A team of researchers claims to have uncovered an interesting paradox: humans are happier when they’re busy, but we’re inclined towards idleness (“an evolutionary vestige that ensures we conserve energy.”) Christopher K. Hsee, Adelle X. Yang, and Liangyan Wang ran a series of experiments with college students and found that students were inclined towards idleness, but would seize even superficial opportunities to be busy. Furthermore, students who took the opportunity to do something with their downtime reported feeling happier after the experiment. In keeping with the times, the authors see an opportunity for government intervention: “Governments may increase the happiness of idle citizens by having them build bridges that are actually useless.” [%comments]
Are We Naturally Lazy?
TAGS: psychology
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yes, make work would very much lead to a great leap forward, and help us create a new man!
I disagree with the point about Governement intervention. By having people build bridges to nowhere wouldn’t make them happy. Dave Ramsey tells a story where teenage boys are paid a wage to dig a trench. Then they filled in the trench and asked the boys to come back the next day to dig again and they will be paid more. The next day only half came back, and they repeated the same process paying more each day, but the work was unproductive. The morale of the story is that work has to have meaning in order to do it. I agree people are much more happier when working or being productive. I also agree with Jane Mcgonigal when she talks about the popularity of gaming, because it is a relaxing activity, but it’s also productive. Check out her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
Bridges to nowhere? If we choose to go ‘civil duty’ with this: Wouldn’t it be great to see our municipalities create volunteer plans to leverage the pent up demand for activity; or make better use of the time that so many are willing to give for simple tasks?
Having seen Nashville and Franklin, TN come together when there was a common cause (after the recent flooding), through quasi-private organizations like Hands on Nashville – that gave all of something to do for each other – I’d love to see more of this social good applied day to day. Just break down the tasks far enough so that we can all help, right?
Maybe we could build pyramids?
In the History of the World:
NO ONE EVER DIED FROM HARD WORK.
Work hard all your life and live forever.
We may be entering the era of the lazy! Conservation of energy is the future it seems, so perhaps this old socially unacceptable genetic predisposition will come back into vogue soon.
I can only hope. I’m tired from all the ridicule for trying to save humanity by conserving energy…
Great study, by the way. It seems right on with my personal feelings and my observations. It looks right.
I recently had a conversation about this with a friend. Came up with this:
How long could you clean concrete stadium floors with a toothbrush for $20 an hour? $40/hr? $100/hr? $1000/hr?
I’m just a simple self-employed Unfrozen Caveman Computer Programmer.
Words like “downtime” frighten and confuse me. I don’t know. Because I’m a caveman — that’s the way I think.
There is one thing I DO know…I hope to experience this “downtime” as you call it before I sleep in the big box.