Its seldom our worlds are fully silentso seldom that complete silence feels shocking.

This post originally appeared on theZapier blog.

We welcome sound into our lives sometimes to our detriment.

Silence, perhaps, is our most under-appreciated productivity tool.

So lets talk about noise.

Two types of everyday noise can be bad for us.

One is excessive noise, such as the prolonged loud noise of being near an airport.

The former may seem worse, but both can be detrimental to our productivityand sanity.

Other studies havefound linksbetween noise and sleep loss, heart disease, and tinnitus.

People who live in consistently noisy places also commonly haveelevated levels of stress hormones.

Quite ahead of her time, Florence Nightingalereportedly considered quiet an important part of patient care.

Concerningly, modern hospitals have become far noisier than they were in the past.

Such a noisy environment can evencause doctors to confuse similar-sounding drugsa potentially deadly mistake resulting from excess noise.

How does general daily noise affect us?

For most of us, daily noise tends to involve interruptions and distractions.

If you work in an open plan office, youll probably find this is an even greater problem.

According to Campbell:

In most workplaces, focused work is left to chance.

If nobodys called you for a meeting that day, you might get an afternoon to yourself.

Collaboration is important, but so is focusparticularly for those of us who are creators.

For knowledge workers, our work happens between us and the blank page.

Disruptions and noise only interrupt that process.

Heres why you should replace noise with silence.

But silence actually produced one of the most interesting effects.

It seems the effect of silence is heightened by contrasting it with noise.

Complete silence, then, allows the brain to return to its normal default state and continue its processing.

Our brains ongoing background processing seems to be responsible for the sounds our brain makes, too.

In the absence of sound, the brain often tends to produce internal representations of sound, says Zatorre.

In other words, silencecouldmake you a little smarter.

Put simply, these skills help us achieve success.

The other best times in my life were with people.

But its interesting how many highlights were just sitting in a room, in that wonderful creative flow.

Free from the chatter of the world.

For Sivers, spending time unplugged, disconnected, and in silence is where he feels most creative.

Silence is a great canvas for your thoughts, says Sivers.

At design agency Navy, the struggle to get work done in the office was real.

To fix this, the Navy teaminstituted daily quiet time.

Before lunch at Navy HQ, the team agrees to be completely silent.

Not just in person, but online, too.

No emails, no slack, no tapping colleagues on the shoulder, and especially no meetings.

They even put their phones away in drawers so they can really focus.

Work has become the best place to get things done, says Campbell.

You cant always escape noise.

And sometimes, youll want to work from a noisy coffeeshop or attend a concert.

But when you’ve got the option to, its worth choosing silence.

Perhaps you’re able to start by adding a period of strict quiet time in your workplace.

Strive to find small pockets of silence for yourself during the day, and savor the silence.

Image byAntonis Spiridakisvia Unsplash.