Last week I attended a writing retreat that we organized in my research group. For us this was a new experience, and we made use of this online recourse in setting it up. We spent two days writing together sitting at the same table using a set schedule for coffee breaks and work.

I must say that I was very surprised by how powerful it was to work in this way. I seldom have problems concentrating, but in this setting, it was even easy to concentrate and we did lots of progress with our CHI submission.

Positive things about this way of organizing work:

• It is easy to concentrate
• It is satisfactory to focus on one thing only (writing)
• You get LOTS of things done
• You have people around you to ask in the break if you get stuck on something
• Seeing others writing gives me lots of inspiration

The others attending the retreat were also very positive. This was really reflected in the answer to the evaluation form, see figure below.