One of the biggest disruptions of the information age is a rise of freelancers, self-employed workers, and other indie workers. As futurist Jeremy Rifkin has said, “we’re moving from big, vertically integrated companies towards diverse horizontal value chains and a self-organized ecosphere of makers.”

While this transformation may improve the overall sustainability of our society, there are also big drawbacks. One is isolation. Many workers have lost the belonging, community, and face-to-face team work that big companies offer. At the same time, more people are workplace-less and are forced to work from home, cafés, libraries or co-working spaces.

What is Hoffice?

Suffering from those drawbacks himself, the Swedish psychologist Christofer Gradin Franzén became pro-active and invited his friend Johline Lindholm to start working at home together. Now their question was: “How do we create good working structures and at the same time give ourselves and each other what we need to benefit our well-being?”

They came up with a concept and called it Hoffice, a merger of the words home + office. As the name indicates, the core idea of Hoffice is that someone invites you into their home, which is thereby transformed into a temporary co-working space.

For the co-working day, Christofer and Johline proposed a structure:

You meet: Around half an hour before the work day starts, you can drop in at your host’s place, set your workplace up and meet your co-workers.

You kick-off the day: At an agreed point of time you gather with all the other attendees in a circle to kick-off the day. Some co-created stretching or a mindfulness practise creates calm in you. Then everyone shares their day’s working goals. You say something like: “Today I will celebrate, if I get X & Y done”. This speaking of intentions creates a feeling of social accountability in you: “the others know what I’m working on and want me to succeed!”

You work: Next follows a 45 minute work block, where you focus on your own tasks. In the same manner as for the whole day, every work block starts with setting a tangible goal: “In the next 45 min I will get X done,” and ends with a brief reporting back to the group: “I’m happy! I reached my goal!” / “I’m struggling with X. Maybe I should do something else…”). The idea is that you are nudged to split your work up in smaller portions and learn to be realistic on time consumption of the tasks.

You take a fun break: Based on the insight that humans don’t concentrate longer than 45 minutes, in the Hoffice you deserve to take a good break: 15 minutes of stretching, dancing, playing, meditating… whatever you and your host can come up with! It might feel at the start a bit awkward to go wild with people you hardly know, but it will do you so good! Your awareness will stretch from your head, back to your whole body. Stress gets relieved, before it gets stuck in your muscles. 15 minutes every hour might sound like taking a lot of breaks, but you will see how they help you to regain willpower and focus for the next 45 minute work block.

The four principles behind the Hoffice structure

You eat: After three to four blocks of work/break, the lunch break awaits you. Often people chose to co-create a potluck meal: when everyone brings a small contribution, you will end up with a rich buffet. The experience shows that planning is not really necessary; it always works out. And the conversations are just as rich as the menu. After working and sharing your progress during the morning, you will have plenty of questions on what exactly it is the other people do. This network building and creating new opportunities is something which lone workers often miss. And when the conversation moves past work, you’ll learn more about the interesting people that Hoffice attracts.

You celebrate: In the afternoon, the 45 minute work /15 minunte break cycle continues for three to four more blocks. Then it’s time for you to gather again in a circle, report back if you’re happy with your progress and goal attainment. If you are: don’t be shy and receive applause from your colleagues. If you didn’t: don’t give up. You did what you could and you got a better understanding of how to set realistic goals! You can find a nice ritual to celebrate together, like clapping three times and shouting “Yes! Yes! Yes!” together. And maybe you want to stay a bit longer with your host and celebrate that you have a full evening ahead, where you don’t need to think of doing more work.

Hoffice is always a gift

Now you know how a Hoffice day is structured, but there’s one more important brick in the Hoffice concept: Hoffice is always a gift! It’s a gift from the host, who opens her or his home to you. But also as a participant it is about giving your time and personal resources to the group. Christofer says that, “when people feel that they receive a gift, they want to give back something. And when we give, we often get much in return — which means we have even more to give. That’s how positive circles of giving get going.” You can help your co-workers with business tips and leads for new partnerships. Or you can bring homemade snacks for the afternoon energy gap.

Try out Hoffice in your local community or home alone

Excited to try Hoffice? A good way to start is to joine a local Hoffice event. Check the Hoffice community map to see if there is already a Hoffice community close-by. There is now around 100 groups on four continents. Some of them are more active than others and you might need to wait a bit till an event comes up…or host an event yourself!

If there’s no active community nearby and you’re not yet convinced enough to start on your own, then try the Hoffice structure first home alone, or even better together with a friend or family member.

