If you’ve ever struggled to work on a personal project at home, this post is for you. I have all too much experience with thinking I’ll get so much writing or so much reading done on the weekend, when I have no work to do and loads of free time. But somehow Monday comes around and I’ve achieved nothing.
Whether you’re hoping to read more, journal, write, work on a side hustle, or study, it’s easy to think that your challenge is just a lack of willpower. And maybe that’s true, but sometimes it’s easier to change your environment than change yourself. So if you’re wishing you got more done at home, consider finding your third place.
What is a Third Place?
A third place is any place that you inhabit regularly that isn’t your home or workplace. Third places provide us with connection to our local communities. Frequenting a third place doesn’t necessarily mean directly conversing with others; it could simply mean being around other people.
Examples of Third Places:
- Libraries
- Coffee shops
- Breweries and bars
- Gyms
- Local parks
- Community centers
- Churches
If you want to stretch the definition, you could also include running or hiking clubs as third places, though, as the location would probably change regularly, this isn’t the traditional “third place.”
Television has some great examples of third places: The bar Cheers from Cheers. Central Perk from Friends. McLaren’s pub from How I Met Your Mother.
Common Obstacles to Productivity
1. Interruptions by Others
Have you ever heard that stat that it takes 23 minutes to find your focus again after an interruption? The study is a little misunderstood because it doesn’t take a person 23 minutes to resume working, but rather that an interruption leads to doing other things before returning to your original task.1
Interruptions come in many forms. They could come from other people who interrupt you in person or via phone call, text message, or social media post. They could be email notifications or really any time your phone pings. All interruptions get in the way of the project in front of you.
2. Internal Distractions
Sometimes the interruptions are internal. You might get distracted while reading a book when you decide to look up a historical figure or pop culture reference, only to find yourself spinning through Wikipedia instead of finishing the chapter. You might not be able to move past a nagging thought that you’re supposed to be doing something else, like cleaning up the kitchen or making plans with friends. A wandering mind is good sometimes, but not when you’re trying to get something done.
3. Burnout from a Long Workweek
After a long workday, the last thing you want to do is think some more. It’s much easier to relax in front of the television than work on a passion project. Mental exhaustion is no joke. All that motivation you felt in the morning fades away by the end of the day, when you’re just glad to be heading home at last.
4. Feeling Overwhelmed
When you feel overwhelmed by all the things you should be getting done, getting any of it done can be a challenge. If you’ve ever found yourself pulled in too many directions, you know exactly how it feels to go nowhere at all.
How a Third Place Can Increase Your Productivity
1. Better Focus.
Home is full of interruptions and distractions. Unless you live alone, there are roommates, partners, or children who interrupt you. There’s probably a list of chores you need to get to. Maybe you notice you need to vacuum or dust or wash the dishes. Perhaps you’ve put laundry in the machine and, just when you’ve found your focus, you need to go take it out.
That’s not to say that an office doesn’t have distractions. There are coworkers who want to chat and snacks in the kitchen, but you’re there to work, and your list of chores doesn’t tend to intrude on your workday. So if you’re looking to get certain types of tasks done outside of work, find another space outside the house to do your work.
A third place, like a library or coffee shop, certainly has stuff happening. It’s not a perfectly quiet location without any distractions. But those distractions aren’t asking anything of you. At the coffee shop, there may be people coming and going, but they’re not visiting you. At the library, you’re likely to be surrounded by other people working on their own projects, but those projects aren’t related to yours, and those people aren’t going to start asking you questions.
When I first thought about taking my book to a coffee shop or library, I thought I’d never be able to focus. I’ve always struggled to tune out the activity around me. But I got used to it; eventually, the background noise of a library or the music playing in a coffee shop didn’t overwhelming me. And now I get most of my writing done outside the house.
2. Purpose.
There’s something about packing up your purse or grabbing your book and taking it with you to the local coffee shop that feels full of intention. Not so much when you grab your book to sit on the couch. I’ve found that bringing my work to a third place makes me instantly more likely to actually do the thing I came there to do.
It’s almost like the effort involved in getting myself to that other place, with my purposefully-prepared materials, that makes me stick to that intention better than the low effort I put in at home.
3. Accountability.
There’s a social pressure when you take yourself to a third place with a particular purpose. Sure, no one at the local bar will notice or care if you’re reading your book or scrolling social media on your phone, but you feel like someone might! How embarrassing to be seen distracted and unproductive!
To take this up a notch, bring a friend along to your third place. Agree amongst yourselves that you’re not there to chit-chat! You’re there to do something in particular. If you see your friend reading her book or typing away on his laptop, you’ll be more likely to stick to your plans too.
4. Romanticization.
Ever heard that advice to romanticize your own life? To pretend you’re the main character in a movie? Coffee shops and libraries are much more cinematic than hunkering down at home.
Romanticizing life can counter that feeling of burnout by increasing motivation and positivity. And even though this is the least measurable reason, my own personal experience has been that positivity, more than anything else, increases my productivity when I sit down to work at a project.
Conclusion
I want to add here that third places have been disappearing over the decades. Our society has changed. It’s easy to entertain ourselves at home via the internet and streaming. We can connect online via social media instead of meeting face-to-face with our friends. It’s much more convenient to stay at home. But beyond that, life has become expensive. It can be tough to fit regularly trips to coffee shops or bars into the budget. Many businesses even discourage lingering in order to make more profit from customer turnover.
I sometimes go to a local coffee shop, where I can get an espresso drink and pastry for about $12 dollars. But once a week is my maximum in terms of what I’m willing to spend. Therefore, I recommend the library as the best third place. (Check out my post, You Should Visit Your Local Library, for the many reasons I love the library!) Libraries are free to use, open to everyone, and even host free events (not just book clubs). Not all libraries are open on the weekends or late into the evening on weekdays, but some are. They’re worth checking out!
Sources
- https://productivityreport.org/2025/04/11/how-much-time-do-we-lose-task-switching/ ↩︎
