Work From Home, Just Not Alone and Not in Your Own Home

Apartment by night, office by day. That's the concept behind a Scandinavian startup that's helping city residents turn their homes into co-working spaces from 9 to 5. Calling itself Hoffice, the Stockholm-based project connects telecommuters into groups who then meet in a participant’s house or apartment to spend the working day together. By teaming up like this, freelancers get the looseness and freedom of homeworking but without the supposed productivity-sapping isolation that comes attached.

Home-based co-working spaces have been around for a while, of course. What makes Hoffice different is that it attempts to mold a co-working group into a shared enterprise, creating a specific, collectively observed structure to the workday designed to keep everyone focused. As each Hoffice session begins, everyone in the group shares what they plan to do with their day, also outlining what they think might get in the way of reaching that goal. The day is then split into 45-minute sessions, interspersed with short breaks taken together. Swedish journalist Agneta Lagercrantz outlines how it works, and makes it all sound a little cult-ish: