There's no formal record of how much time people spend doing nothing, but it's clear that most of us find pure inactivity extremely difficult.
The Spaced-Out Competition, held annually in South Korea and originally conceived as a performance art piece, acknowledges this by setting contestants the goal of doing nothing for 90 minutes, including not falling asleep or laughing.
The difficulty of doing nothing was also demonstrated by a team of psychologists at the University of Virginia in 2014.
They invited participants to spend 15 minutes alone with their own thoughts – the only source of distraction being a button they could press to give themselves a mild but unpleasant shock.
Nearly half the participants couldn’t resist pressing it!
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Jared Read, Chester) 'How long can you do nothing for?'
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