Reading Room

Alright, it’s Sunday again and it’s really raining. I’ve got proper pyjamas on and proper slippers, which means it’s definitely September. This week, I’ve gone fully back to school, and I’ve been working in the British Library.

For a really long time, I’ve really enjoyed working from home. I have my writing nook, I have all my books and notebooks here, plus endless tea and coffee. I can walk around my flat talking to myself, listen to whatever music I like, put up big pieces of paper on my wall and draw out plot lines and character arcs, go to the gym or to Hackney Downs to break up the day. Lately, though, I’ve been really craving some separation between work and home. I think it’s to do with the fact that what I write is very personal, and it’s really hard not to take it home with me, especially if it’s quite literally already here. Closing my laptop isn’t quite enough.

So, this week, I went to the library. The British Library is in King’s Cross, and it’s huge. Fourteen floors, including five levels of basements, with a vast foyer, multiple staircases, a huge glass tower of enormous, leather-bound books — these are King George III’s book collection — running right through the centre, with leather-covered working desks on every floor. It needs all that space because it has over 170 million books, one copy of every book ever published in the United Kingdom, which you can’t take out, but which you can read, if you sign yourself up for a reader’s pass. The system can appear a little impenetrable, not least because the library is still recovering from a cyber attack last October, which is taking the library £6 million to recover from.

Ok, enough library facts. What I mean to say is that despite its scale and its confusing paper system, the British Library is very very accessible. You don’t have to be a member to join. You can just turn up and work in any of the open spaces, and if you want to get a book out and read it in one of the reading rooms you just sign up for a pass which you can do in person on the day, with a piece of ID to confirm your address. In the reading rooms, I’ve found myself more focused, productive and spacious than I’ve felt in months. You can only take pencils, no pens, into the reading room, and you can’t take a bag, food or drink. You leave your bag in a locker in the basement and you put everything you need in a clear plastic carrier bag. This ritual is so satisfying because it is such a clear, physical separation between home and work. Leave all your baggage — including, if you really want space in your brain, your phone — go, focus. Pick it all up again at the end.

I wrote in my email last week how I’ve noticed an increased dependence on my phone. When I’m trying to focus, I’ll often find excuses to check it. Somehow, when there is an elaborate security check (when you exit the reading room, security looks in your laptop to make sure that you haven’t torn out any book pages and slid them inside), three floors, a clunky lift and an even clunkier locker-lock between me and my phone, those excuses somehow seem to disappear, and for the first time in ages, I’ve been able to focus for hours at a time without being distracted. It’s been wonderful, my brain feels like it has more oxygen, and I feel like I have almost double the energy.

This revelation will not be remotely new to anybody who has made a consistent habit of going to the office or who works the kind of physical job that demands total presence and cannot be procrastinated over. But I know plenty of people who are freelancing or have blurry lines between what constitutes work and what constitutes leisure who are in the same boat as me, finding that the boundaries between pleasure and work have become incredibly murky. It does have an effect. It makes it impossible to relax and properly compartmentalise, with work creeping into evenings and weekends while also making you less productive during your working hours because leisure also leaks into work. If you’ve been in a routine like me, where there’s little separation between the two, here’s a prompt to try something different, give up the comforts for a day or two and make a concreted effort to physically separate your work from your leisure. See what happens, see if you find yourself having a little more room.

Love

Rosie x