Why are remote workers “body doubling” online — and can it help get stuff done?

An unavoidable fact about a lot of remote work is that it can be a lonely affair. Unless you’re making use of a co-working space, chances are you’re alone, or at best surrounded by your family and pets.

And while many enjoy this, some find it to be one of the more unnerving drawbacks of working remotely. Enter “body doubling” ― a work style drawn first from the ADHD community that has been adopted by remote workers to help them feel less alone and make them more productive.

Online body doubling is simple: if you’re hoping to knuckle down and get some work done, you do it in the presence of others. That might mean you livestream yourself (as some TikTok creators have started doing), or it may mean that you actually arrange a video call with people (friends or strangers) to have on in the background while you work.

The idea behind body doubling is that with other people around (virtually or not), we are more accountable to our work. Even just telling people what we’re working on and how much we’re hoping to accomplish can be incredibly helpful.

 As Tech.co notes, “this is backed up by research, with a study by the American Society of Training and Development finding that those who stated their intentions to other people became 95 per cent more likely to reach their goals.” (Cue the eye rolling from managers working to get staff back to the office…)

The practice first started among workers with ADHD, where there’s a lot of clinical evidence to suggest that external motivators (like other people) increase productivity. But as remote work matures, many are finding it useful for them: StudyMD, a YouTube channel that features “study with me” style videos, has over 450k subscribers, and new tools ― such as Focusmate, Flow Club or Caveday ― are popping up all the time to facilitate body doubling sessions.

“It just made my heart happy in a weird way,” one 24-year-old body doubler, Nicole Onyia, told Fortune magazine. “I work from home; I go to school from home; I don’t really leave my apartment a lot. And being able to connect with people from around the world and we’re all working from home together, it’s a really fun feeling.”

Content written by Kieran Delamont for Worklife, a partnership between Ahria Consulting and London Inc. To view this content in newsletter form, click here.