“Il dolce far niente”—“the sweetness of doing nothing.” This Italian phrase sounds foreign to American ears in more ways than one. What could be sweet about doing nothing when you have a to-do list that’s bigger than a blue whale? Not only would doing nothing detain us from getting stuff done, but stretches of inactivity would also require us to be unstimulated, unengaged, and bored.
And that means confronting our thoughts with no dopamine hits to distract us—a thought that, evidently, terrifies us: a psychology study found that 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women would rather give themselves a small electric shock than sit alone with their thoughts for just 15 minutes.
