DO LESS. IT'S GOOD FOR YOU

Unproductive moments can boost health and happiness

- Jamie Ducharme

YOU TAKE A VACATION DAY, BUT GET distracted by the thought of your work inbox filling up. Or you sit down to watch a movie and immediately feel guilty about all the tasks still on your to-do list. Or perhaps you splurge on a massage, but barely enjoy it because your thoughts are racing the entire time.

If any of these sound familiar, you're not alone. Relaxing may sound like the easiest thing in the world, but for many people it's anything but.

Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, learned that a decade ago, when she tested the effects of letting people sit with their thoughts for a few minutes. She thought they'd find it relaxing. But the opposite turned out to be true: people were so uncomfortable doing nothing that many opted to give themselves small electric shocks instead.

Doing nothing, as Westgate's study illustrated, can be difficult because most of us aren't used to thinking without turning those thoughts into actions-a disconnect that can be "incredibly cognitively intense," she says. Other research has also shown that some people feel bored, uneasy, or guilty when they slow down.

No wonder. Productivity and hard work are nothing if not the American way, with mainstream institutions from government to church urging people to stay busy, says Celeste Headlee, author of the book Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.

"Our society has valued really, really toxic things," she says. "We have for generations been brainwashed" to believe that productivity is morally superior to rest-so it's not surprising that relaxing sometimes feels uncomfortable or even wrong, Headlee says.