Your home office might be the problem

Watch two toddlers in a room full of toys.

They won't build a tower together. They won't share. Half the time they won't even look at each other.

But separate them into different rooms and watch what happens: they get restless, distracted, and wander off looking for something.

Turns out kids don't need to interact to benefit from one another. They just need to be in the same room, doing their own thing, side by side. Child psychologists even have a name for it: parallel play.

We think we grow out of it.

We don't.

You see, we decided that being a grown-up meant doing our work alone. Especially those of us in the creative world. Home office, door closed, headphones on. Just us and the screen.

But that itch to be near other people while we work? That never went away. We just stopped honoring it.

Lately in Maker Division, we've been honoring it again.

Every Friday, we've started doing Studio Work Sessions. And here's the format, in its entirety: we hop on Zoom, put on some good music, and… work.

That's it.

No agenda. No presentation. No one's teaching anything. Sometimes we don't even talk. We just show up, share the same (virtual) room, and do our own individual work together.

And somehow it's quietly become one of my favorite parts of the week.

We live in a world that gets more remote by the day. We're more "connected" than we've ever been in human history, and somehow lonelier for it. We talk to screens. We scan lifeless emails. We mistake being reachable for being connected.

And usually, this is the part where I'd tell you to shut the laptop and go find some humans in the real world (and hey, you still should).

But here's the reframe I keep coming back to:

The same screen that isolates us can be the exact thing that puts us back in the room with people.

A Zoom call can be one more soul-draining meeting… or it can be a quiet studio full of creatives who just wanted a little company while they did the work.

So if you've been feeling the isolation of the solo creative grind, try this:

1. Join us on Fridays.Seriously. Come work alongside us. You don't need to prep anything or say a word, just bring whatever's on your plate and do it in good company. (Plus, these's a ton of other amazing things included in the Maker Division!)

2. Find your body-double.If Fridays don't work, grab one other creative and hop on a call to work in parallel. (There's actually a name for this one too: "body doubling.") Cameras on, mics optional. You'll be shocked how much you get done when someone's quietly working next to you and holding you accountable.

3. Lower the bar for connection.You don't need a networking event or a perfect elevator pitch. Sometimes just being in the room, even a Zoom room, is enough.

Because at the end of the day, we were never meant to do this alone. Not as toddlers, and not now.

That's a big part of why Maker Division exists: to make sure you don't have to do this alone.

So this Friday, don't close the door.

Open the room.

Hope to see you there!

Zach Ebert,
Zach of All Trades, Master of None

Maker Division Community Manager

P.S. If you're craving in person connection then you're in luck. That's exactly what we're building at Maker Vegas this fall. Two days dedicated to helping you develop a personalized brand strategy and 90-day roadmap for a solo studio that's built around your point of view, and plenty of fun creative fun to be had with others.

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