To Do Better Work, Change Your Environment
How to find your ideal space for focus, collaboration, or creativity
On the first day of his new job at Pittsburgh Municipal Hospital, Jonas Salk was introduced to his office: a basement laboratory, 40 by 40 feet, next to a morgue.
According to reports, the researcher would put in 16-hour days — even on weekends — to work on a polio vaccine. But years after he started, he found himself at a dead end. In his exhaustion, Salk retreated to the monastery at the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi in Italy, a magnificent structure permeated by natural light. That’s where the breakthrough happened. Salk would go on to develop the first successful vaccine against the crippling disease, and become one of the most venerated medical scientists of the century. For the rest of his life, he would insist that something about being in the monastery helped clear his obstructed mind.
Psychological research may help explain Salk’s mental shift. Perhaps the beauty of the monastery put him in a state of awe, allowing him to regain perspective. Or maybe as his brain was processing the new environment, it made a leap in solving the problem he had been stuck on.
You may not be able to pick up and go to a 13th-century Italian sanctuary whenever you hit a mental block, but…
