Being Busy Makes Us Happier, But Our Instinct Is To Do Nothing

BPS Research does it again. Check-out this study.  The upshot:

Forced to wait for fifteen minutes at the airport luggage carousel leaves many of us miserable and irritated. Yet if we'd spent the same waiting time walking to the carousel we'd be far happier. That's according to Christopher Hsee and colleagues, who say we're happier when busy but that unfortunately our instinct is for idleness. Unless we have a reason for being active we choose to do nothing - an evolutionary vestige that ensures we conserve energy.

This research explains nearly 100% of my emotions, actions, and predilections!  And it is very consistent with what every parent knows: When the kids are complaining about being bored or are sitting around being grumpy, get them to do SOMETHING no matter how trivial or inane it may seem.  This may apply to bosses too, but I have to think about it.

The citation is: Hsee CK, Yang AX, & Wang L (2010). Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21(7). 

Comments

[Ellie]

I think this is a real problem if you're in a a job that leaves you slightly underemployed. Every time you find yourself with a few idle moments, you instinctively reset to energy saving mode and that makes starting up again when new work comes in much harder.

I really hate the practice of "make work", where bosses give unavoidably underemployed staff some menial and degrading pointless task just so they aren't sat around looking bored, but perhaps there is some logic in that madness after all?

All the same, I can't help thinking there are better uses for that time, some sort of team social activity like a day off and a picnic, for example, would ease the problem of idleness by keeping people occupied, whilst at the same time giving a reward for past good work and cementing the social bonds that keep a good team working well together.

There's also research that I read somewhere a long time ago (possibly here in fact), that showed rewards can help increase productivity but, counter-intuitively, only if they come as a surprise and after the task has been completed once. If you use the available free time for something like that, then you are killing two birds with one stone.