If you have ever tried to describe virtual coworking to someone who hasn’t heard of it before, it might sound like a prank. You get on a video call. A person in another country waves at you. You tell them you’re going to clear your inbox. They tell you they’re writing a grant proposal. Then, for the next fifty minutes, you both sit there, on camera, doing your own work.
By every norm of polite video-call behavior, this should be excruciating. Awkward at minute two, unbearable by minute fifteen. Instead, most people who try it experience the opposite. The inbox that had been haunting them for three days gets to zero. The proposal that was stuck for a week finally has an outline. When the timer ends, you realize it was never as daunting as it felt before you started.
Virtual coworking is a scheduled video format for body doubling, a practice the ADHD community originally developed to help with focus and task initiation. Body doubling is the broader idea: working in another person’s presence to help you start and stay on track. The video format is what makes it available to anyone with an internet connection, on demand.
Here’s a closer look at what virtual coworking is, why it works, and how people are using it.
What is virtual coworking?
Virtual coworking is a scheduled video session where two or more people work alongside each other, each on their own task. At the start, you say what you’ll work on. For the next 25, 50, or 75 minutes, you work quietly while the other person does the same. At the end, you briefly check in on what got done.
The word “coworking” here means parallel work, not collaborative work. Your partner isn’t helping you write your report, and you aren’t helping them with their work. You’re each working on your own thing, in each other’s presence. People new to it often get this wrong, which is part of why virtual coworking sounds stranger than it is.
Virtual coworking vs. coworking spaces vs. virtual coworking spaces
These three terms often get used interchangeably, and they shouldn’t be. The distinction matters when you’re deciding which one fits your needs.
A coworking space is a physical building with desks, meeting rooms, and a monthly membership. You travel there, claim a seat, and work alongside other professionals who have also shown up. The value is the space itself, the equipment, and the professional environment. WeWork, Industrious, and independent local coworking spaces all fall in this category.
A virtual coworking space is a digital extension of the coworking space idea. These platforms try to recreate the feeling of being in a shared office, usually through avatar-based maps or persistent virtual rooms where a distributed team can coordinate and interact throughout the workday. Gather, SoWork, and Kumospace are some common examples. The goal is team coordination and a shared sense of place for colleagues who already work together.
Virtual coworking, as covered in the rest of this page, is a different thing. It’s a format, not a space. You book a scheduled video session, show up at the start, work quietly alongside another person for a fixed block of time, and check in at the end. The people on the call are usually not on the same team, often not in the same country, and typically not even in the same line of work. What they share is a 25, 50, or 75-minute session, and the intention to focus.
All three have “coworking” in the name. Only one is a booked video session where simply having another person present, for that time block, helps you stay on task.
Is virtual coworking effective?
Short answer: Yes. Virtual coworking itself is a relatively new practice, but what happens inside a session draws on some of the most established findings in psychology.
Saying what you’ll work on, to another person, helps you start
Most sessions begin with a small ritual: you tell your partner what you’re going to work on. It can sound like a formality, but it isn’t.
In 2006, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran published a meta-analysis of 94 independent studies on what they called implementation intentions, which are specific plans for when, where, and how you’ll pursue a goal. People who formed these plans were significantly more likely to follow through on their goals, with a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment across all 94 studies. [1]
In 2008, researchers Shane Owens, Christine Bowman and Charles Dill at Hofstra University tested this directly. They assessed university students using a standard procrastination inventory, then asked them to report to an experiment. The students who formed implementation intentions beforehand were nearly eight times more likely to actually keep their appointments. [2] Stating what you’re going to do, when, and how turns a plan into a commitment, and the research suggests that shift is what enables procrastinators to begin.
Working near someone else changes how you work
In 1898, Norman Triplett observed that competitive cyclists ride faster when racing alongside others than when riding the same distance alone. [3] Robert Zajonc formalized the observation in a 1965 paper in Science, arguing that the presence of another person increases our level of activation, raising our alertness in a way that sharpens performance on familiar tasks. [4] For decades, this was a finding limited to people sharing the same physical room.
