The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-09)

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Wellness

Virtual body doubling can be as

formal as booking your calendar

with sessions hosted by a compa-

ny such as Spacetime Monotask-

ing, or as casual as finding a

friend to FaceTime with while

working on an assignment. You

can find options on YouTube

and most social media plat-

forms by doing a search for

#bodydoubling.

René Brooks, a 37-year-old

blogger based in Gettysburg, Pa.,

known as Black Girl, Lost Keys,

started a virtual support group

for Black women with ADHD on

Monday nights, because that’s

when she does laundry. The ses-

sion isn’t specifically for body

doubling, but Brooks has found

that having other people

“around” — even on video —

makes tedious tasks feel more

doable. By the end of the three-

hour session, “I’ve meal prepped.

I’ve done laundry. I’ve cleaned

my whole house,” she said.

Sloan Burch, a student with

ADHD at Clark University, was

struggling with a paper when a

friend asked her to body double

on Zoom. At the agreed-upon

time, Burch, 23, shared what she

was working on, and her partner

checked in at 30-minute intervals

during the session. Burch com-

pleted her assignment and has

been body doubling ever since.

“Whenever I’m needing to fo-

cus a little bit harder, I’ll find

myself looking over at the screen

and seeing the person there,” she

said. “My brain can mimic what

they’re doing as opposed to find-

ing something else around me to

be distracted by.”

Although there hasn’t been

formal research into body dou-

bling, it is similar to practices

that mental health professionals

recommend. “The term to me was

novel, but the concept is not,”

said Michael Meinzer, director of

the Young Adult and Adolescent

ADHD Services Lab at the Uni-

versity of Illinois at Chicago. He

likened it to the accountability

partnerships that he encourages

students with ADHD to form.

Julie Schweitzer, who leads the

Attention, Impulsivity, Regula-

tion/ADHD Program at the Uni-

versity of California at Davis, said

it reminds her of writing account-

ability groups. “It’s just applying

it to this population who needs it

even more,” she said.

Schweitzer said body doubling

could work as what psychologists

call a “setting event” that consists

of “cues that orient attention.”

When she worked with children

with ADHD, she often asked

where they did their homework.

“I used to hear people say, ‘It’s

better to do it out in the open,

because then I know my mom’s

watching me.’ ”

In fact, friendly surveillance is

so powerful, some people will pay

for it. Spacetime Monotasking’s

subscribers pay $85 per month

for unlimited access to one-hour

sprint and two-hour flow ses-

sions on Zoom, or $10 per drop-in

session. The business grew from

Los Angeles-based co-founder

Anna Pugh’s TikTok account.

That irony is not lost on her:

“It’s like recruiting for AA in

BY KELSEY ABLES

One day in April 2021, Lindsey
Bee decided it was time to deal
with the laundry “doom piles”
that had formed around her
house. So she did what many
people do when faced with
a boring task: She turned to
TikTok.
But she wasn’t there to pro-
crastinate. For an hour, Bee, a
teacher in her 30s, live-streamed
herself sorting the clothes on her
account dedicated to ADHD:
brainsandspoons. As the live
stream went on, viewers jumped
in to do their own laundry “with”
her.
“Everybody was so encourag-
ing,” said Bee, who learned she
has ADHD as an adult. “It made it
really feel like a group project,
not just me by myself on camera.
It definitely made the time go by
faster.”
The ADHD community calls
the practice “body doubling.”
The phenomenon isn’t entirely
new. We often body double with-
out realizing it. You might ven-
ture to a coffee shop to work
alongside strangers or seek out
the energy provided by others at
the gym. “When you think about
it, office spaces, a lot of times, are
just body doubling. You’re just
mirroring the people around
you,” Bee says.
In the past couple of years,
though, working in shared spaces
has become less common. The
coronavirus pandemic has kept
people out of coffee shops, emp-
tied offices of colleagues and
filled our private spaces with
work. For those with ADHD —
who struggle with executive
functioning skills such as start-
ing, completing and staying on
task — a structureless, solo set-
ting can be particularly challeng-
ing. Even people who don’t have
ADHD might find their attention
fractured in an environment
where work and life have merged
into one big, digital blur.
Recently, more people have
been body doubling online. An
ADHD community has flour-
ished on TikTok, popularizing the
term and a cottage industry of
influencers such as Bee, who has
114,000 followers. She pops onto
TikTok to clean, hosts Discord
co-working sessions and even
created a short video of herself
doing her bedtime routine
that her followers can watch for
motivation to get ready for bed
themselves.
In this way, people with ADHD
are finding a feeling of “presence”
in their computer screens, a
sense of social accountability
while alone in a room and a way
to focus with the help of devic-
es known for their distractions.

the liquor store,” she said.

Pugh, 34, begins the sessions

by asking everyone to state their

goals and has found participants

using the time not only for ordi-

nary work but also to clean their

kitchens or go for a run. “During

tax season, seeing everybody

struggling with pulling their tax-

es together just kind of normal-

ized it. That was a really powerful

experience,” she said. “We might

think, ‘There’s something wrong

with me for not being able to do

this thing on my own.’ But the

reality is, sometimes you need

another person’s presence.”

Will Canu, a psychology pro-

fessor who researches attention-

deficit disorders at Appalachian

State University, doesn’t underes-

timate the sway of these social

forces. “We have a little extra

motivation to work when we

publicly make a commitment to

someone else,” he said. There is

an “implicit social reward.”

For Brooks, socializing is part

of the point. “It’s like the commu-

nal nature that you see when

you’re looking at work that’s tra-

ditionally done by women, like

churning butter, shelling peas in

circles, that kind of thing. That is

absolutely body doubling,” she

said. “We’re not just there for the

sake of the activity. We’re also

there for the social connections

that we make.”

One-sided social connections,

or “parasocial relationships,” can

be powerful, too. Many partici-

pants body double without even

knowing the person on the other

side.

Allie K. Campbell, a 32-year-

old self-described “productivity

junkie,” hosts body-doubling ses-

sions on TikTok that draw thou-

sands of viewers. Based in New

Jersey and diagnosed with ADHD

as a kid, Campbell uses the Po-

modoro Technique and curated

playlists to help her stay on track

while working on projects for her

remote marketing job. She also

banters with her viewers, who

occasionally tell her to get back to

work.

She recalled one viewer saying

they got more done in 30 minutes

in her session than in the entire

week before. “They were like,

‘What is this black magic that

you’re doing here?’ ”

Rather than witchcraft, Camp-

bell’s videos might just be a

natural extension of TikTok,

which got its start with people

imitating dances. “I have to get

my work done,” Campbell said. “I

might as well do it in front of a

live audience.”

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‘Body doubling,’ an ADHD productivity tool, is flourishing online

ISTOCK

People are using virtual spaces and live streams to help them stay motivated while doing tasks.