I’m sure the majority of my readership will look at this headline, nod their head, and move on with their day. Asynchronous communication, even from the outside looking in, appears to have enormous advantages. But you try telling that to different generations of workers. There’s a certain instant gratification element baked into more-traditional office environments that’s very difficult to overcome. You can chip away at it, slowly but surely, but this isn’t a change you can make overnight.

But putting on your noise-cancelling headphones to toil away at your desk is actually different than doing the same surrounded by other people buzzing over your shoulder. There are many ways coffee shops trigger our creativity in a way offices and homes don’t. Research shows that the stimuli in these places make them effective environments to work; the combination of noise, casual crowds and visual variety can give us just the right amount of distraction to help us be our sharpest and most creative. (So, no, it’s not just that double espresso.)

This is fascinating — I have these types of distractions at the office and they are totally, 100%, unequivocally distractions.