Co-working spaces and virtual services have been popping up all over the country, drawing start-ups, established businesses, and freelancers to engage in their services. The secret behind spaces like thecommondesk.com is their ability to boost employee productivity–a counterintuitive effect at a glance, but one that’s been reported across a vast number of experiences with co-working.

If you’ve never given the future of office space a try, here are four reasons why co-working spaces make you more productive:

1. Focus Is The Name Of The Game

Co-working spaces put you right in the middle of a work environment full of strangers from across different fields and industries. But rather than being a distraction, exposure to a crowd of inspired and efficient people breeds inspiration and efficiency in turn.

With all the work being done around you at a rapid-fire pace, you learn to focus on the work you have in front of you and match the speed of the output being accomplished around every turn. This is especially beneficial for start-ups, as the emphasis on focus works well with the urgency of getting a business up and running.

2. Your Business Stands Out

With some co-working businesses drawing together over a hundred unique businesses in a given month, your own slice of the market gets frequent time to shine. The shared space culture of trading anecdotes and taking interest in the work happening all around gives a person the chance to reflect on what their business has to offer. Beyond that, differences in professional culture among tenants become more apparent, allowing for frequent chances to introspect.

Co-working spaces offer a boost to belief in one’s own work, which in turn gives a boost to morale that correlates with increased productivity. Moreover, the act of reflection itself is a habit that may not necessarily make you a faster worker, but keeps your mind centered on your business and facilitates the identification of problem areas and groundbreaking improvements. Introspection at the individual level is sound enough advice, but taking the time to really think about your business can make all the difference in the long run.

3. You Never Forget To Have Fun

Naturally, improved focus has to come hand-in-hand with more effective means of letting off steam. Co-working spaces offer this in the way of amenities and social interactions, turning the most routine work week into a journey of productivity ending in a well-deserved opportunity to party as hard as needed.

There’s nothing particularly exciting, for example, about working in Plano, Texas. While I’m sure it has its charm, it’s no Silicon Valley. But co-working in Plano is a different story altogether: one where you don’t have to leave the office to exercise, grab a beer, or even have a kickass party at the end of the week.

Co-working spaces transform the workday into something more manageable, more rewarding, and more instructive of the best practices in cutting loose and keeping spirits high. With the data now pointing to the conclusion that happy employees really are more productive, it becomes a lot clearer why coworking is the next big thing in office space.

Modern businesses keep their workforce productive by investing in the most strategic space to fit their needs, and it happens that co-working environments are becoming an increasingly popular choice to fill said needs. Whether they’re here to stay is a different question entirely, but for now, the wonders they can do for employee output are clear.