Andrew Diarmid: This is the Best Resolution You Can Make in 2023. Experts

Do you remember those bathroom readers that were filled with trivialities, factsoids, and stories. They’ve been entertaining in the throne room since 1988. Although the throne room is a secluded place, it has become a popular gathering spot for guests. 35th anniversary edition came out last fall, it probably won’t hit the bestseller lists. 

The truth is most of us have something else to distract us in the bathroom — our smartphones. We pull them out on the john, at stoplights, in line at checkout, while we pump gas — virtually anywhere we have to wait for more than ten seconds. We are drawn to social stimuli because of the dopamine rush that keeps us coming back every minute. 

But what if we’re cheating ourselves out of a better kind of mental reward? What if we put aside the urge to check our phones and instead spent time thinking? Sounds crazy, right? This is a waste!

However, recent study According to the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the act of “just thinking” It can be much more rewarding than we realize. The paper’s authors recognize that internal thinking is an uncommon human ability. However, many people don’t realize the value of it. This might be one reason we’re so quick to reach for our phones — we don’t know what we’re missing.

Researchers conducted experiments with more than 250 students in Japan and the UK to prove their hypothesis. Participants were asked not to do anything but sit quietly in silence for 20 minutes. The results showed that people had more fun, engagement, and motivation after the experiment than they thought. 

“[P]eople often proactively avoid just waiting to think,” The authors report that they believed thinking was boring and not stimulating. But it turns out we’re designed to think, if we give it a chance: “[P]eople can sustain intrinsically motivated behavior because they can generate internal reward from the change in mental representation.”

We can also benefit from thinking. According to the study, spontaneous thinking includes daydreaming and mind wandering as well as episodic future thinking, recollection autobiographical memories, nostalgia, and episodic thinking. 

Each of these thought processes are valuable. For example, daydreaming, as psychologist Jerome Singer’s research What has been revealed is that we have the unique ability of alternate between fantasy and real, which can be a powerful force that can bring about change and make our lives more manageable. 

Mind wandering or stream of consciousness thinking gives us the ability to think in a different way. several mental gainsYou can use your imagination to generate new, creative ideas, think outside the box, and to place your experiences in a meaningful context. This will help you to feel better and improve your health.

Even nostalgia, a long-held medically and socially harmful emotion, is now acceptable. recently been shown To be a psychological resource that can give us a reservoir of meaning, increasing the sense of belonging, acceptance, self-continuity, and the connection between our past and present lives.

Let’s try it! Are you willing to make a New Year’s resolution to find some time in your busy week to engage in some beneficial task-free thinking? It takes only two minutes to do this while you pump gas and not check your phone. You can take a 15-minute stroll and let your mind wander or daydream for 15 minutes. You can spend up to 20 minutes just thinking in silence, at least once per week. 

You can also keep a diary handy to record the thoughts you have throughout the week. What are some of the new ideas you came up with? What obstacles are you facing to get ahead? What are some past events that you can recall? Keeping a record of your spontaneous thinking is a way to process what’s in your head and may come in handy later, helping you move closer to your goals.

In today’s information-laden age, why not kick off 2023 by making the time to just think? It’s a simple practice that can enhance your direction, sense of purpose and human intimacy — the very basics of a meaningful life.

Andrew McDiarmid, a senior fellow at The Discovery Institute.