The task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think.

 

So unbearable did some find it that they took up the safe but alarming opportunity to give themselves mild electric shocks in an attempt to break the tedium.

 

Two-thirds of men pressed a button to deliver a painful jolt during a 15-minute spell of solitude. One man – an outlier – found thinking so disagreeable he opted for a shock 190 times.

 

Under the same conditions, a quarter of women pressed the shock button. The difference, scientists suspect, is that men tend to be more sensation-seeking than women.

LINK to text (The Guardian)

In my opinion that experiment confirmed what Blaise Pascal wrote in the 1600s:

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

I heard about that experiment listening to this podcast:

Space Hex! (The Curse of Restlessness, Revisited)

It’s a very good podcast that pulls together threads from many sources. It’ll take an hour of your time, but may change your direction. Perhaps you will even want to sit still somewhere. 

Hm, yes, I think now I will sit still for half an hour. Without electro shocks, or a phone. :-)