It can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself.

This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better.

Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.

Part of my job, is that I design protocols to help young children lie in MRI scanners for a living. We have all sorts of techniques to help with this.

However, for each new scanning protocol, I like to have had it myself - so I know what the children go through. And, at times lying inside a MRI scanner, detached from the world, with only the noise of the scanner (very reduced with our new noise cancelling headphones), is almost meditative, and a welcome escape from the constant connection and pressures of being immediately available at work. Sounds like the writer achieves something similar in the coffee shop.

I think it depends on what counts as doing nothing. Every time I cut my hair, I sit in a chair for ~30minutes silently without doing anything. My barber knows I don't like small talk so he just cuts my hair and that's it, there is no conversation.

I would say it is very enjoyable 30 minutes every time I do it. I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do?

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

I try and think about this often.

It is. I did somewhere around ~10mins or something in my first try. Which I was told is very high for a first attempt. But it is indeed difficult. Like @dymk said, you work your way up.

Also, a lot of folks think it's easy to do. Until you try it, that is.

I also remember reading somewhere around the lines of handling the chaos in your-self. Or controlling the chaos within yourself.

And always thought this exercise showed what that is about. (Sorry, forgot the expression. Been a while. It's definitely more nicely put than the above.)

>"Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me"

I've done more than that. Summer time I often swim in open water up to 2 hour at once as one of the ways to stay fit. Obviously it becomes routine and not very entertaining. So I usually doing some high level software design work in my mind at this point, exploring some concepts, thinking business ideas etc. etc. So my body does monotonous work of not very high intensity and my brain is busy with everything else. Not board at all.

I once spent 1.5 hour standing in a church listening to a priest for more than an hour (funeral). Same thing I mentally solved the problem why some piece of my code did not work.

Without this ability I would go nuts. My brain always has to be busy with something. It is like a drug for me.

I felt that for much of my life. Time without stimulation was, if not scary, at least a bit panic inducing. Learning to sit without stimulation, without any distractions from my worries, led to being able to realize that "hey, I'm OK, I don't even need those worries." Which led to handling the underlying pressures and stresses MUCH better, without panic, without stress, with a full clear mind. I could apply my full intellect to things that before were hard to deal with. It felt like a super power when I first started practicing sitting.

It starts like that. Work up to 30 minutes, start with 5. The mind has an uncanny ability to entertain itself when it’s bored but paying attention.

>Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.

Those of us over 40 have already had plenty of this in our lives, it used to be such a common part of life! Waiting for appointments, waiting for the bus, etc. before smartphones. My first job had two hours between lunch and dinner service. I only had about 15 minutes of work during that time, so it was hour plus of almost entirely idle time every shift.

Then dont sit still for 30 mins - try doing it for 3 minutes at first. If you feel like it, repeat the next day with either the same or longer length. Or dont do it at all. If you do - think of it as a kind of a meditation, without the extra steps. Some isolation from sensory stimulation is good for your brain - there is growing evidence we are all over exposed to attention-robbing mechanisms of the digital world.

If nothing else, having to go to church every Sunday in my youth taught be to be able to sit still while bored off my brain for an hour a week.

I thought it was too, but when my daughter was born she had trouble regulating her temperature so I had to stay with her while she was under the warmer for an hour, then another hour swaddled in my arms. They didn't allow phones, so I got to spend two hours with her, no distraction. The time passed surprisingly quickly. I sang to her, I told her stories from my head.

Nowadays when I'm feeding her or napping her I admittedly do have a phone behind her head, but I'll always cherish those two hours where it was just us two.

Some people just call this "meditation".

My therapist used to say: this means you must do it for 40 minutes

>People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-pr...

Try rawdogging a train ride or short flight, and do nothing but take in the view. You might fool your body into accepting this state by actually doing something, but not really doing something.

When I was younger I used to visit a local zendo, and I think the meditation sessions were 40 minutes. It's definitely an experience. Very easy to fall asleep without external distractions. The idea was to just learn to concentrate on bodily sensations, skin, breathing, sound.

Sounds like meditation to me.

Solitude and once’s own company once learned is bliss.

The mind finds entirely new areas of stimulation when it’s not being distracted or purely having sensory experiences.

That is because the monkey mind is trying to create a narrative where none exists in the moment.

Enduring boredom is the antithesis of mindless doomscrolling.

Sounds like the morning standup for most people.