Creativity | Athens Java Hut

If you feel an extra jolt of creativity when you work in a coffee shop, it may not be from the caffeine: The recently launched website Coffitivity.com lets you stream java store ambient noise because they say it helps boost creative thinking.

Research from 2012 published in The Journal of Consumer Research shows that while a loud room is distracting—as you might expect—a room with a moderate level of a noise sparks creativity because it gets you thinking more abstractly than a quiet room.

Coffitivity’s team ran with those results—all the way to the coffee shop. According to their website, “the mix of calm and commotion in an environment like a coffee house is proven to be just what you need to get those creative juices flowing.” So now, with Coffitivity.com, you can bring the humdrum of the coffee shop to your own workplace. People are definitely jumping on the Coffitivity train: On March 4, the first day the site was live, it got a little more than 100 page views—but four months in, it now gets between 10,000 and 20,000 a day, says co-founder ACe Callwood.

Visit Coffitivity.com to see if it helps you do some out-of-the-box thinking—and consider adding some ambiance to your workspace in these other ways, all of which are proven to amp up your creativity:

Dim the lights
You should turn the room’s brightness down a notch when you want to do your best brainstorming: According to a recent German study, the dimness makes you feel less constricted. Easy enough!

photo: sukiyaki/Shutterstock

Bust out some blue
The color gets you thinking creatively, according to research out of the University of British Columbia. In the study, participants did work on a colored computer monitor. Find a cute blue desktop pattern and do the same, or stock your cube with some blue decorations.

photo: Evgeny Karandaev/Shutterstock

…And go green
In an eight month-long study, people got more innovative in a flora-filled office environment, compared to ones with sculptures or no décor. So go ahead and splurge on some nice flowers or plants—maybe you can even write it off as a business expense.

photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

top photo: Wavebreak Media/Thinkstock

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Low on inspiration? Lace up your hiking boots. Spending a few days in the outdoors may actually improve your reasoning and mental clarity, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers sent 56 people on four- to six-day wilderness trips sans smartphones, laptops, and other electronics. Twenty-four of the backpackers took a 10-question creativity test on the morning of their departure, while 32 others took the same test on the fourth morning of their trip. Those who took the test near the end of the trip scored 50 percent better than those who took the test at the beginning of the trip.

The reason for the brainy boost? Aside from the fact that nature can be pretty awe-inspiring, it’s all about letting the brain repair itself, which happens when you have fewer distractions (read: no Instagram updates to like), says David Strayer, Ph.D., co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “When you multi-task all day, you put a heavy load on the frontal lobe of the brain, which is associated with creativity and higher functioning,” Strayer says. Turning off your gadgets and focusing on the environment around you can restore and reset this area, allowing new thought to flow more freely, he says.

And although a four-day trip provided a significant boost in creativity test scores for Strayer’s volunteers, you don’t have to climb a mountain to get the same result, he says. “You probably won’t get the full effect of disengaging, but you can see measurable benefits with just a half hour to an hour walk through a nature preserve or a park,” he says. “Just leave the cell phone in your purse.”

Test Yourself
The standardized creativity tests that Strayer used included questions that listed a series of words and asked the pupil to choose a new word to link them together. An example would be: Envy, golf, beans. Can you think of a word that connects all three? Spoiler alert: The answer is “green.” Now, take some time to unplug, unwind, and enjoy your local park (try one of these 10 best trail runs in America) before trying your hand at this set: Athletes, web, rabbit. The answer is at the bottom of the post. Good luck!

Image: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

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Answer to the creativity test above: Foot.

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