When you went to school as a kid, one of the phrases you would have heard almost daily is “Work hard and you will be successful” or something similar. In many cultures and societies, from the early stages of life, we are taught to occupy our time with activity. Being idle goes against this very thought ingrained in us. Work: Does it spark joy? Marie Kondo’s ways of living took the world by storm a couple of years ago. According to her, you should only keep those things in your lives that spark joy, that make you truly happy. We can put this approach in the context of work too. In 2010, Christopher Hsee (Chicago Booth Professor), Adelle X. Yang (Antai School of Management), and Liangyan Wang (Shanghai Jiaotong University) published a research report titled ‘Idleness Aversion and the Need for Justifiable Busyness’. This report about some rather interesting experiments by the trio. In one of these, the participants had the choice to stay idle or to do something. They were told that ...