Office Cafe

Alone But Not Lonely

Today I spent a little time at Starbucks. I had been doing errands and one errand took me to the same plaza as one of the oldest Starbucks in the county. I stopped in to sit and think for a while. I was alone, but thanks to friends who were already there, I was not lonely. Our conversations were brief, but just long enough to connect and get caught up.

It is good to sit and think. An idea popped into my head and fortunately for me, the iPhone works great in this situation. I wanted a quick answer to a technical question, and within a few minutes I was reading a post from someone who had already gone down the road I was about to go down myself.

It is a good time to think about business and family, too. Goals and new ideas can be brought to mind by just looking around the room. This time someone thoughtfully left today’s newspaper on the small round coffee table next to me. I don’t know what new ideas may come from the headlines I scanned or the article that I read. Sometimes that doesn’t come for a couple of days. But just the act of being there usually makes the stop about more than just the coffee.

I do not discount the value of just relaxing. But today I needed mental stimulus. And I found it. I remembered a small project that I had in mind. I needed a part for the next step. And I realized that I had one more stop on the errand trail today.

Tags: Errands, Think

Too Much Office, Not Enough Cafe

There exists a delicate balance in life: office time vs. cafe time.

I need time away from the office as much as I need time in the office (and by this I really am not talking about the amount of time, rather, just the need to get out of the office and into the cafe).

On the one hand, I have things that must be done in a particular place; for example, some of my work involves opening the mail and filing documents (and keeping them for a number of years). I don’t know about you, but this isn’t going to happen in a coffee shop.

On the other hand, bumping into someone that I haven’t seen in a while is most likely not going to happen in my office; especially not in my home office!

So there is that constant tension.

Unfortunately, this week the paperwork won. Remember the standardized or timed tests? How often did we hear, “Time’s up, please put your pencils down.” Well this week, nobody came to tell me to put my pencil down. And maybe somebody should have. At the very least, that somebody should have been me.

This week, I plan to be in the cafe more often. I plan to sit there to think of one new idea, refine an old idea, or bump into someone that I haven’t seen in a while. Marla talked about interruptions in her blog this week. Let’s just say that last week, I wasn’t there often enough to run the risk of being interrupted. And I’m afraid that I am the poorer because of it.

See you in the cafe.

Tags: Errands, Relax