There are several YouTube playlists, which you can run on your computer in the background while working. The playlists will remind you to take a break and set your intentions for the next workblock (this is harder when you’re alone, but very rewarding when you do it) . In the breaks it will play a video proposing a break activity: a short workout, yoga, self-massage for stress relief or a guided meditation.

Here is a list of playlists:

• Hoffice auto-facilitated, breaks with focus on stress relief
• Hoffice auto-facilitated, breaks with focus on work-out
• Hoffice auto-facilitated, breaks with focus on spirituality
• Hoffice auto-facilitated, breaks with focus on breathing
• Hoffice auto-facilitated, find your own break activities

Would you like to make your own playlist with your favourite break activities? Follow this guide.

Start your own Hoffice community

What if you liked Hofficing alone, but there is no Hoffice group in your town? Then start your own Hoffice community. Here’s how:

• Invite a small group of friends for a series of pilot rounds to get to know the method of hosting and facilitating and adapt it to your needs. Instead of having a facilitator, you can also just run one of the playlists above, and follow the structure together.
• Start your own Facebook group called Hoffice + the name of your town or neighbourhood. You can become a member of a Hoffice Facebook group, such as Hoffice Toronto, and get a feel for how it works and copy the things you like.
• Send an email to info@hoffice.nu and we will add your group to the Hoffice network map and announce it over the Hoffice Facebook page.
• Invite more people into your Facebook group by telling people that you meet about Hoffice, posting about it on social media, approaching your local newspaper and invite them to join an event, and using the Hoffice flyer (pdf | powerpoint; print duplex, cut in the middle and on the left edge, fold so that the door closes at the front)
• Work and have fun together, continue to explore new methods, and get involved with the other Hoffice groups in the network.

It all started at a finance company in Ireland in 2006. Swedish Christofer Gradin Franzen, with a master degree in economics from Stockholm University, worked to raise enough money for his dream: to start a business with eco-tourism — anywhere in the world.

Micro economy + Buddhism, he googled to find the context he wanted to learn from. He received one single hit: the secular Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka. Christofer stayed for six months. Then the civil war broke out and he never set off any eco-tourism project. The whole time he participated in the Sarvodaya social projects, which is to first help people in the villages to help themselves, and then one another, to get their basic needs met — food, water and shelter.

This experience of the movement’s Shramadana, gift economy, that Christofer Gradin Franzen brought back home later became the foundation of Hoffice — a concept of working for free at the homes of others, with others. Right now the concept is getting enormous attention in the world. A story in the American Fast Co.Exist have been shared more than 7.600 times since the publishing January 29th. The day after blogposts showed up in China and South Korea. A Polish newspaper and a Dutch talk show want to cover the Hoffice movement in Sweden. A group is already working at each others’ homes in Toronto, one is soon to be set up in Istanbul and in 15 other cities around the world Hoffices are coming up.

A Hoffice is set up over a special Facebook page, where you invite others to share a structured working day at your place. But behind the structure of 45-minute sessions, pause activities and telling each other what you want to achieve during the day, you can find a philosophy based on certain fields: collective intelligence, gift economy and action research, how knowledge is developed by testing how it works in reality.

This Hoffice philosophy, Christofer Gradin Franzen has in turn fished out from two Western university programs — in economics and psychology — and the two cornerstones of Buddhism — compassion and meditation. Compassion he practiced in Sri Lanka. In the summer right after, he studied meditation with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in French Plum Village. And then he entered the psychology program at Stockholm University.

Now, at 35, he is doing his internship in Kalmar, south of Sweden, in order to get the formal psychologist licence. Why chose psychology for another five years of studies?

“Because I believe that psychology and Buddhism, especially meditation, is the most important knowledge fields for society-changing processes in our time. For me, I want to create a sustainable, more loving and beautiful community, but without perishing with the system we have created so far.”

The Hoffice idea emerged in autumn 2013, when Christofer Gradin Franzen developed a psychological board game about cooperation — Cohero — and at the same time was writing his final master thesis. At his kitchen table he did not get enough done. He became too lonesome. So Christofer and his friend Johline Lindholm, president of an environmental organization, started working at home together. It worked out so well that they wondered if it was possible to develop the idea further. But not at any price:

“We asked ourselves — how can we create the work situation that we want, without using more of society’s scarce resources and instead start with what we have in an effective way?”

He thought that at other “workplace-less” people’s homes, there are printers, wireless networks and other things you need to get through with jobs and tasks on a distance. He considers our homes “an under-utilized resource”.

