How Coworking at Makespace Oxford Changed My Freelance Life

Hi, I’m Ab. Let me tell you about my old morning routine.

7:30am wake up – and instead of leaping out of bed, filled with the kind of joyous freedom being your own boss bestows upon you, I spent an additional 1.5 hours lying in a state of panic and indecision as I tried to figure out where to work for the day.

As any freelancer, remote worker or postgraduate knows, there’s a surprising amount of factors to take into consideration when choosing a workspace. For example, If you don’t get out of the house first thing you’ll feel lethargic – yet having a client google hangout at 11 makes it hard to work from a cafe with the background noise, or questionable wifi.

9am – an hour and a half of indecision has passed. Eventually get up and realise after getting showered and ready that it is too late to head out after all, and make the call to stay in crack on in the home office aka bedroom, and risk not seeing another human in the flesh until the evening.

…So you can see why when I realised that I had the opportunity to move to the coworking desks at Makespace Oxford I grabbed it with both grateful hands!

I’ve been based here for a few weeks now and already felt a huge difference. These are several of the most noticeable ways its impacted my work:

Increased Energy and Focus

Not only am I way happier and energised to get started in the morning because I don’t have to make a decision about where to work, but it’s also far easier to sustain my energy throughout the day. Being surrounded by like minded individuals, striving for social change and to make their venture work, means advice or a fun chat over lunch or making coffee is never far away – and these great vibes carries through in my ability to focus on my own task list, and not crash out completely at 2pm.

Being Part of a Network

Any social business or charity needs clients and customers, and often other services to recommend and use, too. Makespace Oxford is a ready made network of potential business (or volunteers) and people eager to refer great services to the rest of their networks. If someone now asks me for a recommendation for a great market researcher, community artist, designer or even coffee producer I have the perfect people to introduce them to, all under one roof! Likewise, organisations and people based here are eager to approach others like myself, who are based here to deliver work for them too. A strong community network benefits everyone.

Space for My Best Work

A large part of my work is holding training workshops, or consulting one-on-one with a client. It feels like such an exciting offering to be able to welcome them in to Makespace and cater for the work we’re doing together – whether that requires a training space in the evening, a few hours ideating at one of our canalside board tables, or a private meeting in the bookable meeting room. Before Makespace I was conducting many of these either in-house for the client, or in a local coffee shop. Whilst both of these are acceptable it really adds to the legitimacy of my work when a client can be welcomed into the best possible space for it to take place.

If you could gain from being more energised, being part of a vibrant network and having space to get your best work done then Makespace Oxford has a Spring Offer for our hot desking space running until May, to get 25% off your first month here – making it only £100 (or £50 part-time). I used to spend that much by simply working in cafes.

You can see more details and book a tour to check us out by clicking this sentence.