View from my treadmill desk of a body doubling session during a break.

I believe Body Doubling is a technique that emerged or was at least named during the pandemic. I certainly hadn’t heard of it before then. In case the term is new to you, body doubling refers to being on a call (usually a video call) with someone else in a different location where both of you are doing a task. Some people even just record themselves doing something, like cleaning for instance, and post a timelapse version of it on their social media later as a form of body doubling.

Whatever you want to call it, I’ve found it works. And it works best when a formal declaration has been made. (At least for me.) I’ll expound.

The first time I tried body doubling was about a year ago when one of the writing groups I frequent decided to do a team NaNoWriMo. I had never done a NaNo before, and it felt like some kind of rite of passage I’d been missing, so I decided to join. (I won’t be talking about general NaNo impressions in this entry, I’ve done that before, twice in fact, but strictly the effect of body doubling.)

As the group is a fully online group, the moderators thought it would be fun to designate writing sessions via Zoom using a Pomodoro timer. Most of the sessions were at 5 a.m. which is when I work out. I wasn’t going to give up my early morning workouts, so I jumped into the lunch sessions, which, from my understanding, were more sparsely attended, but I still got a lot out of them even if it was just me and one other person.

Since that time, I’ve tried body doubling with other writers, and it works! This is the process I’ve found most effective:

Choose a time in advance. I believe this is helpful because you’ve already got it in your head that you’re going to write during that time, rather than just some nebulous hour when you’re finished with work and chores.
Allow about five minutes for general catching up and to state your goals. But try not to get too chatty. You’ll have breaks. Even if your goal is just to get as many words as possible the entire time, stating a goal still helps. Some people will decide to edit a passage, or create an outline. Whatever you need to do, just say it aloud to your partner(s).
The Pomodoro framework seems to work well. Twenty-five minutes on the clock to work, then a five minute break to discuss what you’ve done and adjust goals if necessary, then twenty-five more minutes of work, and a five minute break to decompress and let everyone know how you did. (You can add on another if you have time, or as many as you want. Two fits in a lunch break.) You can find online timers that you can share so that every member of the group is looking at the same countdown. (Here’s one we use.)

It’s as simple as that. And I’m not entirely sure why it works so well. I believe one large factor is the motivation to keep on task and avoid clicking over to social media or other windows. It’s very easy to pop into another tab to research something and find a synonym and then just start clicking around or go down a rabbit hole. When I’m in a body doubling session, I find that I’ll just mark those places to go back to later and keep writing. My head stays in the space it’s supposed to be at and it keeps me from just clicking over to Facebook when I hit a tough spot and my brain just wants to go play instead.

A few things to watch out for:

If you have members that don’t get a lot of social interaction throughout the day, they may have a tendency to over-chat during the breaks or before the timer gets started. It can feel rude to interrupt (especially if you’re a group composed mainly of southerners, like mine is) but almost everyone gets irritated afterward. Establish a moderator if there isn’t one in the group and have the moderator keep everything on task. I’ve also personally just gone ahead and said at the beginning, “Okay, everyone, I really need to start and end on time today because I have a meeting immediately after this session.” Expectations are set and everyone is aware. Then if they hour hits and your chatty person is still chatting, I simply say goodbye, that I have to go to my meeting, and log off. Many writers are retired, or have flexible employment, so they’re not doing it intentionally, they just forget the for some people the lunch break ends when the lunch break ends.
Getting overly competitive. I ran into this problem with my first couple body doubling sessions. I’m a fairly competitive person to begin with, so I wanted to outdo myself each time. I got a lot of words in, yes, but I had to go back afterward and do a lot of culling and rearranging because I was just letting my fingers fly as fast as they could. The point is not to create additional work for yourself later beyond the normal editing that you would do.
Relying too heavily on your body doubling sessions. (If they’re regular.) I still think it’s valuable to have time to yourself to write and whatever pace you like and to thoughtfully explore aspects of your scene or research a tough one as you go. I love the big chunks of things I accomplish during a body doubling session. (I’ve got four minutes left and I’ll be finishing this blog during our first Pomodoro.) But I like to think of it as a way to push yourself past a stuck point, or to really get some focused time in, rather than using it as the only tool to write.
What tools have you used to get words on the page? Have you tried body doubling? If so, how did it go? If not, do you think you might?

Body Doubling for Writing Motivation