How Noisy Coffee Shops Can Help You Work Better

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

Why do you see so many people studying at coffee shops?

Do you think coffee shops are a good place to work?

Sitting at your favorite coffee shop may be the most efficient way to write something important or finish a work project. So now a new Web site lets you bring the coffee shop to your office workplace.

The site, called Coffitivity, was inspired by recent research showing that the whoosh sound of espresso machines and the noise of people chatting created just the right level of background noise to stimulate creativity. The free Web site plays an ambient coffee shop soundtrack that, according to researchers, helps people concentrate.

In a series of experiments that looked at the effects of noise on creative thinking, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had test members brainstorm ideas for new products while they experienced varying levels of background noise. The researchers found that a level of ambient noise common in a busy coffee shop or a television playing in a living room, about 70 decibels, enhanced performance compared with a relatively more quiet 50 decibels.

A higher level of noise, however, about 85 decibels, about the noise level generated by a food mixer/blender, was too much, the researchers found.

One of the researchers said that too much quiet tends to sharpen your focus, which can stop you from thinking in the abstract.

“This is why if you’re looking too much at a problem and you’re not able to solve it, you can leave it for some time and then come back to it and you get the solution.”

Moderate levels of noise can distract people just enough so that they think more broadly. “It helps you think outside the box,” he said.

The benefits of moderate noise, however, are useful only for creative tasks. Jobs that require close attention to detail, like checking some important document are better done in quiet places.

In other studies researchers have found that exposure to certain colors can help as well. Changing the color of your computer’s background screen to blue enhances performance on creative tasks, for example, and making it red helps with tasks that need close attention to details. Large, open rooms with high ceilings may also encourage creative thinking.

The creators of the Coffitivity site struck upon their idea after brainstorming on an unrelated start-up venture.

They said that they had been visiting coffee shops, and were getting a lot of good work done. One member of the team noticed that when he returned to his regular work space, in a controlled work office, his productivity took a nosedive. And so because one researcher said his boss denied his request to leave the office and work from a coffee shop, he and his colleagues decided that they would bring their favorite coffeehouses to their computers.

They said the sounds they created had the right mixture of everything, you could get the coffee machine, and you had people talking and eating.

Since then, traffic has “exploded,” he said. “Seoul, Korea, is our top user city. New York City is second, followed by London, L.A. and Chicago.”

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading.

 The answers are below the table.