Some of the most successful people in history have done their best work in coffee shops.
历史上一些最成功的人在咖啡店里完成了他们最好的工作。
Pablo Picasso, JK 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.
巴勃罗·毕加索、J·K·罗琳、西蒙·德·波伏娃、让-保罗·萨特、鲍勃·迪伦——无论他们是画家、歌手、哲学家还是作家，全球各地的人们在咖啡馆里的桌子上释放出他们的创造力。
Of course, Covid-19 has put the kibosh on lingering for hours in cozy rooms packed with people sipping lattes. As we begin another year living amid a pandemic, many of us continue to work remotely on our own. And if remote work becomes permanent for some – as many experts predict – we might ask ourselves why, when things settle down, we should bother going back out to work in public, only to ostensibly isolate ourselves with our heads down – something we’re already doing at home.
当然，COVID-19疫情让人们不能在挤满人的舒适房间里消磨几个小时品尝拿铁。在我们开始另一个在疫情中生活的一年时，我们中的许多人继续在家远程办公。如果远程工作成为某些人的永久选择——正如许多专家预测的那样——我们可能会问自己，为什么在事情平息之后，我们要费力地回到公共场所工作，只是为了让自己孤立地低头工作——这是我们已经在家里做的事情。
But putting on your noise-cancelling headphones to toil away at your desk is actually different than 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. (So, no, it’s not just that double espresso.)
但是，戴上降噪耳机在桌子前埋头苦干与被身边熙熙攘攘的人包围在一起是不同的。有许多方式使得咖啡店能够在办公室和家中所不能的方式下触发我们的创造力。研究表明，这些地方的刺激使它们成为有效的工作环境；噪音、随意的人群和视觉上的变化的组合可以给我们恰到好处的分心，帮助我们保持最敏锐和最具创造力的状态。（因此，不，这不只是因为双份浓缩咖啡。）
Some of us stick in our earbuds as soon as we sit down to work in a public setting. But scientists have known for years that background noise can benefit our creative thinking.
我们中的一些人在公共场所开始工作时就戴上了耳机。但科学家们多年来已经知道，背景噪音可以有益于我们的创造性思维。
A 2012 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that 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.
《消费者研究杂志》2012年发表的一项研究表明，在像自助餐厅这样的场所中，低至中度水平的环境噪音实际上可以提高你的创造力输出。这个想法是，如果你被环境刺激轻微地分散了注意力，它会增强你的抽象思维能力，从而导致更多的创意生成。
Another study from 2019, which had similar findings, zeroes in on what’s called “stochastic resonance（随机共振）”: originally observed in animals, it’s the phenomenon in which just the right amount of noise benefits our senses. And while that ‘Goldilocks’ level of noise is different for everyone, audio stimuli in the background also help us improve decision making. 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.
另一项2019年的研究，发现了类似的结果，并聚焦于所谓的“随机共振”：最初在动物中观察到的现象，就是适量的噪音有益于我们的感官。虽然每个人的“理想噪音”水平不同，但背景音频刺激也可以帮助我们改善决策能力。有人甚至将其称为“咖啡馆效应”。因此，爵士音乐、轻松的交谈和咖啡师敲打磨咖啡豆并不是令人讨厌的事情，它们可能帮助你想出下一个杰作。
There’s also the fact that in a coffee shop, we’re surrounded by people who’ve come to do the same thing as us, which acts as a motivator. 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”.
此外，咖啡馆的另一个优点是，我们周围的人也来做和我们一样的事情，这起到了激励作用。2016年的一项研究支持了这个想法，研究人员要求坐在电脑前彼此相邻的参与者在同一屏幕上完成任务。研究表明，“仅仅与一个在任务中付出很多努力的人一起完成任务就会让你做同样的事情”。
“It’s analogous to going to the gym for a workout,” says Sunkee Lee, assistant professor of organisational theory and strategy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pennsylvania. “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.”
“这类似于去健身房锻炼身体，”宾夕法尼亚州卡内基梅隆大学Tepper商学院组织理论和战略助理教授Sunkee Lee说。“咖啡馆的最大优点之一就是社会促进效应：你去那里，看到其他人在工作，就会自然而然地进入一种工作状态。仅仅是观察他们就可以激励你更加努力地工作。”
One thing that can making working from home (and the office) feel onerous is the visual environment; often we sit in the same chair and look at the same four walls without reprieve.
让在家工作（和办公室）感到繁重的一件事是视觉环境; 我们经常坐在同一把椅子上，望着同样的四堵墙，无法解脱。
“Visual stimulation – how the office is decorated – has an effect on people’s creative thinking process. [It] is called convergent creative thinking,” says Lee. In his research, he’s found that visual variety helps in “solving a problem that has an optimal solution, but requires you to think outside the box”. While Lee tried to address this by adding neon lights to the walls of his home office during the pandemic, he soon found that the wacky furnishings quickly became familiar and boring. Coffee shops, though, generally have visual stimuli in spades. (And hitting up different coffee shops each time keeps things even more varied.)
