With your smartphone right at your fingertips, it’s pretty easy nowadays to kill time. But a new study suggests you’re missing out by not unplugging and just thinking.
According to experiments conducted by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, people really like just doing nothing but getting inside their own heads.
In fact, the 250 test subjects consistently underestimated how much they thought they’d like thinking, according to the study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
The test subjects were asked to just sit by themselves in 20-minute sessions in various locations — in a conference room, a darkened tent or just sitting by themselves in a chair.
The subjects were polled both before and after the experiments; they were asked if they’d rather use their phone to browse news headlines or just sit and think — and in nearly every case, they preferred leaving their phones behind and taking their brains out for a stroll.
Some even noted that free time helped them solve problems and gave meaning to their lives.
“On the bus on your way to work, you can check your phone rather than immerse yourself in your internal free-floating thinking, because you predict thinking will be boring,” says study co-author Kou Murayama,oftheUniversity of Tübingen.
“However, if that prediction is inaccurate, you are missing an opportunity to positively engage yourself without relying on such stimulation.”