If you’ve been reading Wheel & Anchor’s newsletter for a while, you’ll know we’re a big fan of coffee houses – not just for their ability to serve you a cup full of energy to revitalise your day of exploring, not just for the incredible smells that everyone loves (even people who hate drinking coffee!) – but also because of the rare treat to sit in a room with so many strangers in such a relaxed, cheerful state.
I reckon coffee houses might be among the very best ways to explore a country, and I will happily die on this hill.
But here’s another thing I’ve noticed about coffee shops: they’re also amazing places to wrestle your thoughts into shape (which can be a blessing if you’re feeling overloaded with the sights and sounds of an amazing trip) – and they’re a terrific place for cooking up a new idea you’d never have back home.
The best idea I had in 2013 happened as I emerged from a coffee-shop. Although, “happened” is too weak a word. It was like a wave broke over my head, bringing me to a halt in the street, my thoughts spluttering. Two seemingly unrelated business ideas, both incomplete in ways I couldn’t define but could definitely feel, had joined together and made something new. It immediately felt blindingly obvious, which is the sign you’ve had a brainstorm – everything snicks into place so naturally that it makes you feel stupid for not being able to engineer them together yourself.
But of course you can’t force it together. That’s never how creativity works. The best you can do is put yourself where a lightning-bolt of inspiration always seems to strike you, and hope for the best.
Enter the lightning-rods known as coffee shops!
Back in 2018 I sang the praises of Coffitivity, an ambient noise app that makes your laptop or smartphone sound like a bustling coffee-house. When it first launched everyone loved it, probably in ways that caught its creators off guard. The New York Times and Fast Company ran articles on it. It was everywhere – and yet it’s just a 10-minute looping recording of the sound of a shop. That’s basically it. (And I’d argue it helped lead to the rapid rise in popularity of ambient noise generators within the popular Calm and Headspace meditation apps.)
So why did so many creative professionals go nuts over it?
I backtracked to find out. Coffitivity links to this research paper, which suggests that moderate ambient noise fosters creativity. Coffee-houses usually have a background noise level of around 70 decibels (dB). The paper’s authors found that a lower volume of noise helped with laser-focused concentration, but also helped strait-jacket the mind into a single way of thinking, one that blocked the abstract creation of new ideas from fragments of old ones.
This goes by the excitingly sciencey name of “processing disfluency“.
When your thoughts are “fluent,” they are bent solely on the task at hand, and they blot the rest of the world out – including everything else you’re thinking about. But what background noise of the 70 dB variety seems to do is tug gently at your arm, like a small child trying to get your attention: “Hey. Hey. Hey.”
It’s just enough of a distraction that it keeps you from sinking too far into what you’re doing, so you’re bouncing round near the surface of all your ideas, within grabbing-distance of other ideas in your head. And since your mind is jittery from the caffeine in your beverage, your brain is restless – and starts to play “Hey, Does This Idea Fit With That Idea?”
It’s a fun theory – and there may be some truth in it. Here’s author Steven Johnson on how good ideas are formed according to modern neuroscience, in which he explains that most “good ideas” are really a happy marriage of two half-baked notions that happened to collide in a mutually complimentary way.
Bringing all these ideas together:
- the background noise of a coffee shop may help keep your mind in a state where it can connect random thoughts to one another in an abstract, playful way…
- the best ideas, the truly brilliant ones, happen because of collisions between sorta-OK-ish ideas, when your brain is in just the right mood to bang them together to see what happens…
- coffee houses are places where hyper-caffeinated thoughts are always leaping out of people’s mouths, and that’s a great environment if your half-ideas need a little help from someone else’s half-idea…
- coffee is great and you should drink gallons of it! (Okay okay, that’s just my opinion.)
So wherever you’re travelling this year, make some quality-time for sitting in the back of a cafe, letting your thoughts drift with a notebook to hand. That could be the place you have that idea that changes everything…
Wheel & Anchor set out to explore the captivating contrasts of Japan, where timeless traditions coexist with cutting-edge modernity. From the vibrant energy of Tokyo’s towering skyline to the tranquil beauty of Kanazawa’s Kenrokuen Garden, Japan’s diversity never ceases to amaze. Our May and September departures are fully booked, but if you’re craving more adventures in the East, get in touch with us for details on upcoming trips to Japan.