Debbie* is on her way to work after the long holiday break. She’s thinking about what she did during her vacation and musing on a trip she’s planning for her next time off. She’s so caught up in these daydreams that she misses the turn off to her office building.
She tells herself that she needs to get her thoughts under control so that she can get off on the right foot from the minute she walks into the office. But does she?
Researchers have found that there is an evolutionary advantage to our engaging in daydreams, which we do almost half of each day. These wandering thoughts can help us escape difficult situations, find solutions for problems, and begin planning for the future. And, as I describe in my book on daydreaming and creativity, there is plenty of evidence that daydreams improve both emotional well-being and productivity.
But recently scientists have discovered evidence that the ability to daydream is actually an indicator of a healthily active brain. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science have found that the more we daydream, the more our brain is able to both hold onto and remember things when we are being bombarded from all sides by all kinds of noise, information input, and conflicting demands.
Obviously, this is useful information for moms and other chronic multi-taskers! How nice to know that whether you’re sitting at work thinking about your little ones, remembering something from a favorite television program while you’re supposed to be coming up with a proposal for a client, or standing at the kitchen sink fantasizing about the day that your youngest child starts college instead of loading the dishwasher, you’re not being an inefficient worker or a bad mom! You’re simply exercising the part of your brain that helps you do the multitude of tasks all clamoring for your attention at the same time!
There is one problem with this formula. Modern technology. Now I’m as big a fan of contemporary media and electronics as anyone. I don’t love it when friends start to text in the middle of a conversation or youngsters pull out their phones during a meal; but I do love having access to the internet when I’m in need of backup for a theory that I’ve put forward that my husband – or whoever else I’m talking with – thinks is wrong. (I don’t love it quite as much, of course, when Google backs them up instead!).
Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, there is growing proof that our cellphones, ipads, laptops and yes, even our ebooks are stealing valuable daydream time. No matter how much we love our electronics, our brains need that downtime; and so do our children, spouses, colleagues and co-workers.
Still, there’s no need to get carried away. No matter what the nay-sayers may be saying (and there’s someone at every gathering whose ready to tell us how bad the new technology is) you really don’t need to ban all technology in order to daydream more. In a recent interview with author Michael Posner, neuroscientist Daniel Levitin put some of the concerns about technology into perspective this way: “When people started writing, people worried that we’d lose the art of conversation. After the introduction of the printing press, people complained we’d be buried in an avalanche of books. The same sorts of fears were voiced after the arrival of television and computer games. Maybe there is a limit, and we do have problems, but we seem overall to be doing pretty well.”
So the good news is that, when, like Debbie, you miss a turn because you’re daydreaming, that’s a good thing, not a bad one. You’ll just be that much more effective when you do get to work, especially if you need to focus in the midst of distractions.
And more good news – you don’t have to get rid of all of your technology to make sure that you keep on daydreaming. You just have to turn off your machines every once in awhile and let your mind wander a bit. You won’t even have to work at it. We’re programmed to wool gather, as they used to call these mind-wanderings.
How can you beat it? All you have to do to make your brain be more efficient is to follow this piece of advice that literary agent John Wright gives his clients. “Put down your cellphone and daydream.”
* names and identifying information changed for privacy
Read more:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/the-virtues-of-daydreaming
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-science-of-daydreams
You can also take a look at my book Daydreaming: Unlock the Creative Power of Your Mind (Viking/Penguin)
Teaser image source: iStock_000015201389Small.jpg
Please follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/fdbarthlcsw
copyright@dianebarth2015
