Teamwork is about body doubling

March 26, 2025 • 317 words • 1.0 Harry Potter pages HP Series has 1,084,170 words across 3407 pages, 318 words per page (reference). • 2 mins

A recent work trip highlighted how important body doubling is to me. For me, in person teamwork might be effective simply because having people around me keeps me accountable and focused.

Only a year ago, did I learn about the concept of “body doubling”. I would define it as:

Benefitting from someone’s physical or virtual presence for enhanced focus whether sharing a task or not.

In the World Wide Web, I found this definition:

ADHD body doubling is having another person around while you work on a task.

Either way, it helps. And until a year ago I had not realised how much.

My whole life I had relied on body dobuling for simple functions I had given for granted such as:

going to bed at a reasonable time
eating at regular intervals and reasonable times
studying and working

Inadvertendly, I had depended on friends or partners for these basic functions but once I was on my own, chaos would ensue. My sleep and eating patterns would go mayhem and what in company was simple would become really difficult to accomplish on my own.

Having this realisation has been transformative yet I still find it uncomfortable to ask others for this kind of support at the fear of coming across as infantile, like I need an adult in the room to finish a task.

Living with ADHD or ADHD symptons can be characterised by a lot of shame. I hope that by talking about the issues I face and what I have found helpful I can alleviate this shame for myself and others.

Many people already practice forms of body doubling in fact, such as working with a friend from a cafe or pair programming. I find that distraction is abound nowadays and tools such as body doubling, timeblocking or the pomodoro technique don’t just help people with ADHD but anybody achieve difficult, laborious or tedious tasks.