Why you’re more creative in coffee shops

As we sit in a coffee shop and open our laptops (often in our favourite chair) the visual stimulation around us, the decoration, walls, windows, makes us delve into convergent creative thinking, the one that requires us to think out of the box.

The people that come and go, the sunlight that changes, and the food that is being eaten around creates micro-stimuli that helps us work differently and efficiently than at home where we may feel stuck and bored.

Meeting at a bar or a coffee shop creates an air of informality that is missing from the board room. This helps people gather, collaborate, brainstorm and do stuff that isn’t possible in a Zoom meeting.

The Open-Office culture, which took speed more than a decade ago, helped people collaborate by providing the same setting as a cafe would, though in many cases it turned into added levels of distraction.

Recent research on remote workers reports that about 80 percent want to continue working from home, and not in co-working spaces or cafes.

The lure of the coffee shop is not going away even after this temporary jolt, as people who are working from home can benefit from the change of scenery and the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee that is hard to find at home.