“The problem with working at home for most of us, is to be so lonely in the complex soup we call life”, Christofer laughs. “All our addictions of distracting ourselves, all escape mechanisms here and there — they’re difficult to handle when you’re on your own.”

That is how he and Johline started talking about sharing their working days with more people, even ones they did not know. They invited ten people each and never thought it would be bigger than that. Now, their question was: How do we create good working structures and at the same time give ourselves and each other what we need to benefit our well-being? The structure they agreed on is still there: work in concentrated periods of 45 minutes, tell each others what you intend to do during the day and fun break activities.

Now Hoffice has been around for over a year, and the interest is growing exponentially. What has been added to the philosophy since then?

“To emphasize the voluntarity even more. The structure is laid, and it should be supportive and certainly not authoritarian. It must be easy to say ’no’ to what you don’t want. People join a Hoffice on their own terms.”

The voluntarity in giving and receiving Hoffice has been important also for Christofer himself. There, he has been able to experience the special process that occurs when you describe your own unique needs and get them met through the support of others — exactly what he learned about in the Sarvodaya movement.

“It creates in me a desire to give back and to listen to others’ unique needs. That’s how I think we implement social change. Here in the West, it will be just in a different way than in Sri Lanka.”

Agneta Lagercrantz, Swedish journalist and author

If you want to learn more about the theories behind Hoffice, you can read below.

Gift economy

Sarvodaya movement is inspired by Buddhism and Gandhi’s social philosophy. It is Sri Lanka’s largest people’s movement and is spread to 15,000 villages. Its base lies in voluntary work called Shramadana(“to donate effort”), or gift economy, where the volunteers help people to help themselves and then each other to in the first place get food, drink and shelter. Thereafter, they help each other in improving the village’s communications, a beautiful environment, schools and possibilities to provide cultural/intellectual stimulation.

“These are all basic human needs — yet it is important to understand that every person’s needs are unique”, explains Christofer Gradin Franzen. “You learn to listen to what everyone’s needs are and support them to address these needs. To get this yourself from fellow human beings is like starting a process. It makes you become willing to help others.”

The gift economy has no clear financial arrangement between people, no organized bands in giving and receiving. Everyone must feel what something is worth to oneself, and then give back accordingly.

“When we give of our resources in a Western culture, it is not necessarily of our money”, reminds Christofer.

Hoffice means opening your home to others as a gift. But as a participant, it is also about giving of one’s time and personal resources into the group, says Christofer. It could be tips of business contacts or new partnerships. Support for the work practices and the participants’ visions arises automatically.

“When people feel that they receive a gift, they want to give back something. And when we give, we often get much in return — which means we have even more to give. That’s how positive circles of giving get going.”

Collective intelligence

Our life situations are very complex and difficult to handle on our own, Christofer Gradin Franzen states. But we can increase our intelligence to manage these by getting support from people around. Those able to, and who want to, give their support as a gift to those who need.

“Someone contributes with cognitive resources, someone else engage in the problem with his or her time, a third one can offer empathic listening — and voilà, we have created a bubble of collective intelligence around the person. You get more perspective on the problem and can manage on a higher level of complexity.”

Action research, to learn how to make

Action research is a method highlighting the connection between knowledge and action, typically in social systems. The approach is to examine whether an action will work by testing it in practice, trial and error, trial and error. The feedback given every time creates a learning process through “feedback loops”. On Hoffice, these are about the participant’s own working process. When we tell everybody what we intend to do during a working day, and then before each 45-minute session, and afterwards speak out loud what we actually achieved, we make our own working processes clear to ourselves. It also creates a social accountability — telling others what you intend to do, increases the probability that you actually will do it. This feedback loop also increases the chance that we will learn from our own mistakes.

“If we never get aware of our own working processes, we will only repeat the same mistakes, over and over again”, says Christofer Gradin Franzen.

Focus

It has been known for long that we have difficulties in concentrating longer than 40 minutes at a time, and that we need breaks. Hoffice have set work sessions to 45 minutes. The purpose is to give a few minutes for starting up and closing down, and not make them too broken-up. The main theme of the breaks is stillness exercises and physical activities, both known to facilitate concentration. Meditation, playful exercises and stretching movements can be examples of what happens during the breaks.

“Then we practice coordination, balance, strength and agility. Playing make contact with the child in us and meditation is linked to our inside. If we use many different parts of us I think it creates synergies”, says Christofer Gradin Franzen.

To follow our dreams

When Christofer Gradin Franzen talks about Hoffice, he often says that the idea is to support people to follow their dreams. What does that mean?

