I’m pretty passionate about co-working – it’s why I opened Woolf Works in 2014. For many, though, the concept of co-working is still a bit unclear.

So you share an office. And then what? These are the kind of comments I hear:

Why would I want to pay to use someone else’s space when I have a perfectly good home office at home?

That’s something for established business owners – I’m still starting out, I need to save on expenses.

Ugh, I’ll be forced to talk to people I don’t know. I really don’t like networking.

It’s for millennials, right? People like me don’t use a co-working space.

I’d like to clear up some of these myths by sharing what I believe are the top benefits of working from a co-working space like Woolf Works:

1. Increased Productivity

For the rare few, home offices work like magic. For the rest of us mere mortals though, they are places of distraction and frustration. It can be very hard to get in the ‘flow’ of work – you know those moments when a few hours pass and you realise you haven’t left your seat, and you’ve been totally absorbed? At home, so often other things creep in – a visit to the fridge, a shower, the household bills that need to be paid or filed, or, of course, the kids.

During those moments when we come across something a little challenging in our work, at home there are lot of ‘outs’ that help us walk away from the problem.  In a co-working space like Woolf Works, which is clutter-free and calm, you don’t have much option but push on through that block. We’ve found that women in our space are able to be much more productive than they are at home – achieving in four hours what they would take a day or two to get done at home. And at the end of the day, increased efficiency is better for your business or work, too!

2. Community Support

We had a potential new member come in for a trial day about a month ago. She was looking for somewhere to work on a writing project while she was in-between freelance jobs. I had a chat with her at the end of the day, and I asked her how she had found it. She told me how she had tried other co-working spaces, and she’d been constantly introduced to people she didn’t want to meet – lots of what she called ‘forced networking’. She appreciated having a day of peace and quiet to just work. The next day she joined up to our Part Timer (three days per week) membership.

Since then she has discovered and joined our Writers Accountability Circle, joined us for Happy Hour drinks on the roof terrace, and is coming to a Lean In circle later this month. She found the aspects of our community that worked for her – and came to them on her own terms. It wasn’t forced.

Another member came up with an app idea, while also looking for a project job. She’s been a member for about nine months now, and has bought her app past prototyping stage and found a four-day-a-week job that allows her to retain her one day a week ‘Woolf Works day’. She has relished the support of members of the community – she’s been able to try out the app prototype, and also found valuable connections to her network to help get it closer to investor pitching stage.

3. Open To Opportunities

Many people I talk to about co-working think that it is only applicable to entrepreneurs – you know, the stereotypical small tech team, the app developer like I mentioned above, or the small business owner. But in fact, at Woolf Works these members probably just make up about 20% of our membership. The rest are writers – novelists, journalists, PhD students, freelancers – or coaches, consultants, or what I like to call ‘thinking-about-it-preneurs’. Our membership is about 20% Singaporean women and 80% from a very diverse range of countries round the world. We all bring an amazing breadth of experience to our community, with most of our members being over 35 and in their second (or third!) career. Over the last two and half years we have seen some great collaborations, hosted fascinating workshops, facilitated some awesome social nights, and bought a ton of great speakers and mentors in to the space. From water cooler coincidences to ah-hah moments in a peer circle, being part of a co-working space opens up a world of opportunities, both personal and business related.

Visit Woolf Works page to find out more about the Coworking space.