Pablo Picasso, J.K. Rowling, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Bob Dylan — whether they’re painters, singer-songwriters, philosophers or writers, people across nations and centuries have tapped into their creativity working away at a table in a café.

Noise

A low-to-moderate level of ambient noise in a place like a cafeteria can actually boost your creative output. 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.

Some have even dubbed “the coffee shop effect.” So, the jazz muzak, light conversation and barista banging coffee grounds out of the grinder aren’t a nuisance — they could help you come up with your next magnum opus.

Focus crowds

A 2016 study backed up this idea when researchers asked participants sitting next to each other in front of a computer to do a task on the same screen. The study showed that “simply performing a task next to a person who exerts a lot of effort in a task will make you do the same.”

One of the biggest things about coffee shops is the social-facilitation effect: you go there, you see other people working and it puts you in a mood where you just naturally start working as well. Just observing them can motivate you to work harder.

Visual variety

Visual variety helps in “solving a problem that has an optimal solution, but requires you to think outside the box”... Coffee shops, though, generally have visual stimuli in spades. And hitting up different coffee shops each time keeps things even more varied.

Air of informality

Experts say these café settings can also benefit work groups who are brainstorming and building camaraderie. All those audio and visual stimuli help groups, too, compared to the dearth on Zoom or in a formal meeting room.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【讨厌的人（或物）】tǎoyàn de rén (huò wù) nuisance an obnoxious or annoying person, thing, condition, practice, etc

【代表作】dài biǎozuò magnum opus the most important piece of work done by a writer or artist

毕加索、J·K·罗琳、波伏娃、萨特还有鲍勃·迪伦 — 不论是画家、创作型歌手、哲学家还是作家，来自各个国家不同世纪的人们都曾坐在咖啡馆的小桌子旁，挖掘他们的创造力。

恰如其分的环境噪声

多年来，科学家们发现背景噪声有利于激发我们思维的创造力。

在咖啡馆这样的地方，低到中等水平范围内的环境噪声能够促进人们的创意输出。如果周遭的刺激因素能使你对手头的工作稍有分心，那么你的抽象思维能力会得到相应的提升，更多创意也会被激发出来。有些人甚至称其为“咖啡店效应”。所以，咖啡馆里的爵士乐、轻松的交谈声和咖啡师在咖啡机上敲咖啡渣的声音并不是什么讨厌的事，它们说不定可以帮你创作出下一个杰作。

专注的人们

2016年的一项研究验证了这一想法。当时研究人员要求参与者们彼此相邻坐在电脑前，并在同一屏幕上执行任务。研究表明，“坐在一个投入工作的人身边，你也会同样投入精力去完成任务”。

咖啡馆最大的优点之一就是它带来的社会促进效应：当你去咖啡馆看到其他人正在工作，你也会自然而然地开始进入工作的状态。光是看看身边的人就会激发你更加努力地工作。

多样的视觉体验

视觉多样性有助于“跳出思维定式，发现问题的最优解”…… 咖啡馆常常有着许多能够刺激视觉的因素。每次去不同的咖啡馆甚至会让你的思维变得更加多样化。

非正式的氛围

专家称咖啡馆里的这些布景对正在进行头脑风暴或者培养团队精神的工作小组是有好处的。和缺少这些的zoom或正式的会议室相比，咖啡馆里所有的听觉和视觉刺激都会激发小组成员的思想。 (chinadaily.com.cn)