“That we are okay as we are, and that we come and get support from others just as we are. The sharing atmosphere makes it more easy to follow our heart, and doing what we dream of deep down creates a mening. In Hoffice this might not mean earning a billion … Or yes”, Christofer regrets, “of course you’re welcome also with that dream!”

Spirituality

Spirituality is a part of Christofer Gradin Franzen’s philosophy of life. For him, it means to regard life as sacred. He quotes an American non-growth-activist, Charles Eisenstein, who believe that human life has two dimensions — we are at once unique parts and inevitably linked to one another and everything.

“Then you can see the world as a more beautiful and sustainable place. You understand that every single person is unique. At the same time, you realize that we need each other, for we are all interconnected. That is the way forward for the world that I want to see, and that many of us dream of.”

Answering a deeper calling

We started Hoffice as a means to help us have better workdays. For us that meant working in a more focused way, thinking hard about our priorities and integrating reflections to aid learning and allow for more realistic expectations on the output of our work.

Hoffice was also a response to a deeper calling, a longing for a different way of life. A life with a better balance between work and play, where these aspects of life could complement and strengthen one another rather than come into conflict. A community with a deep respect for the autonomy of the individual paired with a strong sense of connection. A peer-2-peer network for support that empowers us to live lives of passion and meaning. A regenerative culture fueled by authentic sharing and generosity.

Finding a formula

Our initial answer to this calling was to conduct experiments and investigate formats of co-working that would address our longing in an appropriate way. The format that we soon ended up with was working in 45 minute blocks of shared focus and then taking fun and energizing breaks together. At the start of the day we would share our priorities and intention for the day, before every work block we shared our thoughts on what and how much work we hoped to accomplish, and at the end before taking a break we shared how we did. It was as simple as that, yet it really had a huge positive impact on our lives.

The structure created clear boundaries between work and playtime, that made it easier to fully immerse ourselves in both. We felt empowered as individuals as we started to see that we could break maladaptive work habits and establish new more positive ones. We also felt more connected through sharing this process and supporting each other. The positive impact this had on our lives lead us to want to share it with others, so that they could either join our network och start a group of their own.

Growing pains

The reactions to our social experiment was overwhelming. We were apparently not alone in experiencing this calling for a work situation that reflected a different attitude towards life. As the Hoffice community expanded we received a lot of positive feedback on the benefits of using a shared work structure. It helped people overcome procrastination, feel supported when tackling challenges and energized people that too long had neglected their need for play and regular physical activity.

However we also received concerns regarding how the structure a times was experienced as a barrier that made people more reluctant to participate in the network and use the free workspaces. Some people also found that the facilitated structure became more of an obstacle and time consuming on certain days when they needed to “work really, really hard”. Others were intimidated by the frequent sharing of intentions, predictions and results, experiencing it too vulnerable to expose one’s personal shortcomings.

We ourselves also started to see that the work structure didn’t quite deliver everything that we hoped for. Our wish was that our pop-up workspaces would have a warm feeling and be experienced as open and inclusive. As a lot of new people started to join our online community, as a result of all the positive attention we received from media, the atmosphere at our Hoffices slowly started to shift. The enthusiasm that had initially characterized the events and community started to slowly fade.

Sharing the community culture

The people that were new to Hoffice had no problem grasping the concepts associated with the work structure, it is quite straightforward and easy to understand. What was more difficult to get a grasp of was the culture and the implicit code of conduct that had emerged within our network. When realizing that this was probably at the root of the problem, a phase of inquiry into the culture and norms of Hoffice began.

The aim was to formulate a set of principles that constituted an explicit code of conduct in alignment with our aspirations for the community. We wanted to create low entry barriers to Hoffice events, yet preserve the values associated with the facilitated structure. We wanted to create more space for autonomy with regards to one’s own work, recognizing that no structure no matter how elegant can be a perfect fit for everyone all the time. We wanted to lower the thresholds to participate in the various sharing activities without diminishing their potential for learning and development. Another concern regarding the principles was that we wanted them to be as lean as possible; addressing only the most crucial aspects of how we relate to one another and the shared structure. More elaborate principles would risk increasing thresholds for participation rather than lowering them.

The proposal of principles

After a lot of thinking and discussions this is what we came up with: a proposal for a lean code of conduct. We believe it protects the integrity of individuals and the work structure and keeps the psychological barriers for participation low but still leaves a lot of room for fun and experimenting.

The proposal for a code of conduct:

1. By attending the Hoffice event I consent to respect the shared work structure. This means that I will do my best to act in a manner that doesn’t disturb it.

2. Whenever I don’t feel that participating in the shared structure is what I want/need I can withdraw my consent to participate.

