When you allow your mind to wander from a task, or when you finish the task, or if you pause too long in anger or dismay while doing the task, the TPN in your brain defaults to a different connectome. Not surprisingly—given that we default to this state—this other connectome is called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN allows for expansive, im

“Such a paradigm shift may help us accept our drifting mind as a normal, even necessary, part of our mental existence—and may even enable us to try to take advantage of it in some creative, enjoyable way.”33

There’s a third major place the mind goes when it wanders: to problems we’ve been working on. But compared to its conscious, directed state, the wandering mind deals with problems in a looser, freer way. In fact, it looks to Corballis like “mind-wandering is the secret of creativity.”