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In today’s Q&A, we are helping you figure out which tasks are suitable for being done in a coffee shop and how to stay focused.
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Read our full post on tips for working in a coffee shop
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to Q&A with S&J.
SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J, the mini-podcast where we answer your questions about online business.
Today’s question comes from Felipe Hernandez. Felipe writes:
“I see you guys work at coffee shops a lot. What tasks are your favorite to do in the coffee shop? The distractions make it so I only get very little done. How do you stay focused?”
It’s funny you ask that Felipe, because the first blog post that we ever wrote on FlippedLifestyle.com was actually about working in a coffee shop. You can find that at the link FlippedLifestyle.com/coffee and I think it was, was it three tips or five tips? I think it was five tips. Five tips for working in a coffee shop because Jocelyn and I, one of the reasons we love online business is because we don’t have to be a slave to an office.
We don’t have to work, even in our home, we can just get out and change our scenery every day. We work in cars when we’re driving. Not like while we’re driving. One of us drives while the other one works. We go to coffees shops, the library, just anywhere we can go get some work done – during a basketball game or watching TV – anytime we can get work done, we do it then and coffee shops are one of our favorite places. We’ve got a great little store down here down the road, great little coffee shop, just an awesome atmosphere and just love going down there and to get a bunch of work done and kind of socialize and hang out with people. But it can be a very distracting environment.
JOCELYN: I actually don’t love to work at the coffees shop. It’s okay and I do it from time to time but it is very distracting for me, just all the people coming in and out, and people wanting to talk to you and things like that. I’m a person who really needs to focus on what I’m doing so it is kind of tricky for me. Sometimes I’ll go if I have things that don’t require 100% concentration.
Maybe if I’m working on some blog graphics or something that I just don’t have to concentrate on fully, I might do something like that at the coffee shop. But as far as like writing blog posts or maybe if I’m doing research for a post or podcast or something like that, I don’t really like to do things like that sitting at the coffee shop because there are just too many distractions for me. Shane and I often will do planning at the coffee shop, like things that we have to talk about together, plans for the next few weeks, for the next few months, whatever the case may be. We will do things like that a lot of times at the coffee shop.
SHANE: Yeah, anything that’s conversational like maybe we’re meeting with someone who we’re helping or maybe someone is helping us come up with some ideas or something like that, or like Jocelyn said, we just went to the coffee shop the other day. We went to lunch, grabbed a burger, and then we went over to the coffee shop and sat down and basically planned out our entire 2015, what we’re going to do next year. That was very good because Jocelyn gets a little tea. She’s not much of a coffee drinker. I grabbed the coffee and we shared a brownie and just kind of wrote everything down on paper to kind of get our plans. So that’s a great thing to do at the coffee shop.
I also love to do repetitive tasks like if you’re moving some files or you’re like consolidating some folders and you’re putting things together, maybe getting organized on your computer screen there, if you’re trying to get all your documents in order, that’s a great thing to do at the coffee shop. Anything that doesn’t require 100% concentration, that’s the kind of things that we do when we’re working out in public. We can’t record podcasts or videos or anything like that because there’s just too much noise, too much background going on.
Anything that takes a lot of effort mentally, we kind of avoid that at the coffee shop. But if the coffee shop is where you choose to work the most, there are definitely some strategies for whatever task you choose to do there to get them done. We’ll kind of go over some of those tips that we wrote about in that blog post and you can go check that out once again at FlippedLifestyle.com/coffee but we’ll go ahead and give you those right here on the air.
JOCELYN: All right, the first tip is to sit in a low traffic area and depending on the size of your coffee shop, this may be a little bit difficult if it’s really small. The one we normally go to is pretty big so we can kind of pick a table that’s not right there in the open where people are walking by all the time.
Tip #2 is to go with someone else who is also working. That is sort of the key there because if they are not working, they are probably going to be very distracting for you. If you’re there with somebody else who is really trying to get some work done, it does help because you’re also motivated to do things yourself.
SHANE: All right, tip #3 is bring some noise canceling headphones or like earbuds. What I do a lot of times, you know that coffee shop always has its own music so I’ve actually bought a pair of the noise canceling headphones that kind of block sound from the outside and you can only hear your headphones. I don’t always even play music on these. I just kind of plug them in and turn them on. That way, I’m kind of drowning out all the noise around me and I’m kind of sitting in my own little bubble that’s a little bit quieter. Headphones are also really good too because they keep other people from distracting you because a lot of times if someone walks by and they see you wearing headphones, they won’t stop and talk to you or hang out.
If you really need to get some work done and you’re just there for the atmosphere, just there for a change of scenery, you don’t want to get into a lot of conversation so you can just have your headphones in and a lot of times, people will leave you alone and they won’t bother you because they think you can’t hear them with the little music. I also like to change up my music. I like to listen to music on those headphones without words. I like to use like instrumental tracks and things like that when I’m working on the coffee shop because it just kind of flows better. I’m not thinking about the lyrics as I’m working and it lets me concentrate on what I’m doing.
The fourth tip that we always say is BYOI – bring your own internet. Jocelyn and I do not trust the coffee shop’s internet. There’s nothing worse than you go out to the work and you really need to get on the internet and maybe the WiFi signal is weak or you’re just not able to get on the internet. So we always bring our phones and we actually have a little Verizon hot spot where we can broadcast our WiFi connection. That way, we always have our own internet in the coffee shop because you don’t want to get there and not be able to get online.
JOCELYN: All right, our final tip is to enjoy yourself while you’re there. I mean, the whole reason of going to a coffee shop is to enjoy some coffee, enjoy the atmosphere, may be even talk to a couple of friends here and there. Just keep that in mind as you go, I mean, it’s not all business all the time. That’s the whole point of what we do in the Flipped Lifestyle. We do try to put our life first and our work second. Just keep that in mind as you go, that’s it’s not all about work and just try to pick activities that you can do while you’re at the coffee shop.
SHANE: All right, that’s a great question, Felipe. Thanks for writing in. If you guys have any questions, don’t hesitate. Make sure you send them to us and we will try to get you a message back or maybe even answer you on air on a future Q&A with S&J. Until next time, we will catch you all on the flipside. Thanks for listening.
JOCELYN: Bye.
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