You may find you work better in a coffee shop than in your bedroom, but perhaps not for the reasons you鈥檝e been led to believe. Instead of the noise and bustle stimulating your imagination, your productivity could be because concentration is contagious.
For those who work from home, a cafe is a more inviting option than a day at the library. The idea that working in busy, noisy places like coffee shops enhances creativity and concentration has had a great deal of press over recent years. has shown that a moderate level of ambient noise, such as the clattering of plates and the whir of a coffee machine, improves performance on creative tasks.
There鈥檚 even a website that can help you replicate the sounds of a cafe at home. , which plays ambient sounds recorded in coffee shops, claims 鈥渢o boost your creativity and help you work better鈥�. It was inspired after its creators realised they worked more effectively when in a busy, noisy environment. 鈥淲e had been in and out of coffee shops, and we were getting really good work done,鈥� the site鈥檚 creators .
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But could it be that the reason people work so effectively in busy places has more to do with the people around them than the sounds they are hearing?
We鈥檝e known about the 鈥� that having a small audience improves performance 鈥� for close to 100 years. Similarly, it鈥檚 also well established that we perform better when we have someone to compete with. A study showing that when there is a speedy pacemaker was published back in 1898.
Choosing the best cafe
But neither of these phenomena explains why being in a coffee shop filled with people reading, chatting and relaxing would make us work harder. Perhaps it doesn鈥檛?
It might be that it鈥檚 the other people working hard at their laptops in a coffee shop that are responsible for your improved performance. A recent study suggests that 鈥� simply being around people who are working hard is enough to make us work harder ourselves.
This discovery was made by sitting people who were doing different tasks next to each other. When one person鈥檚 task was more difficult, the person next to them worked harder too, even though they couldn鈥檛 see what was on their neighbour鈥檚 computer screen.
How this effect occurs isn鈥檛 clear, but it might be that we are influenced by subtle, unconscious cues such as a person鈥檚 body posture or breathing.
So instead of playing recordings of clinking cutlery and inane chatter at home to replicate the coffee shop effect, it might be more helpful to seek out an establishment filled with other people working hard 鈥� such as a student library.
If you鈥檇 prefer to work in the proximity of caffeine, it might be better to choose a cafe filled with people working, instead of one where the clientele is largely there to socialise.
As for the power of background noise, while it may be better than nothing, there is a wealth of evidence that suggests listening to music we enjoy is even better. Music that stimulates us seems to improve 鈥� and it doesn鈥檛 have to be classical music like Mozart.
Perhaps taking your headphones and laptop to the library is the best approach after all.