3. We don’t offer one another feedback or suggestions based on what they share, unless this is explicitly asked for.

The first principle is geared towards the protection of the integrity of the shared and facilitated structure.

1. By attending the Hoffice event I consent to respect the shared work structure. This means that I will do my best to act in a manner that doesn’t disturb it.

This is the glue that holds the day together and creates a frame for a sense of togetherness and mutuality during the day. This is one of the things that sets a Hoffice apart from most other co-working experiences. When we can trust that everyone that we are sharing the workday with understands and have given their consent to this, it is easier to relax and reap the benefits of both the focused work blocks and enjoy the shared breaks. We can also resolve issues when someone acts in a way that disturbs the structure more easily, simply referring to our agreement.

Consent to the structure and facilitation during the workday doesn’t mean that we can’t question and have opinions about it. On the contrary, we hope that this will continue to happen as it is the creative engine that can improve Hoffice. These ideas about how things could be done in other ways are however easier to process in a constructive way if they are raised at a time and space where they can be given the attention that they deserve. Ideas and proposals related to these constructive outlets for processing tension will be described in an upcoming article and we aim to go even deeper into this subject in the book about Hoffice.

The second principle is geared towards protecting the autonomy of all participants.

2. Whenever I don’t feel that participating in the shared structure is what I want or need I can withdraw my consent to participate.

We come to Hoffice with our own agenda. Even though it is a workday that is shared with others, and the value that the facilitated structure can contribute is dependent on active participation, there are still good reasons to hold the autonomy as sacred at every Hoffice-event. Having one’s autonomy being acknowledged and respected is a primary human need. When we attend a Hoffice we want to use the space and shared structure as a means to get work done in a manner that support what is important to us. When the activities proposed are not in alignment with our own agenda and motivation, we are free to opt out at any moment.

The only thing we need to remember when doing so is that we still have given our consent to respect the shared work structure. This means that if we want to break the silence during the focused work blocks, we are free to do that but we should make sure to do it in a space where no one else is disturbed. If we don’t want to participate in a sharing round or a break we still allow others to do so. This principle allows everyone to be more relaxed at the Hoffice, especially during the more silly and adventurous break activities that sometimes occur. It is so nice to be able to trust that everyone participates because they really want to, making it easier to focus on the experience and enjoy.

The third principle makes it easier to share freely and honestly about how our workday is unfolding.

3. We don’t offer one another feedback or suggestions based on what they share, unless this is explicitly asked for.

Hoffice gives us the rare opportunity to share our trials and tribulations and to celebrate our successes, big and small. At Hoffice we don’t have to strive to be perfect or appear more successful than we are. We come as we are. We work at our dreams. We share and listen. If we fear that what we say will be judged or diagnosed by others this is likely to decrease how open and honest we will be. And the most profound insights come as we hear our own honest words, this is the kind of feedback that helps us grow and learn from our own experiences. When we feel secure that the group complies to this principle, sharing become less psychologically vulnerable. As trust builds with support from this principle it often happens that we start to ask each other for advice, comments, feedback on our work or even coaching. When this kind of support is being welcomed it can become a truly valuable experience for both giver and receiver.

Principles in action

Having distilled these principles for a code of conduct the next step for us was to see if we could make any amendments to the work structure that we presently used and how we facilitated it. For starters we agreed that it was a good idea to always include the code of conduct in our invitations. Clearly communicating before the event allows presumptive participants to make an educated decision if this is something that they think they can agree with. We also decided that it would be a good idea to make it easier to exercise the second principle. When facilitating we started to announce the upcoming break and sharing round 2 minutes before it was time for it. When doing this we would also ask anyone who did not want to participate to show this by raising a hand. This seemed to make the process easier for everyone. When it was time for break the facilitator would know which participants wanted to partake in the sharing round and break activities, and no time was needed for explanations about why someone didn’t want to participate. The third principle has not resulted in any real changes to the structure but in the role of being the facilitator we tend to include a reminder when we open the sharing rounds, especially when there are new participants attending.

Our invitation to you

We are happy with the principles that we have come up with, they work for now. However it is more than likely that they will be amended in the future and that different sets of principles might be used in different Hoffice events. We learn from our shared experiences and we are more than excited to hear from you, in other groups and communities, about your thoughts and experiences regarding an explicit code of conduct and how it can be used to support the community. Please let us know by e-mail, on facebook or comments on this article.

In the upcoming Hoffice book we will share our ideas for inviting to and facilitating a process that helps you develop a code of conduct that matches your Hoffice community’s purpose and way of working together. Stay tuned.