Coworking spaces get marketed with a lot of fancy words: networking, community, collaboration. All of that can sound very exhausting if you’re the type of person who often requires a solid hour of silence to recover from a single work event.

Here’s the introvert’s honest guide to getting real value out of coworking without your social battery hitting zero before lunch.

It is not necessary to network to benefit.

The biggest myth about coworking is that you need to always be working the room. That’s not true. Plenty of members show up, close their door, and get their work down before leaving out a single unplanned conversation. That’s a completely normal way to use the space.

Plan your day depending on your energy.

• Book your office for early in the day, before common areas fill up with conversation
• Close the door if you need to
• Only join in on the conversations you have the spoons for
• Give yourself permission to wear headphones if you want to show that you are not up for it today

This part my surprise you: working entirely alone, all the time, doesn’t always work. Isolation comes with a cost, and a coworking space offers a low pressure, optional social contact instead of the all or nothing choice between total isolation and forced office small talk. You get to control what happens.

Find your version of community.

Community doesn’t have to include happy hour or a team dinner. For a lot of introverted people it just means recognizing the same faces, having a couple of people to nod at in the kitchen, and knowing there’s a professional network nearby if you the time came and you needed it. Not something that is forced onto you.

Ready to see it for yourself?

Quiet focus, optional community, zero pressure to mingle. Come see what coworking looks like on your own terms at any HeadRoom location.