On Working Alone

There is a particular kind of afternoon I chase. It usually arrives around two o'clock, when the coffee has settled and the notifications have been silenced. The cursor blinks. Nothing else moves. This is when I actually work.

I spent years believing that collaboration was always additive — that more voices in a room meant better outcomes. And sometimes that's true. But I've learned that certain kinds of thinking require a room with only one person in it.

The myth of the open door

We've built offices and cultures that reward visibility. Being seen at your desk, in meetings, on Slack. Responsiveness as a proxy for productivity. But responsiveness and depth are almost perfectly opposed. Every time you answer immediately, you're choosing breadth over depth.

I don't think this is anyone's fault. It's an emergent property of systems optimised for coordination rather than creation.

What solitude actually feels like

It doesn't feel romantic. It feels like sitting with discomfort long enough for something to loosen. Like waiting for your eyes to adjust in the dark. The first twenty minutes are usually just noise — the residue of the day clearing itself out.

Then something shifts. A problem that seemed knotted reveals a thread. A layout that wasn't working suddenly has an obvious answer. Nothing magical. Just time, and the absence of interruption.

A practice, not a preference

I'm not advocating for isolation. The best work I've done has always been tested against other people — handed over, critiqued, improved. But the generation of ideas, the deep drafting, the hard design decisions: those happen alone.

Protect your quiet hours. Not as a luxury, but as infrastructure.