Turns out, there's a reason people write at coffee shops ...
Outside of race and religion, perhaps there is no stereotype more enduring than the coffee shop writer.
There they are, hunched over a laptop, most often a Mac, papers splayed about the table. Chances are he’s wearing some type of corduroy, listening to a new band he’d sneer at you for not knowing, crafting this generation’s finest novel/screenplay/blog.
The shoe does not fit everyone, of course, and while it’s fun to poke the coffee shop scribe, could there really be something to such displays of public writing?
According to a new study, the ambient noise and general environment of a coffee shop could just be a boon to creativity.
Certainly, the exploits of coffee shop writers are well known. As the Star points out, Bob Dylan reportedly wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” at a New York roaster. Picasso was also a regular to Paris’ Le Select café.
*Bing: How to write a screenplay
But until now, coffee shop writers appeared to be doing so for no other reason than to be, well, seen doing so.
Researchers might just have rebuked that. University of Illinois professors found that working in an environment with moderate ambient noises, about 70 decibels or so, is the most fitting to spur creativity.
“People start thinking outside of the box,” said Ravi Mehta, study co-author. “They start thinking at an abstract level, their focus broadens.”
Coffee shops commonly fall right in that 70 decibel range, and remarkably the study found that even lower levels of noise, in the 50 decibel range, hamper creativity as much as higher levels of noise (85 decibels or above).
How? Well, by the study’s findings, a moderate level of noise – versus a high or low level – improves construal thinking, “thus promoting abstract processing, which subsequently leads to higher creativity.”
Do you think better in a coffee shop atmosphere?
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
*RedOrbit.com photo
Posted by: Craig | Jun 26, 2021 9:30:49 AM
i believe it...who can work in a quiet office and get anything interesting done?
Posted by: SP | Jun 27, 2021 8:20:27 PM
Did the people doing the 'study' break the groups down into different age/education/disposition categories?
When I was a teen I liked being out of my parents house and could study at school, the library (pretty much anywhere). However as I aged and was forced to tackle more detailed items I found that the fewer distractions I had the better.
Then again, I'm also not trying to justify cube farming to corporate clients.
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So, to sum up. If I was planning on writing a ballad to the girl who dumped me, or a sequel to the Twilight series perhaps a coffee shop might be perfect.
But If I was trying to design a CPU or Nuclear power plant cooling system I might find that fewer transient mothers with screaming babies, or university students talking about how drunk they are might be better.
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Could just be me though.