QCOSTARICA — When thinking about the benefits of silence for the economy in Costa Rica, it is no coincidence that we like five-star hotels. Nor is it a coincidence that we want to live in luxury homes located in places far from the stress of the city.
In addition to privacy and proximity to nature, this is evidence that tranquility and silence also have an invaluable price.
It is clear that people pay to be surrounded by greenery. But people also pay to not be surrounded by noise. The importance of silence for the economy requires more attention.
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Reasons like these tell us why we enjoy nature and noise-free places. And they also suggest why we should live with more sound tranquility in our cities, workplaces, and neighborhoods and homes. This is true today—more than ever, when more and more people work from home.
In another article we explored the importance of silence for health. Here we summarize how science and experience confirm the advantages of silence for our pockets and economic well-being.
Specifically, we are going to delve into at least four benefits of silence for the economy: Silence…
- Increases productivity at work
- Leads to better decisions at personal and business level
- Increases the value of properties
- Attracts nature and its sounds to our surroundings
These and other reasons could well lead us to call silence “invisible gold.” Let’s see why, by exploring these four benefits of living with more peace and less noise in more depth.
Silence Increases Productivity at Work
Nothing is more certain than the absence of distractions to ensure that an engineer designs a bridge safely and accurately. The same can be said for a doctor to transplant a kidney or a heart without making mistakes. Errors caused by the distraction generated by noise and din can be very costly. On the contrary, spaces of silence are required to be able to concentrate and perform with professionalism.
Furthermore, if we reflect on our common experience, it is easy to realize how cultivating spaces of silence and rest increases our productivity and improves our performance. We perform better when we are relaxed. “Rest is productive,” as business magazines such as Harvard Business Review have pointed out.
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It is no coincidence that Google headquarters, for example, has a “quiet room.” There, employees have a view of the water. They can even get a massage to dream about the next big Internet app. Other studies highlight how incorporating 5-6 minute reading practices in quiet spaces can reduce stress by up to 60-70 percent.
For reasons such as these, a trend has emerged in the work world toward incorporating all kinds of transcendental practices. These include being mindful (“mindfulness”); incorporating modalities of so-called “business spirituality” (“business spirituality”); finding companies designing work spaces focused on the holistic well-being of their employees (“workplace wellbeing”); allocating physical places for yoga and meditation within companies. Harvard Business Review itself has created the magazine “Ascend” with weekly reflections focused on these topics — including the power of silence.
Both business psychologists and human talent managers have recognized that human beings are not machines, but complex biological beings. And, as such, we do our best when we are relaxed and in environments that do not obstruct the flow of new ideas. That is why a multinational like 3M gives its employees 15% of their time to wander and be creative in personal projects. (This is something that Google has also imitated.) Silence, rest, and productivity go hand in hand.
And silence and rest should not be confused with laziness or wasting time. According to Oxford graduate Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, silence enhances creativity. It also stimulates new ideas, and leads us to daydreaming. Allowing the mind to wander, leaving the brain free from invasive noise, frees us to weave fresh connections in our neurons. And so new ideas emerge ‘unintentionally’.
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Studies and science today confirm what tradition and experience have always suggested: rest is creative and so is its twin brother, silence. Stopping sometimes allows us to move forward and not hear noise, in fact, it allows us to hear everything.
It Leads to Better Decision Making
For some reason, the best business meetings take place in places in the countryside or mountains, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. For the same reason, we seek out quiet spaces when we need to make important personal decisions. And, for the same reason, gurus, sages, and prophets throughout the centuries have sought out solitary places in nature to be enlightened.
Scientific studies have shown the reason behind these practices. On the one hand, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota has prescribed meditation as good medicine. Its doctors have found that silent meditation reduces levels of stress, anxiety, anger, and depression.
On the other hand, according to a report from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, quiet contexts also make us smarter.
“Research suggests,” this report concludes, “that meditation modulates brain activities associated with cognitive control, emotion regulation, and empathy, and leads to better non-social and social decision making.”
Similarly, several behavioral and brain MRI studies show that those who meditate for a long time show changes in the physical makeup of their brains. These changes include increased cortical thickness in the prefrontal cortex, increased concentration of gray matter in the right insula, and increased gray matter density in the brain stem. Literally, meditation and silence change and improve the physical makeup of the mind.
Similar evidence from cognitive studies also points to how meditation in quiet environments improves attention and memory capacity. And meditation also helps reduce worry, on the one hand, and increase happiness and altruism, on the other. Silence is healthy food for the mind and soul.
Our ‘neuroplastic’ minds change and are able to adapt to different behaviors depending on the stimuli we receive. Literally, the mind shrinks and becomes stressed by negative and antisocial behaviors (and by negative stimuli such as noise). In contrast, the mind grows and is stimulated by more noble and social behaviors and the presence of correct stimuli—in this case, by spending more time exposed to silence.
All of this leads to the question: What economy can emerge with people stressed and embittered by noise, leading them to make bad decisions? Or is it rather that a healthy economy also requires healthy minds? Scientific evidence and personal experience point to a resounding “yes.”
Increased Property Value
An urban center like New York City—the city “that never sleeps”—has established the following as a Code of Law:
“It is the public policy of the city that each person is entitled to ambient sound levels that are not detrimental to the life, health, and enjoyment of his or her property. Therefore, it is declared that the creation or maintenance of excessive and unreasonable noise within the city affects and is a threat to the public health, comfort, convenience, safety, welfare, and prosperity of the citizens.”
