Library writing tables or coffee shop counters: which wins for focus?

I spent Saturday at the downtown library and noticed half the writers were hunched over tiny cafe tables while the big wooden desks sat empty. Is it the background noise that helps creativity, or is the library vibe just too quiet for some of you to get words down?

3 comments

3 Comments

davidshah11d ago

My buddy Mark tried the library desks last month and brought his whole laptop setup. He sat at one of those big oak tables for two hours and wrote maybe three sentences. He said the silence was so loud it made his brain freeze up. He packed up and went to a noisy coffee shop instead and got like 800 words done in an hour.

drews5510d ago

Three sentences in two hours? That is brutal, I can't even imagine. The silence thing is real though, sometimes it feels like the quiet is poking you in the brain. I get why coffee shop noise works for your friend, it's like a buffer for all the random thoughts. Maybe the library just has that vibe where every little mistake feels ten times louder. I'd probably give up and nap on the table after forty minutes of that.

shane_morgan11d ago

Does anyone else find that their brain treats silence like a challenge to start overthinking everything they just typed? I'm with @davidshah on this one, coffee shop chaos is basically my word count cheat code.