New Study Highlights the Value of Solitude

In the digital age, it’s possible to be what author and professor Cal Newport calls “solitude deprived.”

“At the slightest hint of boredom, you can now surreptitiously glance at any number of apps or mobile-adapted websites that have been optimized to provide you an immediate and satisfying dose of input from other minds. It’s now possible to completely banish solitude from your life." 

A new study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology highlights the importance of being alone with your thoughts. Psychologists studied a group of more than 250 university students and asked them to sit and wait in a quiet room without doing anything. Across six experiments, they consistently found that participants’ predicted enjoyment and engagement for the waiting task were significantly less than what they actually experienced.

This underappreciation of “just thinking” also led participants to proactively avoid the waiting task in favor of distraction provided by technology (i.e., Internet news-checking on a smartphone), despite their experiences not being statistically different. These results suggest an inherent difficulty in accurately appreciating how engaging just thinking can be, and could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination in their daily lives.

The paper also reports benefits to losing yourself in thought, including improved problem solving, increased creativity, enhanced imagination, and a better sense of self-worth.

Next time you have a moment of solitude—take it! The distractions can wait.