In 2022, Olga Sutskova and colleagues at Birkbeck, University of London tested whether the same effect holds over video. And it does. Participants working on a video call with another person present performed better than they did working alone. [5]
Being seen working and being watched are two different things. In a virtual coworking session, cameras are on, but neither person is evaluating the other’s output. The presence is ambient, and that’s what makes it useful instead of stressful.
The session’s structure keeps you on task
A session has a fixed start and a fixed end. You know when you’re beginning, when you’re finishing, and exactly what you’re doing in between. A task that might otherwise stretch across an afternoon, or get postponed entirely, becomes a task you’re doing for the next fifty minutes.
The closing check-in adds one more small piece. You said what you’d do. At the end, you share your progress. For most people, knowing that brief moment of reporting is coming is enough to keep them on task through the middle of the session.
Who uses virtual coworking
The practice has expanded well beyond the ADHD community that originally developed body doubling as a technique. The most common analogy used to explain virtual coworking to someone else is that it’s a gym buddy, but for work.
Virtual coworking for freelancers
For freelancers, the actual work is rarely the hard part. The admin around it often is. Invoicing, proposal drafting, inbox triage, tax filing — the tasks no one is waiting for, with no fixed deadline pressure, are the ones that tend to get pushed to the end of the day and sometimes off it. Booking a 9 am session to file three invoices isn’t really about the filing. It’s about having a reason to start at 9, a reason to stop at 9:50, and the small but real awareness that another person on a screen is expecting you to show up.
In our research at Focusmate, 96% of members reported that sessions help them follow through on their intentions and plans. For freelancers and solo workers who don’t have a manager or a team standup to anchor the day, that kind of low-stakes follow-through is often the missing piece.
Virtual coworking for students
Students use virtual coworking for paper writing, exam preparation, and thesis work, where knowing you need to study and actually starting are two different problems. The stated intention at the start of a session is what closes that gap. Scheduled one-on-one sessions help most when getting started is the issue, while drop-in formats and study-with-me videos work better for unpredictable days when the need is presence rather than commitment.
Universities have started building this into their academic support. The University of York created designated study doubling areas in its library in 2025, with 16 dedicated desks, after a student proposed the idea through a campus innovation competition. William & Mary and Queen Mary University of London have also formally adopted body doubling and study doubling programs, with Queen Mary’s Students’ Union hosting virtual study hours during exam season. What was until recently an informal practice on Reddit and Discord is now, in some places, a service the university offers.
Virtual coworking for remote workers
Remote work comes with a well-documented trade-off. A 2024 meta-analysis of 108 studies, led by Ravi Gajendran, found that working remotely increases autonomy, which should lift productivity, but it also increases isolation. [6] That isolation, the researchers argue, undermines job satisfaction, commitment, and the very productivity gains that the autonomy should be delivering. Virtual coworking is one of the few responses that addresses this without requiring a return to the office or team buy-in. In our research at Focusmate, 83% of members said sessions help them feel less lonely and isolated.
Does virtual coworking actually keep you accountable?
It keeps most people accountable most of the time, for a lighter reason than the term usually implies. Your partner doesn’t know whether you finished your proposal. What they do know is that you said you would, and they’re about to hear how it went. For many people, that small moment of stated commitment is enough to close the gap between wanting to start and actually starting.
Research suggests that high pressure isn’t always productive. Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School ran a study of workplace creativity, analyzing more than 9,000 daily diary entries from people working on creative projects. On higher-pressure days, people were 45% less likely to think creatively than on lower-pressure days. [7] The pressure made them feel productive without making them more creative or effective. A virtual coworking session sits at the other end of that spectrum: lower pressure, steady presence, and just enough accountability to keep you moving.
Virtual coworking isn’t the right tool for everything. Work that requires real collaboration won’t happen in a silent session. Deep work that needs three uninterrupted hours will outlast a single block, though stacking sessions back-to-back is how most regular users handle it. If the problem is that the task itself is unclear, rather than getting started, a session can give you time to think through it, but can’t provide the clarity itself. For everyone else, it works because it makes starting and staying on task easier.
Different formats of virtual coworking
Virtual coworking isn’t one thing. Several different formats sit under the same name, and the one that works best depends on what’s getting in your way.
