Dive into a creative realm as you work out of a coffee shop.
Putting on your noise-cancelling headphones to toil away at your desk is actually different from doing the same surrounded by other people buzzing over your shoulder. There are many ways coffee shops trigger our creativity in a way offices and homes don’t. Research shows that the stimuli in these places make them effective environments to work; the combination of noise, casual crowds and visual variety can give us just the right amount of distraction to help us be our sharpest and most creative.
Working from home is the new normal right now, but have you ever stopped to wonder how it can hamper creativity? Yes, creativity comes to life when you’re exposed to people, new surroundings and a different ambience. Because creativity can’t be tamed, and you never know what strikes a creative chord in you.
If you're in a creative profession, you probably understand the phrase brain jam very well. Sometimes the creative juices just don't flow, and maybe all you need is a change in environment to help to find your creativity again; yes coffee shops can be a possible answer. Whether they’re painters, singer-songwriters, philosophers or writers, creative minds across nations have tapped into their creativity working away at a table in a café. So calling all coffee lovers, here's another reason to enter Starbucks and let yourself be drawn in by the delightful smell of freshly brewed coffee.
When it comes to stepping out to channel your creativity, coffee shops often do wonder. With our creativity being triggered by a combination of noise, people and visual variety giving us just the right amount of distraction to help us be more creative. Here are some fun facts that might leave you pleasantly surprised.
- From the sound you hear to unintentional eavesdropping on conversations the ambient noise in a cafeteria can boost your creative output. How? The idea is that if you’re very slightly distracted from the task at hand by ambient stimuli, it boosts your abstract thinking ability, which can lead to more creative idea generation.
- Seeing people around doing similar things can also act as a motivator and help to be more productive (just as you get motivated by seeing others in a gym!)
- Sitting on the same chair and seeing the same four walls can be mundane and restrict our creative ability.The visual ambience of a place and how it is decorated can help you think of out-of-the-box ideas. And of course, a change from the same four walls of your room and the same furnishings that appear boring is always a good stimuli. You can even choose different coffee shops every time to keep things interesting.
- The informal setting of a café can be a refreshing change from the formal settings that imply an agenda based task. Café settings are a great place for brainstorming with an air of informality.