How much does ambient sound affect us and what effects does it have on our health or work performance? How can we learn to listen better to our surroundings? And how should we talk so that others would like to listen to us? These are topics Julian Treasure, British "sound consultant" and author of Sound Business, has been dealing with for some time. His company Sound Agency advises businesses around the world how to work effectively with sound. Treasure presented more on these topics in his TED talks from 2009 to 2014.
How sound affects us
The TED talk The 4 ways sound affects us (2009) explains how ambient sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively and behaviourally. Treasure offers practical examples and guidance for the commercial use of sound: "First, make it congruent, pointing in the same direction as your visual communication. That increases impact by over 1,100 percent. If your sound is pointing the opposite direction, incongruent, you reduce impact by 86 percent. Secondly, make it appropriate to the situation. Thirdly, make it valuable. Give people something with the sound. Don't just bombard them with stuff. And, finally, test and test it again."
How to keep your hearing healthy
The second TED talk, Shh! Sound health in 8 steps (2010), begins with how ambient noise is harmful to us. Treasure advises us to use quality hearing protection, to buy only quality headphones or to leave if we consider the sound in a specific place unpleasant. Furthermore, we find out why we should learn to sing or play a musical instrument. "The voice is the instrument we all play, and yet how many of us are trained in using our voice?" says Treasure.
How to listen better
"We spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we're not very good at it." This is how Treasure introduces his TED talk 5 ways to listen better (2011). He then presents five simple exercises to improve our listening. He starts wiith three minutes of silence and continues by filtering what we hear. Finally, we learn an acronym for the basics of good listening and communication.
How to speak better
The latest Julian Treasure TED talk is called How to speak so that people want to listen (2014). It teaches us what communication habits we should get rid of: these include gossip, judging others, complaining, excuses or dogmatism. Instead, we should focus on the four cornerstones of a successful speech: honesty, authenticity, integrity and love in the sense of wishing good things to others. We can learn how to work with different voice instruments and maybe to achieve "a world that does sound beautiful, and one where understanding would be the norm."
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