One-on-one matched sessions pair you with a single partner at a scheduled time. Cameras on, brief goal-share at the start, quiet work in the middle, brief check-in at the end. This is the format Focusmate runs, and the one the rest of this page mostly describes. It tends to be the most accountability-heavy option because the pairing is one-to-one. Your partner is specifically waiting for you, and you for them.
Facilitated group rooms bring a group of people together for a scheduled session led by a host. The host opens the room, walks the group through goal-setting, holds a silent work block, and closes with a round of check-ins. Group sizes vary across platforms, with some sessions staying small and others running closer to thirty participants. Flow Club, Caveday, and FLOWN’s scheduled sessions run this format. Group energy works for some people. For others, one-on-one feels more effective.
Ambient drop-in rooms are always open. You join when you want, work silently for as long as you want, and leave. No scheduling, no facilitator. FLOWN’s Drop-In and LifeAt are examples. The format works well for unpredictable schedules and slow starts.
Asynchronous study-with-me content is pre-recorded or livestreamed video of someone working or studying, played in the background while you work. YouTube has entire channels dedicated to multi-hour study streams. Twitch has body doubling streamers. The presence is one-sided and requires nothing from you, which is the point.
If you’re new to virtual coworking, try more than one format before settling on what works. One week of sessions across two or three formats is usually enough to know what works for you.
Frequently asked questions about virtual coworking
Does my partner need to be doing the same kind of work as me?
No. Most virtual coworking partners are working on completely different things. A developer might be debugging code while the other person drafts a novel. A grad student might be reading a paper while their partner clears an inbox. What matters isn’t what they’re doing, it’s that they’re present.
Are there free virtual coworking platforms?
Yes. Focusmate offers three free sessions per week. ADHD and study-focused Discord servers host informal sessions at no cost. YouTube study-with-me videos are free to play anytime. Facilitated group platforms are typically paid, but most offer trial sessions or intro tiers.
What if I don’t want to talk to anyone?
Most of the session is already silent. You share your intention at the start for about half a minute, and briefly check in at the end. Everything between those two moments is quiet work. If you want even less interaction than that, Focusmate has a Quiet Mode, which lets you and your partner greet each other and check in via chat instead of talking.
Does virtual coworking work for creative work?
Yes. Writing, designing, composing, illustrating, practicing an instrument, editing video. The format works for anything where starting or sustaining focus is the hard part, and creative work fits that description as much as administrative work does. The low-pressure structure of a session also tends to suit creative work better than tight deadlines do.
How is virtual coworking different from body doubling?
Body doubling is the underlying practice: working in another person’s presence to help with focus. It can happen in person, over video, or even alongside a pre-recorded stream. Virtual coworking is the video-based, scheduled version of body doubling. The mechanism is the same, but the format is more structured.
How to try virtual coworking
The simplest way to understand virtual coworking is to try it for yourself. Book a free session on Focusmate and see how much you can get done in the first 25 or 50 minutes. If scheduled sessions feel like too much, put on a study-with-me video while you work this afternoon, or drop into an ADHD or study Discord and see what happens. A few sessions are usually enough to know whether the format helps you focus better.
Sources and further reading
[1] Gollwitzer, P. M., and Sheeran, P. (2006). “Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.
[2] Owens, S. G., Bowman, C. G., and Dill, C. A. (2008). “Overcoming procrastination: The effect of implementation intentions.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(2), 366–384.
[3] Triplett, N. (1898). “The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition.” American Journal of Psychology, 9(4), 507–533.
[4] Zajonc, R. B. (1965). “Social facilitation.” Science, 149(3681), 269–274.
[5] Sutskova, O., Senju, A., and Smith, T. J. (2022). “Impact of video-mediated online social presence and observance on cognitive performance.” Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(2).
[6] Gajendran, R. S., Ponnapalli, A. R., Wang, H., and Javalagi, A. (2024). “A Dual Pathway Model of Remote Work Intensity: A Meta-Analysis of Its Simultaneous Positive and Negative Effects.” Personnel Psychology, 77(4), 1351–1386.
[7] Amabile, T. M., Hadley, C. N., and Kramer, S. J. (2002). “Creativity Under the Gun.” Harvard Business Review, August 2002.