When did you last allow yourself to be genuinely idle? 

In an age of vibrating phones, endless notifications and an almost permanent connection to the internet, doing absolutely nothing has become less a habit than a minor act of resistance.

At first glance, idleness seems like a small luxury, a chance to recover from busy schedules and mental noise.

Yet new research suggests that for people who are prone to worrying, an empty stretch of time may feel far from peaceful; it can become uncomfortable, even distressing.

The study, published in Cognitive Therapy and Research, explored what the authors call "idleness distress" through three separate investigations involving about 900 participants.

Rather than treating boredom as a simple lack of entertainment, the researchers examined whether being left with little or nothing to do might intensify the unease already present in anxious minds.

In the first study, nearly 600 people completed an online questionnaire about their general anxiety levels and their emotional response to being idle.

The second study asked another 180 partcipants about boredom and then placed them in a room for 12 minutes, during which they were not allowed to stand up, use their phones, read, sleep or distract themselves in any obvious way.

After this brief sitting task, participants reported how they felt.

For many people, 12 minutes may sound harmless, but when the usual escape routes are removed, time can begin to feel surprisingly heavy.

A third study involved about 170 participants, who first answered questions about their mood and mental health.

They were then asked to spend 12 minutes in a room again, but this time they watched part of a nature documentary chosen because it was emotionally neutral, making the situation less idle than before, though still hardly stimulating.

These participants also predicted how they expected to feel before the task and reported their feelings afterward.

Across all three studies, a clear pattern emerged: those with a stronger tendency to worry were more likely to experience completely, or even mostly, idle moments as distressing.

The researchers suggest that rare periods of idleness may be difficult because they turn our attention inward, toward thoughts and feelings we usually keep at arm's length.

For habitual worriers, such inward focus may not offer rest; instead, it may give anxiety more room to speak.