Lately, the most stressful thing in my life is a thing called “quiet.” This feels like a new problem, brought on, I believe, by my addiction to the Internet. When I’m under-stimulated, such as in a quiet environment with no access to electronics, I become instantly stressed. It feels like a painful sort of loneliness.

Luckily there isn’t much quietness around. Life is mostly noisy. I’m in my office now, 5:39 a.m., and I can hear a low hum of freeway traffic in the distance, an occasional train, and some industrial moans from the rock quarry across the valley. It’s just the right amount of noise to keep the quiet away without distracting me.

A study showed that people are more creative when there’s human background noise, such as in a coffee shop. My experience agrees with the study. Back when I owned a restaurant, I brought my laptop to lunch one day to do some work in a booth while my order was being prepared. Ideas came to me so rapidly that I ended up writing an entire book while sitting in the restaurant during lunch rushes. The trick with background noise is that you don’t want to hear individual conversations. You want a muffled hum of activity.

As I was writing this post, I stumbled upon the very product I was about to suggest: a background coffee shop sound loop. It’s here at Coffitivity. http://coffitivity.com/ I’m playing it now. It’s too early to say whether it helps my creativity, but I like the idea.

A lot of people play music while working or doing homework. The studies are mixed on that strategy. Apparently music doesn’t hurt performance too much when you’re doing math but it kills you when you’re trying to do anything with language. I think people play music while working in part because they like music and in part because quiet is disturbing.

I know many of you will weigh in with a comment saying music helps your productivity. You’re probably wrong about that, unless you’re doing manual labor or math. If music made you more productive, companies would require employees to listen to music while working. I don’t think the science supports music as a productivity booster in most situations. However, it might make you happy, and less stressed, and that can be reason enough.

I just turned off the Coffitivity.com background sound. I found it distracting. But that might be because I was too interested in whether it was working. I might give it another go later.

My question for the day: Does quietness stress you or relax you? And if it stresses you, were you always that way, or have you become addicted to continuous stimulation?

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Scott Adams

Creator of Dilbert

Co-founder of CalendarTree.com

Author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big