People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts
I read the article because I&#x27;m quite strongly the opposite of the &quot;most people&quot; study population and I&#x27;ve been thinking about this trait more lately. Sadly, TFA doesn&#x27;t address the opposite case very deeply...<p>&gt; <i>Some people seem to enjoy thinking more than others. For instance, the study found that people who are more agreeable or cooperative were more likely to enjoy themselves when they were told to think about anything. Individuals who admitted that their daydreams normally leave them happy fared better, too.</i><p>I generally like &quot;being alone with my thoughts&quot; but not exclusively so. For a few years I had a multi-hour, once a week-ish commute and on such a long drive alone, I would occasionally listen to podcasts but my content bar is high, it needs to be one of the few podcasts I really enjoy AND even then an episode on a topic I&#x27;m especially interested in. Even with my favorite podcast, nowhere near half the episodes make my interest-level cut. The reason is that the alternate content needs to be more appealing to me than thinking my own thoughts. I find pure thinking to be quite interesting, engaging and even sometimes downright entertaining. It can also be productive as I&#x27;ll often have ideas or realizations which are valuable.<p>I realize that I&#x27;m in the minority as I have friends who&#x27;ve expressed apparent horror at the thought of just driving alone for a couple hours and thinking in silence. I find that the times I do prefer to listen to a podcast are usually when I&#x27;m too mentally tired to generate my own good quality thinking.<p>In case it&#x27;s of interest to anyone else who may share this trait, here are my other relevant characteristics:<p>- I was clinically diagnosed in childhood (many decades ago) with ADHD significant enough to be medicated daily and put in special ed classes (heavily attentional, minimially hyperactive or emotional). For me, meds did help mitigate the attentional impacts of ADHD enough to muddle through typical school contexts with mostly Bs and Cs and I&#x27;ve found meds meaningfully (although not completely) useful in adult careers as well.<p>- My personal satisfaction and career trajectory found success once I learned to focus on bridging between traditional technical and creative roles. I was an &quot;above average&quot; programmer but never at the top. Same with writing, design, marketing, customer engagement, etc. But with good knowledge, decent ability and lots of experience in both - I excelled at product management and entrepreneurial-type roles.<p>- I&#x27;m a &quot;secret introvert&quot;, meaning that most people who work with me or know me casually would assume I&#x27;m an extrovert as I not only have no problem giving a keynote speech, stage demo or delivering a high-stakes presentation to the BOD or VCs - I&#x27;m widely considered very good at it and even enjoy it sometimes. It&#x27;s also easy for me to step into the role of ad hoc host of the reception or be the &#x27;life of the party&#x27; when necessary. In fact, I always <i>thought</i> I was an extrovert until I went to one of those in-depth, high-level leadership training programs where a team of psychologists spent days one-on-one assessing me and told me I was clearly an introvert and probably always have been. I openly doubted them until they told me that what really mattered wasn&#x27;t &quot;did I like it or do it well&quot; but instead &quot;did I recharge my batteries afterward by being alone or by being engaged with others.&quot; Then it made perfect sense because I&#x27;ve definitely always recharged alone after major emotional energy expenditures.<p>- One perhaps downside trait which may be related is that I am strictly a mono-tasker, so much so, now I just point-blank tell people &quot;I can either listen, talk or think - but I can&#x27;t do any of them <i>well</i> if I have to do more than one at a time.&quot; This is true to the extent that what others might consider acceptable ambient noise like a TV talk show playing in the same room can to me be almost like &quot;a denial of service attack on coherent thought&quot;. Like I find it pretty uncomfortable to even have breakfast in one of those communal breakfast buffet rooms at business travel hotels where they play Good Morning America or CNN at pretty high volume. Even if I&#x27;m just eating alone - it takes extra effort to form coherent chains of thought, so I just take my plate back to my room. As for my friends who say they &quot;always have a radio or TV turned on for ambient comfort&quot; anytime they are alone, doing something else and not at all watching it - even just imagining that is kind of uncomfortable to me. (and yes, in my laptop bag I always have a variety of earplugs and noise canceling devices to enable functioning in various &#x27;hostile&#x27; contexts). Just to be clear, I love watching great movies and good TV shows and even have a high-end home theater dedicated to it. However, when I watch media - I do so intently and with pure focus. If I have guests over who may like to talk during good movies, I prefer to just go into host mode refilling drinks and popcorn and will wait to really <i>watch</i> the film later on my own (unless the film is just bad, in which case, if I&#x27;m alone, I&#x27;ll leave the theater or stop the film - I guess because my high-focus attentional cycles can be scarce I treat them as valuable and worth conserving).