Why You Need Less Noise for Work and Your Health
Shhh. Heard what? Not? It’s amazing. Most likely, you are hearing something right now: a siren, a hum of a fan, blurry background conversations, a ticking clock. Our worlds are rarely completely silent – so rarely does this complete silence cause shock.
This post originally appeared on the Zapier blog .
We welcome sound in our lives sometimes to our detriment. Silence is perhaps our most underrated productivity tool. So let’s talk about noise.
Noise problems
It is common knowledge that the harsh sound of a jackhammer or the loud noises of a rock concert can damage our hearing , but this is not the only type of harmful noise.
Two types of everyday noise can harm us. One is excessive noise, such as prolonged loud noise from being near an airport. Another is simply a distraction of general noise around us, such as conversations or interruptions from colleagues in the workplace.
The former may sound worse, but both can damage our productivity – and our sanity.
Excessive noise is harmful to health
Excessive noise has been found to have a very serious impact on our health. Epidemiologists have found a correlation between chronic sources of noise like highways and airports and high blood pressure, which in turn can lead to other health risks , including damage to our brains and kidneys.
Other studies have found links between noise and sleep loss, heart disease, and tinnitus. People who live in constantly noisy places also often have elevated levels of stress hormones .
Ahead of her time, Florence Nightingale reportedly saw silence as an important part of patient care . As for modern hospitals, they are much noisier than they were in the past. As more technology is added to wards, the average noise level in hospitals is well above the World Health Organization’s ward noise standards , affecting the health and recovery of patients. Such a noisy environment can even lead doctors to confuse drugs with similar sounds – a potentially fatal mistake caused by excessive noise.
Continuous breaks reduce concentration.
So what about those of us who don’t live or work near an airport or highway? How does everyday noise affect us?
For most of us, everyday noise is usually a distraction and distraction. Colleagues, meetings, phone calls, noisy cafes, street noise, and our phone’s different notification sounds all vie for our attention as we try to work.
If you work in an open-plan office, you will likely find this to be an even bigger problem. Ollie Campbell, CEO Milanote and a member of a multidisciplinary team of Navy Design , says that offices with open-plan have their own implicit values . They make team members feel like breakups are acceptable, collaboration is a key priority, and insight is worth the breaks it takes. In Campbell’s words:
In most jobs, focused work is left to chance. If no one called you for a meeting that day, you can spend time alone.
If you’re lucky.
Distractions and interruptions are such a frequent part of our work days that we no longer even think of them as excessive noise. This is often more evident when we don’t hear the noise of distractions around us at work than when we do. A study at the University of California at Irvine found that knowledge workers have focal periods of just eleven minutes, on average, between breaks. As Campbell said, “If you need to focus, ‘work’ is the worst place you can be.”
Collaboration is important, but focus is just as important – especially for those of us who are creators. For knowledge workers, our work happens between us and a blank page. Failures and noise only interrupt this process.
Between interruptions, distractions, background noise, and a general lack of peace and quiet, office noise can be harmful. Around you with a noisy office, a noisy street outside your window and something distracting every three minutes, it’s almost impossible to create anything of value.
The benefits of silence
Eliminating both types of noise – literal (and excessive) sound and the more general clutter of the modern workplace – can improve our ability to focus and create our best work.
This is why you should replace noise with silence.
Silence gives the brain a break
For a long time, researchers have used silence as a control in experiments to test the effects of sound or noise. Realizing that silence is fascinating in and of itself, researchers began to focus more on the effects of silence than on attributing it to a status of control.
In one experiment that tested how the brain responds to different types of music, silence was used as a control between different music videos. But in fact, the silence produced one of the most interesting effects. Compared to so-called “relaxing” music – or even a long silence before starting an experiment – the short two-minute pauses between music actually turned out to be more relaxing for the brain. The effect of silence seems to be enhanced by contrasting it with noise.
Perhaps our strongest response to the relaxing effects of silence has to do with the way our brains work when not bombarded by the outside world. Research shows that our brains are never truly quiet – instead, they always work, even when we are not actively participating in conscious activity. In fact, science suggests that when we actually engage our brain in a conscious effort, it effectively overrides the brain’s “default mode”, temporarily diverting resources to what we want to do.
Thus, complete silence allows the brain to return to its default normal state and continue processing.
Our brain’s constant background processing seems to be also responsible for the sounds our brains make. For example, when a song you know well stops in the middle of a chorus, your brain often fills in the gap, creating the sound of the next line of the song. According to Robert Zatorre , an expert in the neuroscience of sound, you don’t actually hear anything, but rather create that sound in your mind. “In the absence of sound, the brain often tends to produce internal representations of sound,” says Zatorre.
Silence isn’t just relaxation for the brain. One study in mice found that listening to silence for two hours daily prompted subjects ‘brains to grow new cells in the hippocampus, which is linked to our brains’ ability to remember. While the growth of new cells does not always bring health benefits, in this case, these new cells did indeed become new functioning neurons in the brains of mice. In other words, silence can make you a little smarter.
We do our best in silence
The ability to close off the world around us can be beneficial beyond the pure benefits of silence. Thinking creatively as well as thinking about lasting solutions are skills thatpsychologist Jonathan Smallwood says “enable us to find new solutions to problems” and stick to our plans long enough to reach our goals.
“The ability to disconnect from the outside world, when the outside environment is favorable enough, seems to reflect a skill set that is essential to nearly every human endeavor,” Smallwood says. Simply put, these skills help us succeed.
Smallwood isn’t the only one who thinks getting away from the noise of the world is a healthy habit. French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal believed that people should learn to be quiet more often, as expressed in his famous quote: “All the misfortunes of people arise from one simple fact: they cannot sit quietly in their room.”
Derek Sivers, writer and founder of CDBaby, says that spending time alone, away from the hustle and bustle of the world, is the best opportunity to create new work:
It’s not that I hate people. The other best times of my life were with people. But I wonder how many highlights were just sitting in the room in this wonderful creative flow. Free from worldly chatter.
Sivers believes that time spent offline, disconnected from the network and in silence is where he feels most creative. “Silence is a great canvas for your thoughts,” says Sievers.
At design agency Navy, the struggle to get the job done in the office was real. Constant distractions and regular noise were such a problem that employees stayed at home when they really needed to focus. To remedy this, the navy team introduced a daily “quiet time”.
Before lunch at the headquarters of the Navy, the team agrees to remain completely silent. Not only in person, but also online. No letters, no relaxation, no pats of colleagues on the back, and even less meetings. They even put their phones in drawers to really focus. As Campbell explains, “Quiet time is a contract: a few hours a week when we agree to work even if we don’t feel like it.”
Although it took months to get used to the normal quiet time, the team was 23 percent more productive after four years. In addition, they are generally less stressed and can rest on Friday afternoons because they do so much during the week.
It worked. “Work has become a better place to work,” says Campbell.
Noise is not always avoided. The sirens will pass, you will be stuck at the airport for several hours, and you will not be able to silence your colleagues. And sometimes you want to work in a noisy coffee shop or attend a concert.
But when you have the opportunity, you should choose silence. Perhaps you can start by adding a period of strict silence in the workplace. Strive to find small pockets of silence for yourself during the day and enjoy the silence. Or, if you can, it might be time to add extra insulation and block out constant noise from your home and office, which could pay off in increased focus and direct health benefits.
Finding peace and quiet for yourself will not only improve your health, but also help you perform your best.
The Power of Silence: Why You Need Less Noise for Work and Your Health | Zapier
Belle Beth Cooper is the co-founder of Exist , a personal analytics platform that helps you understand your life.