Sound and Productivity

The way sound affects us in our day to day lives, consciously or unconsciously, is quite fascinating. Just concentrate for a second on the environment around you and notice everything that you hear at this moment. Surprisingly you would come up with more variety of sounds than you would have imagined. That may be colleagues talking two cubes over, a cell-phone going off in the distance, shoes stumping on the floor, door closing with a shudder, neighbor typing frantically on the laptop keyboard as if he were in a race to prove his dexterity or it could be some white noise continuously humming in the background--say from AC source or a heater or a fan.

Notice that I have not even used the word music in the above examples and it is silly that whenever we use word sound, the first thing that comes to our mind is Music. Julian Treasure gave a talk at TED, where he talks about how sound affects us in our daily lives. Open Space offices reduces our productivity by 66%, says Mr. Treasure. Well, that explains quite a bit of bay area culture and its love for open cube spaces.

Most often than not, the sounds that we hear are unpleasant and disturbing. On the other hand, do you know why ocean waves are so soothing to us ? Sounds produced by ocean waves are 12 cycles per minute apart, exactly same frequency as breathing when we are sleeping.