Humans love to daydream, with our minds unconsciously wandering off nearly half the time. According to a study done by Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth, we daydream forty-seven per cent of the time that we are awake.
Does this make us naturally distracted and unproductive? Daydreaming can seem at odds with the values our society champions, like productivity and efficiency. However, studies suggest that you should not feel guilty for daydreaming.
Scientists, researchers, and psychologists have in recent years lauded this ‘daydreaming’ mental state for enabling us to solve problems and enhance creativity because it encourages lateral thinking.
If you find yourself zoning out over lunch or on your way to the office, it could actually be useful—according to two studies conducted by Dr. Mann and Rebekah Cadman of the University of Central Lancashire.
Studying daydreams
In the first study, 40 volunteers had to complete a deliberately mundane task—copying numbers out of a telephone directory for 15 minutes. The activity, while boring, allowed the participants to daydream while completing the task.
They were then asked to complete another task—coming up with different uses for a pair of polystyrene cups. This second task was set up to measure their creativity.
Their results were then measured against a control group, who were only tasked to come up with uses for the cups.
Surprisingly, the volunteers who had first copied out the telephone numbers had found more uses for the cups than the control group.
In the second study, the researchers attempted to increase the likeliness of daydreaming by introducing a more mundane task—reading the numbers out instead of just writing them down. A control group was still asked to copy out the numbers as above.
They found that, in both studies, the control group were the least creative, implying that creative performance increased as participants were allowed to daydream prior to the task.
Zone out for a creativity boost
The study suggests that giving your brain a short “down time” can actually boost your creativity levels. Letting your mind wander off during a stressful episode at work can kick start your creative process.
There are two separate regions of the brain involved during daydreaming and problem solving. The front of your brain or the ‘executive network’ is usually thought to be active when the brain is doing decision-making and problem solving. Meanwhile, the ‘default network’ is thought to be active when your brain is at rest. Scientifically, these separate regions of the brain were thought to be mutually exclusive—one turns on when the other is turned off.
However, there’s new evidence that points otherwise.
Based on the 2009 Christoff study at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, both regions of the brain are reportedly active at the same time when your mind is wandering.
This means that the two separate regions of your brain that do not usually work together start communicating as you daydream.
At work, we tend to assume that we can get more done when we are consciously working on something or paying strict attention to a problem.
But giving your mind some time off lets your brain incubate the problem all by itself, and a creative fountain might just spurt out. Engage in something easy, mindless even. Take a 5-minute walk out of the office, dream about the next holiday or check your Facebook newsfeed—something positive might just transpire from
Stacey Wee is a writer-monster at Digital Boomerang. She oozes creativity from her pores.Related posts: