People in this digital age always want to do things, and they are supposed to be busy, even in their free time people are constantly looking to stay busy, productive and, at least partly to blame, social networks push us to share every aspect of our lives, from our social life to our hobbies and our personal time.
Even moments of genuine introspection end up published on some platform waiting for likes and validation, but there is a famous study carried out with university students in which they isolated each person in a small room with white walls for 15 minutes.
In the room there were no distractions, nothing to observe or read and obviously they were not allowed to use their phones during the experiment, this forced them to be alone with their minds for those long 15 minutes. At the end they were asked if the experience had been pleasant and half of the students said no.
As they were university students, people with a similar age and context, another experiment was carried out, including people from the neighboring community of different ages, to rule out that the result was a generational phenomenon. The experiment was extended with people from the community from 18 years of age to 77. 42 people spent 15 minutes in the room, but this time they had electrodes on their ankle that would give them an electric shock if they pressed a button.
The shock was strong enough to be uncomfortable, everyone already knew what the shock felt like and had assured that if they had to choose between receiving the shock or paying $5, they all responded that they would rather pay. Obviously people who like receiving electric shocks were left out of this study. Well, 18 of those 42 people pressed the button to give themselves the shock during the experiment.
Between getting bored or receiving the shock, they preferred the shock, as an extra picturesque fact, a man pressed the button 190 times, so they left him out of the study because it was obviously an anomaly and they did not want it to affect the statistics, let's analyze that, this man hit himself every 4.7 seconds during the 15 minutes. When asked what's up with that, he responded, "Some farts."
What does this study tell us? That a large number of people do not like to be doing nothing, being alone with their thoughts seems so uncomfortable to them that they prefer to have an unpleasant experience like an electric shock. Although it must also be clarified that although most people rated the 15 minutes of doing nothing negatively, there were people who enjoyed it and curiously, they are the people who had responded in a questionnaire prior to the study that they enjoy daydreaming.
And doing nothing does not necessarily mean leaving your mind blank, it can also simply be relaxing, thinking, imagining and those people who enjoy daydreaming have turned it into a tool.
Do you usually go to the bathroom with your phone? If so, I warn you that it is a terrible idea, because you will probably spend more time there than you need to do what you have to do and that is bad for circulation and for your tail. Many people do it and it is a clear sign that they do not like the experience of doing nothing apart from what they are doing in the toilet, they get bored and if for some reason they left their phone outside the bathroom, they look to read what is at hand, it has happened to me.
That's why I now know that my shampoo has blue number one and yellow number six. Why do we read shampoo ingredients? We need to know the ingredients or the address of the company that manufactures it, I don't think so, we do it because not doing it seems boring to us and boredom seems unpleasant to many people.
I believed that my ability not to get bored was a very good thing, when I heard that someone was bored, I thought how lucky I am to be busy all the time. Making these publications takes me a lot of time, but apart from my work, I try to do sports, which is very good for the mind and body, and I highly recommend it, but that leaves me with very little time for a social life and much less free time, to the point that I have abandoned activities that I really liked to do such as painting, playing musical instruments or reading.
I said, "It is impossible for me to be bored because even if I found free time to do nothing, I have many things I would like to do." I genuinely believed that I was immune to boredom and that that was a good thing, and that's probably not the case. If we are constantly avoiding those downtimes, we are missing something very important.
Boredom is necessary. The state of boredom is a testing ground for our imagination and creativity. It would seem that when we are bored our brain is in standby mode because there are not as many stimuli to process as when we are busy, but this is not the case, the general activity of the brain is reduced by 5%, but it is concentrated in specific regions dedicated to autobiographical memory, empathy and the fabrication of hypothetical scenarios, that is, imagination, so get bored.
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