Activating silence grows your brain!

We often take the most valuable things for granted, such as air, water, time, freedom, and silence. At Silen, we know that silence can offer an ultimate feeling of freedom – freedom to focus, create, or simply enjoy quiet time and rest. Science shows that it goes even beyond that, as silence has a profound impact on our brain.

23% increase in productivity

The idea of having quiet time in the workplace isn’t just a theory, it’s actually working wonders in real life. Take Milanote, a company that has built a tool designed for project planning and creative work. They started making time for quiet in their daily routine and found out it boosted their productivity by a whopping 23%. During these quiet hours, everyone is encouraged to keep it down – no chatting, answering phones, emailing, or having meetings. This setup really makes the morning the perfect time for getting down to serious work, saving the afternoon for group stuff and meetings. What’s even cooler is that people actually started looking forward to coming to the office for focused work. The office has turned into the go-to spot for getting things done.

Silence and the brain

Silence is like a secret weapon for doing great at work. Science backs this up, showing how silence is good for your brain. Studies have found that quiet can help grow new cells in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that handles memory and learning. In a study from 2013 by Imke Kirste, a biologist at Duke University, looked at how different sounds and silence affects the brains of the mice. Turns out, when the mice got two hours of silence a day, they ended up growing new cells in their hippocampus that turned into working neurons. So, in this sense, chilling in silence can literally grow your brain. It means taking some quiet time can not just make you more productive now but also smarter and more creative over time.

Beyond productivity

Silence does more than just bump up productivity. In a world where mental health issues are more common, having a quiet spot can really help with feeling good. Silence helps chill you out by dropping your cortisol (that’s the stress hormone) and adrenaline levels, acting like a natural chill pill for stress. In 2006, physician Luciano Bernardi looked into how different kinds of music affected people’s bodies. They analyzed how people’s blood pressure, heart rate, and brain circulation changed with different tunes. The most important discovery happened during the unexpected quiet moments between songs – the silent breaks were more calming than any type of relaxing music. Our brains don’t need much to unwind – just a bit of quiet every day.

Implementing silence

Bringing more quiet into our workday needs a bit of thought and some simple rules. Here are a few easy ways to create a calmer, more focused environment:

Silent zones: Set up quiet areas like privacy rooms and meeting pods where you can always work in peace, sparking your focus and creativity.

Silence hours: Pick specific times during the day when non-essential communication is minimized, allowing everyone to get their work done without interruptions.

Design for silence: Take advantage of smart office room dividers to design workspaces where noise is organically redirected from office areas dedicated to silence and focus.

Noise management policies: Encourage the use of noise-canceling headphones and decide together in a team how loud our shared spaces should be.

Mindfulness and meditation rooms: Provide spaces for mindfulness or just taking a breather to clear a head. Silen MindSpa was invented with exactly this in mind. 

Embracing silence in our workspaces isn’t just about reducing noise, it’s about unlocking a world of enhanced focus, creativity, and well-being. Let’s make space for silence, and watch as it grows our brain, transforms our work, and our collective spirit.

Authors
Martin Kull
Eva Maimre

References

https://medium.com/@oliebol/quiet-time-969ccc3416f8
https://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/blogs/articles/why-silence-is-good-for-your-brain