“视觉刺激——办公室的装饰——对人们的创造性思维过程有影响。[它]被称为聚合型创造性思维，”李说。在他的研究中，他发现视觉多样性有助于“解决一个有最佳解决方案，但需要您跳出固有思维模式的问题”。虽然李试图通过在疫情期间在家办公室的墙壁上加装霓虹灯来解决这个问题，但他很快发现奇装异服很快就变得熟悉和无聊。然而，咖啡店通常拥有丰富的视觉刺激。 （而且每次去不同的咖啡店保持事物更加多样化。）
“Even if you think that you are working in isolation – in the space of your computer screen and noise-cancelling headphones – there are still things going on around you,” says Korydon Smith, a professor of architecture at the University of Buffalo in New York, who co-wrote a recent article on the benefits of working in coffee shops. “People come and go. The daylight changes. The aromas of coffee and food vary. While we tend not take conscious notice of these micro-stimuli, and likely don’t overtly choose to work in this location because of them, these activities around us prod our brains to work a bit differently than at home."
“即使您认为自己是在隔离环境中工作——在计算机屏幕和降噪耳机的空间中——周围仍然发生着一些事情，”纽约布法罗大学建筑学教授科里登·史密斯说。他与其他人合著了一篇最近关于在咖啡店工作的好处的文章。 “人来人往。日光变化。咖啡和食物的香味也不同。虽然我们往往不会注意到这些微小的刺激，也不会明确地选择在这个位置工作，但是周围的这些活动会促使我们的大脑以与在家时不同的方式工作。”
And while the stereotypical coffee-shop user might be a lone worker struggling with a creative endeavour, experts say these café settings can also benefit work groups who are brainstorming and building camaraderie .
而虽然咖啡店的典型使用者可能是一个孤独的工作者，努力完成一项创造性的任务，但专家表示，这些咖啡店的环境也可以让团队进行头脑风暴和建立情谊。
“There is an implied formality when gathering on digital meeting platforms. By contrast, there is an air of informality when meeting up at a bar or café,” says Smith. All those audio and visual stimuli help groups, too, compared to the dearth on Zoom or in a formal meeting room.
“在数字会议平台上聚集时，会有一种暗示的正式感。相比之下，在酒吧或咖啡馆会有一种非正式的氛围，”史密斯说道。所有这些音频和视觉刺激对团队也有帮助，与Zoom或正式会议室上的匮乏相比。
Office-based meeting spaces or platforms also come with other constraints. “Agendas are not required to meet someone for coffee, but are inherent in a scheduled meeting, virtual or otherwise, which can kill creativity,” says architect Kelly Hayes McAlonie, director of campus planning at the University of Buffalo and one of Smith’s co-authors. She says that university campuses, like open-air offices, have blended elements of coffee shops into their design to prompt people to gather and collaborate, as part of a trend that’s been happening for more than a decade.
办公室会议空间或平台也有其他的限制。 “不需要议程就可以约人喝咖啡，但是安排好的会议，无论是虚拟的还是实体的，内在地会杀死创造力，”肯特州立大学校园规划主任、史密斯的合著者之一，建筑师凯利·海斯·麦卡隆尼说道。她说，像露天办公室一样，大学校园将咖啡店的元素融入到设计中，以促进人们聚集和协作，这是一个持续了十多年的趋势。
One caveat, though: not all public spaces are equally work friendly. “One difference between the café and bar is the level of ambient noise, where many bars have background music and athletics that don’t always promote small-group conversation to the extent that you more commonly find in cafés,” says McAlonie.
然而，需要注意的是，并不是所有的公共空间都同样适合工作。“酒吧和咖啡馆之间的一个区别是环境噪音的程度，许多酒吧都有背景音乐和运动会等，不一定会像在咖啡馆中一样促进小组对话的程度，”麦卡隆尼说道。
With Covid-19 still raging in many countries, many still several months away from being able to work from a coffee shop.
随着Covid-19在许多国家仍在肆虐，许多人还需要数月时间才能够在咖啡厅工作。
And over the last year, we’ve all – of necessity – found ways to be productive at home. When social-network management company Buffer surveyed 3,500 remote workers around the world for its 2020 State of Remote Work report, it showed that 80% of them prefer to work at home, instead of places like coworking spaces and cafés. That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually a similar figure to 2019 and 2018, meaning lockdowns don’t appear to have made more workers bond with their home offices. That indicates that for some, the thirst for public settings is still there, even after a year of social distancing.
在过去的一年里，出于必要，我们都找到了在家中提高生产力的方法。当社交网络管理公司Buffer为其2020年远程工作状况报告调查了全球3,500名远程工作者时，发现他们中有80％喜欢在家工作，而不是在共用办公空间和咖啡馆等地方工作。听起来像很多，但实际上这个数字与2019年和2018年相似，这意味着封锁似乎没有让更多的工人与他们的家庭办公室联系起来。这表明，对于一些人来说，渴望公共场所仍然存在，即使在社交距离隔离了一年后仍然如此。
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