are your cohort.

And your universities may well set up things like this online, and people who are doing a PhD in your department, for example, could arrange to go together, and that can create a kind of cohort feel.

For me, this is what I try and create in the membership. So I'm sure all know I run a monthly membership program, and as well as the sessions that the students get with me, and as well as the co-working sessions that I run, there is a huge program now of member-led co-working sessions. So members will put it in a shared calendar, say, you know, "I'm gonna be working between this time and this time on Zoom or Teams," or whatever platform they put up, and then other members can come in. And the joy with that is they are people that you sort of vaguely know because you've seen them being coached, or you've seen their messages in the community.

You know, they're not your best friends necessarily, although Some of them do get to know each other really, really well. They're all over the world. They're not people that you can just go for a coffee with, but you have this shared sense of being part of something, and you have a shared sense that you've all kind of struggled with procrastination or overwhelm or motivation or imposter syndrome, or all the reasons people join my membership.

So there's a shared sense that you kind of get each other, and there's a shared sense of how you want to get on with the work. Because my membership has a vibe where we're trying to get stuff done, but we're trying to enjoy it on the way, we're trying to create fun working environments, it means that in the member-led co-working sessions, they are gonna be motivating each other in ways that are in line with the kind of general ethos.

So as well as setting the schedules and things like that, they'll be cheering each other on. But they won't be doing the, "You must be more disciplined. You must just drive, drive, drive," 'cause that's just not our vibe in the membership, okay? Equally, they're not gonna be doing the, "Oh, well, probably can't do it today.

Why don't you go and rest?" kind of vibe either, 'cause that's not our vibe either. They're likely to be pragmatic, they're likely to be supportive, they're likely to be cheery, they're likely to be trying to focus on the what they can do side. And when you can find those sorts of communities, then body doubling becomes magic as far as I'm concerned

I also think finding that sort of community where you have this sort of shared approach helps in terms of the accountability. Because accountability can mean a lot of different things, and sometimes accountability is about dreading letting somebody down, dreading appearing not to have everything together, feeling like you have to do it for someone else, and that's not what I'm trying to nurture in my members, right?

I want people to do things because they told themselves they were going to do it, not because they told other people they were gonna do it. I want them to learn to be accountable to themselves. And when you have people who are in this sort of more kind of friendly community where you have shared values and things like that, then the accountability becomes, "We're all in this together. Let's do our best," rather than, "I have to do this or they'll think I'm rubbish." That's the kind of accountability we want, that shared sense that we're doing something meaningful, that it's something we want to achieve, that we all recognize it's hard sometime and we understand that we need to be compassionate, but that we're striving together towards it.

That's the kind of accountability. So not that you'll get told off if you dial out early. In fact, in our co-working sessions, the ones that the members lead, there's really clear instructions on it that if you don't want your camera on, that's fine. You can do that, too. If you wanna pop into a breakout room with somebody to have a little chit-chat because you're just getting upset or whatever it is, that you can do that. That if you wanna just be there while you're not actually working, but you wanna sort of have that sense of being with other people, absolutely fine. No pressure. That kind of accepting community can really, really strengthen the power of a body doubling experience 

It's also why I love the peer-led ones because I organize a couple of co-working sessions a month, right, where I'm in charge. I set it up. They're on the calendar. Everyone can come. And people do really like that 'cause it's a little bit of access time with me. They can ask me questions in the chat while we're working if they want to and stuff. And so people do really value having those ones that are led by me. But the ones that are member-led, they have a little bit of chitchat at the beginning, and they have a little bit of a chitchat in the middle.

And if they're struggling with something, they'll kind of help each o- Now, they don't coach each other. They know that's not their role, but they support each other, and they help each other out, and they share their experiences, and they recommend resources that are in the membership to each other and things like that.

It has that sense of it's not just the work blocks, that there's little bits of community in the breaks as well. And again, that can really strengthen the effectiveness of a body doubling experience

Now, what I think is missing from a lot of the body doubling world, and especially the online Study With Me videos, is more structured body doubling. Now, obviously, there's lots of structured body doubling Study With Me videos where the structure is Pomodoros, where it's 50 minutes of this, 10-minute break, whatever. What I've seen much less of are videos that are designed to help you get over a particular issue you're having at the moment, and actually do something about it. So how I see YouTube at the moment is we have how-to videos over here, okay? So we have how to stop procrastinating, how to write a paper, how to, you know, whatever, okay? And in those videos, somebody's talking at you and telling you things, and, you can watch them and learn how to do those things, right? And then over here, on the other hand, we have Study With Me videos where somebody is basically saying, "Hello, we're working. Here's my beautiful aesthetic desk. I'm so pretty. Come and work with me. 50 minutes, let's go." Boop. Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop, music going, right? And these get millions of views. But what I can't find, and tell me if you think it exists, but it's going to, that's my announcement in a minute. What I can't find are videos that are in between those two things, that are how to and let's do it videos.

That's a terrible name for them. I'm not gonna call them that. But videos that take you from, "I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to start," to actually doing a task. From, "I need to write this thing, but I don't know how," to actually writing it in a video. So structured Study With Mes that start with some prompts, start with some motivational chat. Start with something that helps you get in the zone of what you're about to do, but that then gives you the time and space to do it.

I can't find that at the moment. My members have access to a video called Smash Your Emails. It's a 15-minute video, for people whose inboxes are annoying them and want to get them done, and it takes you through just a little bit of principles about how to clear an inbox, and then we sit and do it together. That one at the moment is only available for members. I do have a more general study with me, which has a little bit of a how to get set up, ready to start work bit at the beginning. I will link that in the newsletter for you, so everyone who's on the newsletter will get hold of that.

If you're not, why not go to my website, sign up for my newsletter? But my news for you all today is that I'm gonna be recording a bunch of these. I'm gonna be recording a bunch of these, not just for members, for all of you guys, which take you through really common scenarios that PhD students find themselves in, so that when you're Googling, "How do I stop procrastinating?" Or whatever, you find a video that doesn't just tell you what you should be doing, it takes you through it and into doing that task. I hope they'll become your go-to asynchronous body doubling and when they're out, you guys will be the first to know.

I am super excited. If you're thinking, "Okay, that's amazing, but I also want some of this synchronous vibe," then obviously the easiest way is join the membership. We're gonna open again at the end of July, so keep a little eye open for that. Make sure you're on my newsletter so that you hear when the launch is happening. But in the meantime, check out your universities, talk to your friends and cohort. These things can be really useful to actually organize. In fact, my members who organize the coworking sessions for me, they say that actually setting them up helps them even more than attending them because then they get this sense of responsibility that they said they would run a coworking session between 9:00 and 11:00 or whatever, and so they kinda have to.

Now, they don't have to turn up. I mean, if they don't turn up, there's no consequences, right? Everyone would understand, but they have that sense of shared community responsibility that they're gonna be there 'cause they told other people that they would. So if you can't find one that's organized by somebody else, become the person who organizes it, and then slot into my membership in a few months' time and you can come organize with us too.

I hope you find that useful. Do make sure you get in touch. So if you're on my newsletter, reply to the email that tells you about this podcast. Tell me your experience of body doubling, what you would love to see videos on from me. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week