The reasons behind this declaration are explicit. But beyond the benefits already mentioned in this article and in related publications, this legislation is also based in part on the effect that noise has on property values. New Yorkers know that noise oxidizes invisible gold.
According to a study by the real estate magazine Realtor, although the value of a property is not always directly linked to the noise levels in which it is located, there is a correlation. For example, the study indicates that residential areas within a 3-kilometer radius of an airport are offered at 13 percent below homes in surrounding areas. Similarly, proximity to a railroad decreases the average price of a property by 12 or 13 percent. Proximity to a highway by 11 percent. Proximity to a busy street by 9 percent. (This effect can be confirmed by those who live near the train whistle in Costa Rica.)
Another study from the Journal of Real Estate Practice and Education, published in Research Gate, confirms similar findings. The value of a property decreases when the sound levels of vehicular traffic exceed 45 decibels. Also, the company Collateral Analytics states that noise “is among the most significant factors affecting the value of a residential property.” (This real estate price calculator provides estimates of the negative effect that decibels can have on the price of a property.)
While noise may represent a saving for those who rent or buy a property in a noisy area, in the long run the savings take their toll. Cheap always ends up being expensive. Not only do municipalities collect less funds to improve our neighborhoods and cities. Even more seriously, those of us who live in places affected by noise end up paying the price in the long run, to the detriment of our health. And also to the detriment of our quality of sleep. (There is much to be said about the importance of silence for health.)
Bring Nature and its Sounds to Our Neighborhoods
Last but not least, silence benefits and protects the health of nature and the ecosystem. Sadly, this is not true in our cities in Costa Rica. As a tourist once said when visiting San José, “you live in a very noisy city.”
In addition to the smoke, bad smells, and commercial signs that disfigure the face of a city, noise also scares away local tourism—tourism being of course an important source of income in the country.
What would become of Costa Rica if we better protected the invisible gold? What would make those who visit our forests and mountains decide to visit the cities with the same enthusiasm? Sleeping in silent hotels. Walking on sidewalks without loudspeakers and without scandals. Enjoying the silence in the parks… what if we made silence and natural sounds something essential and non-negotiable in neighborhoods and cities? That is why engineer Zeidy Marín from the College of Engineers and Technologists points out how noise in Costa Rica continues to be a “contradiction for the economy.”
That said, we also have to go further. We cannot simply evaluate the advantages of silence for the economy, and nothing more. Beyond any benefits that more trees, birds, crickets, butterflies and pollinators bring to our contexts, plants and animals are also worthy of living in silent habitats. They need and deserve silence just like us humans do.
According to National Geographic: “Animals use sound for a variety of reasons, including to navigate, find food, attract mates and avoid predators. Noise pollution makes it difficult for them to perform these tasks, which affects their ability to survive.”
For its part, the National Science Foundation maintains how noise pollution affects the late nesting of bird species. Birds turn out to be more sensitive to light and sound than humans. Noise affects their migration and mating patterns. (This may sound trivial, but we should reconsider whether we recognize the indispensable role of birds and insects in seed dispersal, forest health, the stability of biological corridors, and pollination. Not to mention tourism and our personal well-being.) Who in their right mind would rather wake up to the snoring of mufflers than the singing of birds?
Similarly, the Wildlife Society points out how even insects require living in silence. In fact, insects deserve our respect and gratitude. They are the ones who “rule the world,” as Jesse Barber, associate professor at Boise State University in Idaho, recognizes. Or as Albert Einstein put it, “without bees there is no civilization.”
One of Professor Barber’s studies comparing noisy and quiet areas showed, for example, that quiet areas harbor 25 to 95 percent more crickets than areas polluted by noise. (This may have been caused by other factors, including the absence of birds that feed on these insects, causing the insect population to grow more than normal.)
This consideration may seem esoteric or irrelevant… but in fact it brings us closer to the root of why there is so much noise in our neighborhoods and cities. And the root of the problem is that we have turned technology into a god. We have given carte blanche to our technological devices to do and undo as they please. But was technology created for humans and not humans for technology?
The way of living life that predominates today could ignore calls for attention like these. (Today we live focused on technology, on entertainment, and on us humans as the center of all things.)
But we have to ask ourselves if the concrete jungles and digital bubbles in which we live immersed do us the same good as being surrounded by other non-human organisms and all kinds of vegetation. Again, who in their right mind can oppose sleeping to more crickets and waking up to the singing of birds? As a famous former president of Costa Rica said, “why tractors without violins?”
It is not for nothing that the Covid-19 pandemic saw an exodus of people to rural and country areas. And, as we pointed out at the beginning, it is not for nothing that luxury homes are found in places surrounded by greenery and silence, the invisible gold.
Science and experience show that we urgently need to welcome nature back to our cities. And it is also time to bring the silence that is experienced in the suburbs to our neighborhoods.
To summarize, silence increases productivity at work; it leads us to make better decisions in politics, in the family, in business. Silence increases the value of properties; silence attracts nature and its sounds to our daily environments.
It is time to recognize noise as a masked cancer. Today is when we must honor silence as the “invisible gold” that it really is. It is time to transform our businesses, neighborhoods and cities into luxurious spaces where silence and peace are within everyone’s reach.
The article is translated and adapted from the original article “Beneficios del Silencio para la Economía en Costa Rica” by Eduardo Sasso at Costa Rica Sin Ruido. Read the original, in Spanish, here.
Header image by Costa Rican photographer @lulitafotocr
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