Is a coworking space worth it? Measure a week there against home
· 7 min read
Whether a coworking space is worth it depends less on the space than on what you do there. The honest way to find out is to measure: alternate coworking days and home days for two weeks or more, read what each day’s record says about your focused hours and your total hours, then add the commute and the price. You decide on numbers rather than on how the new place felt in its first week.
What you are really trying to learn
“Is it worth it” hides several different questions, and it helps to know which one you are asking:
- Do I get more focused work done there? More hours in the app where your real work happens, and fewer in mail and chat.
- Do I work better hours or just longer ones? A day that starts later and ends at a sane time can beat a longer day at home.
- Does leaving the house help me stop? For many remote workers the value is the boundary, not the desk.
- Is it worth the money and the commute? A clear number for what each extra focused hour costs.
Feelings are a poor guide here. A new place feels productive because it is new, and the novelty wears off. So does the frustration of a bad day at home, which tends to be remembered more vividly than an ordinary good one. Measuring takes both out of the decision.
Setting up a fair comparison
- Pick weeks with a similar workload. Avoid a launch week, a holiday week or a week of travel on either side.
- Alternate days rather than whole weeks, if the space offers day passes or a flexible membership. Home on Monday, coworking on Tuesday, and so on, so that one heavy week does not land entirely on one side.
- Mark each day. Write H or C on the receipt, or keep a note with the date and the location. Nothing on your Mac knows where you were.
- Keep the same closing time for both kinds of day, so neither gets extra evening by default.
- Note the commute separately, door to door, in both directions.
Two weeks is the minimum. Four is better, because by week three the novelty of the new place has mostly gone and you are measuring the ordinary version of it.
Recording the day without thinking about it
Punchcard is a Mac menu bar app that notices which app is in front during your day, by name only, and prints a receipt at the closing time you set: your top five apps with the time on each, the rest as MISC, and a day total. There is nothing to start or stop, so the record is the same at home and at the space, and you do not have to remember anything new while you are also getting used to a new desk.
Tracking and printing work with no connection, and tracked data never leaves the Mac. That is useful on a shared network you do not control: the record of your day stays on your laptop.
What to read on each day’s receipt
Lay the home receipts next to the coworking receipts and compare:
- The line for your main work app. Your editor, design app, writing app or spreadsheet. This is the closest thing to focused hours, and it is the number most people hope coworking will raise.
- Mail and chat. Some people answer fewer messages when there are other people around doing real work. Others answer more because the day feels less protected.
- MISC. A large MISC line means a lot of time spread across many apps, which usually means a scattered day.
- The day total. Longer is not better. A coworking day with a smaller total and a bigger main-work line is a good day.
- When the day started. The CSV export has one row per session with start and end times, so the first row of each day shows when work began. How to see what time you started using your Mac today covers reading it.
Adding the commute and the cost
The commute is not on the receipt, and it is part of the day. Add it to your notes for each coworking day.
Then do the arithmetic, with your own prices. An example with invented round figures: a membership of $200 a month that you use on eight days costs $25 a day. If your coworking days average an hour more in your main work app than your home days, you are paying about $25 per extra focused hour, plus the time spent getting there. If the difference is zero, you are paying for something else.
Reading the answer honestly
Four results come up often:
- More focused time, similar total. The space is buying you concentration. Probably worth it, and worth protecting by keeping calls for home days.
- Similar focused time, but home days run into the evening. The value is the boundary. Leaving the building ends the day in a way that closing a laptop at the kitchen table does not. How to separate work from home when they share a desk has cheaper ways to get some of that at home, if the price is the problem.
- No real difference. Save the money, or spend it on fixing whatever makes home hard, such as a better chair or a door that closes.
- Coworking is better for some work and worse for others. Many people end up splitting the week: calls and admin at home, long pieces of making at the space.
Not everything worth paying for shows up on a receipt. Company, a change of scene and a reason to get dressed are real benefits. The numbers do not argue against them; they just tell you whether you are paying for focus, for company, or both. Are you working more from home or just longer? looks at the home side of the same question.
Questions
Does Punchcard know which days I was at the space? No. It has no location features and records app names only. You mark each day yourself.
Can I compare the two kinds of day in a spreadsheet? Yes. The CSV export works without a license and has a row per session with start and end times, so you can add a location column and total each kind of day.
How many receipts do I get for free? The first two receipts are free, and tracking and the CSV export never expire. Printing receipts after the first two needs a $9 one-time license for two Macs.