The science of a wandering mind
our minds are wired to wander. Wandering is their default. Whenever our thoughts are suspended between specific, discrete, goal-directed activities, the brain reverts to a so-called baseline, “resting” state—but don’t let the word fool you, because the brain isn’t at rest at all. Instead, it experiences tonic activity in what’s now known as the DMN
... See moreMaria Konnikova • Mastermind
While mind wandering may hurt our immediate focus on some task at hand, some portion of the time it operates in the service of solving problems that matter for our lives.
Daniel Goleman • Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
Third, during mind-wandering, your mind will—Nathan said—engage in “mental time-travel,” where it roams over the past and tries to predict the future. Freed from the pressures of thinking narrowly about what’s right in front of you, your mind will start to think about what might come next—and so it will help to prepare you for it.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
Envisioning or planning one’s future, projecting oneself into a situation (especially a social situation), feeling empathy, invoking autobiographical memories also involve this daydreaming or mind-wandering network. If you’ve ever stopped what you were doing to picture the consequence of some future action or to imagine yourself in a particular fut
... See moreDaniel J. Levitin • The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
Daydreaming and mind-wandering, we now know, are a natural state of the brain. This accounts for why we feel so refreshed after it, and why vacations and naps can be so restorative. The tendency for this system to take over is so powerful that its discoverer, Marcus Raichle, named it the default mode
Daniel Levitin • The Organized Mind
science of mind-wandering, asking: What happens when our thoughts float freely, without any immediate focus to anchor them?
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
Task-negative mode is more colloquially known as daydreaming, and, as Daniel J. Levitin of McGill University has written, it “is responsible for our moments of greatest creativity and insight, when we’re able to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable.”
David Leonhardt • Opinion | You’re Too Busy. You Need a ‘Shultz Hour.’ (Published 2017)
we also find a sub-network that helps us recall past events and imagine future ones, another that helps us navigate through space, and yet another that helps us interpret the words and actions of others. And these are the mental functions associated with mind wandering.