I write for a living, so I spend a lot of time trying to figure out a solution to a creative problem. A headline won’t work. The final third of a script doesn’t resolve the way I need it to. I’ve started calling these moments mental cramps. And for years, my reaction to these issues was the same: reaching for my phone.

But it turns out I’m not alone. Researchers started to look into this behavior back in 2014. A team led by University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson published a series of 11 studies in “Science” that asked people to sit alone in a bare room for six to 15 minutes, with nothing to do but think.

Needless to say, the participants didn’t enjoy their experience. In one version, participants were free to press a button that would administer a mild electric shock to themselves – one that they’d earlier said they would pay to avoid. Twelve of the 18 men pressed the button at least one time. About one quarter of the women pressed it. One man pressed the shock button 190 times.

The conclusion is that Wilson’s participants would rather feel something, even an unpleasant sensation, than feel nothing at all. Most of us never have to make that trade. We carry an entertainment box in our pockets almost all the time. Boredom is almost never a threat.

But constantly evading boredom has a cost. Dr. Shahram Heshmat, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Springfield, argued in “Psychology Today” that the quick fixes we use to get away from boredom make us worse off in the long run. He suggests that they cause a vicious cycle similar to addiction. The more stimulation we feed to our restlessness, the more it requires of us over time.

Ultimately, we can’t completely avoid boredom. We all get bored at some point. And no app or hobby will change that. But we can change what we do when boredom shows up.

My suggestion is to do nothing. Name it. Notice it. And don’t try to get away from it right away. This is easier said than done.

For me, boredom has a texture. It initially starts as restlessness, then it devolves into frustration. But the problem is that there’s no object of frustration. And that’s when I pull out my phone and start scrolling.

None of this is new. Blaise Pascal wrote in his “Pensées” that “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.” The problem of boredom is an old one. In some ways, it seems that we’re afraid of ourselves, afraid to be alone with our own thoughts.

I wish I could say that when a mental cramp hits, I leave my phone in another room. But that’s not true. Even in writing this piece, I’ve picked up my phone twice. It happens before I even realize what I’m doing. I understand this about myself. I know all the warning signs. And I still fall victim to it.

I used to treat boredom as a problem to solve quickly. But now I try to think of it more like the weather. And that’s precisely what it is: the weather of the mind. The challenge is to notice when the storm of boredom sweeps through, refusing to flee the moment it poses a threat.

So, here’s where I’ve landed. The next time a headline won’t come or a script stalls in its final act, I’m going to try to sit in it a little longer. Not forever. Maybe five minutes. Granted, that’s less than Wilson asked of his participants, and my desk doesn’t come adorned with a shock button.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Greg Westfall, CC BY 2.0