Coworking in Your Local Library

For most of my career, I’ve owned and operated my own businesses. For some of those years, I rented my own office space around Sydney, where I worked in solitude, until I opened a number of training centres across Sydney and worked with many different professionals, training students in MYOB, MS Excel, and so on. Since closing our training centres back in 2006, I’ve worked primarily from my home office.

I’ve always found working from home quite productive, as opposed to working in an office environment where I’m often temped to kill time chatting to my co-workers over coffee or tea in the lunchroom. But that’s not to say that I don’t love to get out of the house every now and then, if not for my sanity (my wife also works from home!) but for the change of scenery.

For a Change of Scenery

Usually I find myself at a café, where I’ll order a coffee, send a few emails and brainstorm some business ideas. But when I need a quiet place so I can focus on something important, I usually head home to my office. For a lot of contractors, freelancers and other self-employed professionals, though, this is not a very productive option.

Some people have a wife and kids at home, or they’re not just able to switch off from the mounting laundry and dishwasher that needs emptying. For these people, getting out of the house is the most productive option. But where do you go if you can’t find a shared co-working space nearby?

Getting Back To Old School Roots

A member of my team recently told me that when she needs to get out of her home-office, she takes herself to the library. Depending on her workload and how far she wants to travel, she may decide to go to her local library, grab a desk and plug into a power outlet; other times, she may take a trip into the city and setup at the State Library, which has its own café onsite.

Working from the library never occurred to me before (it always reminded of high school) but it makes perfect sense, especially if you have a lot of research to do. Most local libraries offer free Internet access, while larger ones like the State Library, allow you to connect to their Wi-Fi network to use the Internet and print documents.

However, given the library’s policy on noise the use of mobile phones, it’s probably not a good place to go to if you need to make a lot of phone calls. You may need to make your phone calls from home, find a suitable café, or book a ‘phone booth’ at a co-working space, if you think you’ll need to spend most of your day making business calls.

Otherwise, though, if you just need a quiet place that offers free power and Internet, why pay for a co-working space, when you can go to the library for free?

Small Business Meetups

If you are looking for great working spaces around Sydney to work and find a team of people working on similar projects so you can help each other come along and learn about our Small Business Meetups.