We live in a society today where it’s too easy to reach out for a mobile device to preoccupy ourselves with and as a result we don’t get enough time to just be with our thoughts. For one reason or another, being left alone to our thoughts may seem to be an uncomfortable situation leading to our habits of constantly having to find something entertain ourselves or lose our minds in. However, recent study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General found that being with our thoughts can be more enjoyable than we think.
For their study, researchers recruited a total of 259 participants of whom went through a series of six experiments that compared people’s assumption of how much they would enjoy just sitting and thinking versus how much they actually enjoyed sitting and thinking.
Across the board, under various situations such as sitting in a conference room to a dark quiet room, from three minutes to twenty minutes, overall people actually enjoyed being alone with their thoughts more than they predicted they would.
In one specific experiment, they found the group where participants that were left to think enjoyed the experience more than the group assigned to check the news.
“It’s now extremely easy to ‘kill time.’ 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. However, if that prediction is inaccurate, you are missing an opportunity to positively engage yourself without relying on such stimulation,” said author Kou Murayama.
So take out the earphones and put away the mobile device, and let yourself experience your inner experience as well as what is happening around you mindfully as it is. Prior studies have shown that letting people just be with their thoughts enhances problem solving, boosts creativity, and may even help people answer the deeper questions of life.
It is of note that the authors did not focus on whether or not letting thoughts wander and thinking in of itself to be enjoyable, rather the study focused on whether or not thinking was predictably more enjoyable than the participants thought it was going to be.
A Hatano et al. Thinking about thinking: people underestimate how enjoyable and engaging just waiting is. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001255
