Why can you concentrate on your work in a noisy coffee shop, but not in a quiet office?

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I believe many people have the feeling that you can work very attentively in a noisy coffee shop, but it is difficult to do so in an open-plan office. Why on earth did this happen? Studies have shown that an appropriate level of ambient noise can stimulate our thinking to think more creatively. It is not the noise itself that may distract us at work, but who makes it. In an open-plan office, we usually can't stop ourselves from being attracted and brought in by other people's conversations, or we are often interrupted and disturbed by others when we want to concentrate. The ideal work environment for focusing on work is not a quiet environment without any noise, but one that will not be interrupted and disturbed by others.

A few years ago, a media journalist friend gave me an exclusive interview about a new book I just published. during the interview, the media reporter said something that made me think a lot to this day. He said he was fed up with the noise of his open-plan office environment, which distracted him so easily that he set up a member in a joint office space across the street from the company's office building, where he could work more intensively.

I very much agree with and understand that all kinds of noise in an open office environment can easily distract people. But it is difficult for me to understand that the joint office space mentioned by this journalist friend allows him to focus more on his work. After all, the joint office space usually uses an open office layout.

But recently, when I read a series of articles on the effects of sound on the brain, I began to understand why my media friend chose to work in a joint office space rather than in his own open-plan office in order to focus on his work.

According to previous research, we know that one of the biggest headaches in an open office environment is that there are all kinds of noises that people don't want to hear.

But the latest research finds that it may not be the sound itself, but who makes it, that distracts us at work. In fact, moderate office humor and gossip are helpful for us to do some creative work, as long as we are not brought in by this kind of gossip. The ideal work environment for creative work is not an absolutely quiet environment with no noise at all, but an environment with a moderate level of background noise. That's why you can concentrate on your work in a noisy coffee shop while it's hard to concentrate in a noisy office.

A study published by Consumer Research Weekly shows that an appropriate level of ambient noise can stimulate our minds to think more creatively. Professor Ravi Mehta of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign led researchers to study how different levels of noise affect subjects who are being tested for creative thinking.

The subjects were randomly divided into four groups, each of whom was asked to complete a long-distance association test. Usually, provide several phrases that are far apart and guess their common related words. For example, "salt, deep, foam", its related word is "sea". Creative thinking is the process of reintegrating the associated elements. The farther away the newly combined elements associate with each other, the more creative the thinking process or problem solving will be. The association of creative people is different from that of ordinary people. Creative people have a wide range of associations, one element can be connected to many other elements, while the average person has fewer element connections). In groups, we will set different levels of noise during the test, from complete mute to 50 dB, 70 dB and 85 dB noise. The differences between most groups were not great, but the group in the 70 dB noise environment (which was very close to the noise level in the coffee shop) performed much better than the other groups on the creative thinking test. In addition, our level of creative thinking is not much different in a completely quiet environment than in a background noise environment of 85 decibels.

Because the subjects in the 70 dB noise environment performed significantly better than other groups on creative thinking tests, the study concluded that the appropriate level of background noise (not too loud and not too quiet) actually helps to improve a person's creative thinking ability. The right level of background noise may disrupt our normal mode of thinking and allow our imagination to wander, but it will not distract us. This "distracting focus" allows us to accomplish creative tasks at our best. As the author writes: "in a relatively noisy environment, it may stimulate our brains to think more abstractly, resulting in creative ideas."

In another study, when subjects completed creative thinking tests at different levels of noise, the researchers used frontal lobe electroencephalogram (EEG) machines to study their brain waves. The researchers found that the subjects' performance scores of creative thinking varied greatly in different noise environments, and that the score was closely related to specific brain waves. Like the results of previous studies, a certain level of white noise is an ideal environment for creative tasks.

So the question is: why do most of us hate working in open-plan offices? Quiet conversations among colleagues and the soft sound made by the air-conditioning system should help us concentrate. But the problem is that in our open-plan office, we often can't stop ourselves from being attracted and brought in by other people's conversations, or we are often interrupted and disturbed by others when we want to concentrate. In fact, EEG researchers have found that face-to-face communication, conversation and other interruptions can have a negative impact on people's creative work process. By contrast, a joint office space or cafe provides a degree of unfamiliar ambient noise and protects yourself from being disturbed by others, so that no one will come and interrupt you when you are trying to concentrate on your work.

All in all, what we have learned from the above research is that the ideal work environment for focused work is not a quiet environment without any noise, but one that will not be interrupted and disturbed by others. So finding an environment where you can immerse yourself in your work, no matter how noisy it is, is the best strategy to make sure you can get important work done.

Original link: https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-you-can-focus-in-a-coffee-shop-but-not-in-your-open-office