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Now You Can Pay People to Take Away Your Phone
‘Cave’ events in New York, L.A., and Denver promise to block out distractions so you can finally get to work
A few weeks ago I sat in a circle with eight strangers at a rented meeting space in Los Angeles. It was 9 a.m. on a gloriously clear Sunday morning, the hour when the weekend day still stretches languidly ahead, and the shadowy outline of the coming workweek is still just over the horizon.
The number of lovely Sundays in a lifetime are finite, and yet on this day all of us had chosen to pay $25 — the equivalent of brunch or a fancy yoga class — to spend this one indoors, working.
This light, airy meeting space decorated with swaths of millennial-pink decor was pitched as a “cave,” the signature program of Caveday, a New York City-based startup that leads structured work sessions for people who want to block out distractions, overcome procrastination, and get to work.
Caveday hosts three to four caves per week in New York City and monthly sessions in L.A. and Denver. Each week the company also holds four remote caves, where people dial in from all around the world to a Zoom meeting and leave their video cameras on while working alone in their homes and offices (also $25, or $35 per month to cave as often as you like).
“There’s a war for your attention, [and] the knowledge workers that get ahead are the ones that know how to protect their time.”
Every cave follows a predictable schedule. A facilitator (or “cave guide,” in company parlance) welcomes the group, leads everyone in a brief introduction that involves participants sharing their day’s goals, offers some encouraging words about the importance of work and the participants’ ability to get it done, and then sends everyone into the first of the session’s four 35- to 45-minute blocks of uninterrupted silent work time.
A close reader will notice there is not much happening at Caveday that a person couldn’t do alone, in a quiet workspace, for free. The concept seems a bit like being annoyed by the presence of your television’s constant chatter and paying someone to come over and turn…
