In 1997, I spent 6 months living in Greece and working as a bartender at a British resort on the island of Corfu. The resort, perched on the side of the Ionian Sea, was a short swim from the villa that we lived in and the food we ate often came straight from the sea. The days on this island were sunny, hot and so beautifully slow. Although I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, it felt as if no one on the island was in a rush – not at the resort, nor the neighbouring village, or even the city of Corfu. It was the kind of place where waiting was commonplace; things unapologetically took time.

Life on the island was slow, and so were we. 

In 2014, a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin explored whether modern-day North Americans are capable of being in a room—alone and without distraction—for 15 to 20 minutes. Their findings were resounding, but not surprising. While the studies showed that most of us prefer doing “something” rather than “nothing,” it also showed that many of us would prefer just about anything over the prospect of spending time alone. In one of the studies 67% of men and 25% of women opted to self-administer an unpleasant shock over experiencing 15 uninterrupted and non-distracted minutes by themselves (one participant actually shocked himself 190 times in the 15-minute time period).