November 24, 2010

A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy One

New research underlines the wisdom of being absorbed in what you do

By Jason Castro

We spend billions of dollars each year looking for happiness, hoping it might be bought, consumed, found, or flown to. Other, more contemplative cultures and traditions assure us that this is a waste of time (not to mention money). ‘Be present’ they urge. Live in the moment, and there you’ll find true contentment.

Sure enough, our most fulfilling experiences are typically those that engage us body and mind, and are unsullied by worry or regret. In these cases, a relationship between focus and happiness is easy to spot. But does this relationship hold in general, even for simple, everyday activities? Is a focused mind a happy mind? Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert decided to find out.

In a recent study published in Science, Killingsworth and Gilbert discovered that an unnervingly large fraction of our thoughts - almost half - are not related to what we’re doing. Surprisingly, we tended to be elsewhere even for casual and presumably enjoyable activities, like watching TV or having a conversation. While you might hope all this mental wandering is taking us to happier places, the data say otherwise. Just like the wise traditions teach, we’re happiest when thought and action are aligned, even if they’re only aligned to wash dishes.

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The ingredients of simple, everyday happiness are tough to study in the lab, and aren’t easily measured with a standard experimental battery of forced choices, eye-tracking, and questionnaires. Day to day happiness is simply too fleeting. To really study it’s causes, you need to catch people in the act of feeling good or feeling bad in real-world settings.

To do this, the researchers used a somewhat unconventional, but powerful, technique known as experience sampling. The idea behind it is simple. Interrupt people at unpredictable intervals and ask them what they’re doing, and what’s on their minds. If you do this many times a day for many days, you can start to assemble a kind of quantitative existential portrait of someone. Do this for many people, and you can find larger patterns and tendencies in human thought and behavior, allowing you to correlate moments of happiness with particular kinds of thought and action.

To sample our inner lives, the team developed an iPhone app that periodically surveyed people’s thoughts and activities. At random times throughout the day, a participant’s iPhone would chime, and present him with a brief questionnaire that asked how happy he was (on a scale from 1-100), what he was doing, and if he was thinking about what he was doing. If subjects were indeed thinking of something else, they reported whether that something else was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Responses to the questions were standardized, which allowed them to be neatly summarized in a database that tracked the collective moods, actions, and musings of about 5000 total participants (a subset of 2250 people was used in the present study).

In addition to awakening us to just how much our minds wander, the study clearly showed that we’re happiest when thinking about what we’re doing. Although imagining pleasant alternatives was naturally preferable to imagining unpleasant ones, the happiest scenario was to not be imagining at all. A person who is ironing a shirt and thinking about ironing is happier than a person who is ironing and thinking about a sunny getaway.

What about the kinds of activities we do, though? Surely, the hard-partiers and world travelers among us are happier than the quiet ones who stay at home and tuck in early? Not necessarily. According to the data from the Harvard group’s study, the particular way you spend your day doesn’t tell much about how happy you are. Mental presence - the matching of thought to action - is a much better predictor of happiness.

The happy upshot of this study is that it suggests a wonderfully simple prescription for greater happiness: think about what you’re doing. But be warned that like any prescription, following it is very different from just knowing it’s good for you. In addition to the usual difficulties of breaking bad or unhelpful habits, your brain may also be wired to work against your attempts stay present.

Recent fMRI scanning studies show that even when we’re quietly at rest and following instructions to think of nothing in particular, our brains settle into a conspicuous pattern of activity that corresponds to mind-wandering. This signature ‘resting’ activity is coordinated across several widespread brain areas , and is argued by many to be evidence of a brain network that is active by default. Under this view our brains climb out of the default state when we’re bombarded with input, or facing a challenging task, but tend to slide back into it once things quiet down.

Why are our brains so intent on tuning out? One possibility is that they’re calibrated for a target level of arousal. If a task is dull and can basically be done on autopilot, the brain conjures up its own exciting alternatives and sends us off and wandering. This view is somewhat at odds with the Killingsworth and Gilbert’s findings though, since subjects wandered even on ‘engaging’ activities. Another, more speculative possibility is that wandering corresponds to some important mental housekeeping or regulatory process that we’re not conscious of. Perhaps while we check out, disparate bits of memory and experience are stitched together into a coherent narrative – our sense of self.

Of course, it’s also possible that wandering isn’t really ‘for’ anything, but rather just a byproduct of a brain in a world that doesn’t punish the occasional (or even frequent) flight of fancy. Regardless of what prompts our brains to settle into the default mode, its tendency to do so may be the kiss of death for happiness. As the authors of the paper elegantly summarize their work: “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” 

On the plus side, a mind can be trained to wander less. With regular and dedicated meditation practice, you can certainly become much more present, mindful, and content. But you’d better be ready to work. The most dramatic benefits only really accrue for individuals, often monks, who have clocked many thousands of hours practicing the necessary skills (it’s not called the default state for nothing).

The next steps in this work will be fascinating to see, and we can certainly expect to see more results from the large data set collected by Killingsworth and Gilbert. It will be interesting to know, for example, how much people vary in their tendency to wander, and whether differences in wandering are associated with psychiatric ailments. If so, we may be able to tailor therapeutic interventions for people prone to certain cognitive styles that put them at risk for depression, anxiety, or other disorders.

In addition to the translational potential of this work, it will also be exciting to understand the brain networks responsible for wandering, and whether there are trigger events that send the mind into the wandering or focused state. Though wandering may be bad for happiness, it is still fascinating to wonder why we do it.

Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters co-editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize -winning journalist at the Boston Globe, where he edits the Sunday Ideas section. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com

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Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth (right) and Daniel T. Gilbert (left) used a special “track your happiness” iPhone app to gather research. The results: We spend at least half our time thinking about something other than our immediate surroundings, and most of this daydreaming doesn’t make us happy.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Wandering mind not a happy mind

Steve Bradt

Harvard Staff Writer

About 47% of waking hours spent thinking about what isn’t going on

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone Web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects’ thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.

The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described this week in the journal Science .

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” Killingsworth and Gilbert write. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain’s default mode of operation.

To track this behavior, Killingsworth developed an iPhone app that contacted 2,250 volunteers at random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.

Subjects could choose from 22 general activities, such as walking, eating, shopping, and watching television. On average, respondents reported that their minds were wandering 46.9 percent of time, and no less than 30 percent of the time during every activity except making love.

“Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities,” says Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. “This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the nonpresent.”

Killingsworth and Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, found that people were happiest when making love, exercising, or engaging in conversation. They were least happy when resting, working, or using a home computer.

“Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people’s happiness,” Killingsworth says. “In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged.”

The researchers estimated that only 4.6 percent of a person’s happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing, whereas a person’s mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 percent of his or her happiness.

Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects’ mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.

“Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to ‘be here now,’” Killingsworth and Gilbert note in Science. “These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

This new research, the authors say, suggests that these traditions are right.

Killingsworth and Gilbert’s 2,250 subjects in this study ranged in age from 18 to 88, representing a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations. Seventy-four percent of study participants were American.

More than 5,000 people are now using the iPhone Web app .

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A wandering mind is an unhappy mind

Affiliation.

  • 1 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. [email protected]
  • PMID: 21071660
  • DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439

We developed a smartphone technology to sample people's ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically makes them unhappy.

  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Middle Aged
  • Regression Analysis
  • Young Adult

a wandering mind is an unhappy

  • TED Speaker

Matt Killingsworth

Why you should listen.

While doing his PhD research with Dan Gilbert at Harvard, Matt Killingsworth invented a nifty tool for investigating happiness: an iPhone app called Track Your Happiness that captured feelings in real time. (Basically, it pings you at random times and asks: How are you feeling right now, and what are you doing?) Data captured from the study became the landmark paper "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" ( PDF ). 

As an undergrad, Killingsworth studied economics and engineering, and worked for a few years as a software product manager -- an experience during which, he says, "I began to question my assumptions about what defined success for an individual, an organization, or a society." He's now a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar examining such topics as "the relationship between happiness and the content of everyday experiences, the percentage of everyday experiences that are intrinsically valuable, and the degree of congruence between the causes of momentary happiness and of one’s overall satisfaction with life."

Matt Killingsworth’s TED talk

a wandering mind is an unhappy

Want to be happier? Stay in the moment

More news and ideas from matt killingsworth, dear ted: “how can i be happier at work”.

Smart advice from TED speakers to help you rediscover your joy on the job

The power of daydreams: 4 studies on the surprising science of mind-wandering

[ted id=1607 width=560 height=315] What makes us happy? It’s one of the most complicated puzzles of human existence — and one that, so far, 87 speakers have explored in TEDTalks. In today’s talk, Matt Killingsworth (who studied under Dan Gilbert at Harvard) shares a novel approach to the study of happiness — an app, Track Your Happiness, […]

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New Perspectives on Mind-Wandering pp 225–253 Cite as

Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy Mind? The Affective Qualities of Creativity, Volition, and Resistance

  • Nicolás González 3 ,
  • Camila García-Huidobro 3 &
  • Pablo Fossa 3  
  • First Online: 08 October 2022

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1 Citations

In recent years, research on mind wandering has increased. Much of this scientific evidence has shown the negative effects of mind wandering, such as everyday accidents, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, concentration, and learning problems in educational processes. Although there is scientific evidence of the positive aspects of mind wandering, this is still scarce in literature. In this chapter, we propose the important role of mind wandering as an affective expression of consciousness, which extends to the processes of creativity, volition, and resistance as inter-functional connections of thought.

  • Mind wandering
  • Affectivity

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González, N., García-Huidobro, C., Fossa, P. (2022). Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy Mind? The Affective Qualities of Creativity, Volition, and Resistance. In: Dario, N., Tateo, L. (eds) New Perspectives on Mind-Wandering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06955-0_13

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Mind & Body Articles & More

Does mind-wandering make you unhappy, when are we happiest when we stay in the moment, says researcher matt killingsworth ..

What are the major causes of human happiness?

It’s an important question but one that science has yet to fully answer. We’ve learned a lot about the demographics of happiness and how it’s affected by conditions like income, education, gender, and marriage. But the scientific results are surprising: Factors like these don’t seem to have particularly strong effects. Yes, people are generally happier if they make more money rather than less, or are married instead of single, but the differences are quite modest.

Although our goals in life often revolve around these sorts of milestones, my research is driven by the idea that happiness may have more to do with the contents of our moment-to-moment experiences than with the major conditions of our lives. It certainly seems that fleeting aspects of our everyday lives—such as what we’re doing, who we’re with, and what we’re thinking about—have a big influence on our happiness, and yet these are the very factors that have been most difficult for scientists to study.

a wandering mind is an unhappy

A few years ago, I came up with a way to study people’s moment-to-moment happiness in daily life on a massive scale, all over the world, something we’d never been able to do before. This took the form of trackyourhappiness.org, which uses iPhones to monitor people’s happiness in real time.

My results suggest that happiness is indeed highly sensitive to the contents of our moment-to-moment experience. And one of the most powerful predictors of happiness is something we often do without even realizing it: mind-wandering.

Be here now

As human beings, we possess a unique and powerful cognitive ability to focus our attention on something other than what is happening in the here and now. A person could be sitting in his office working on his computer, and yet he could be thinking about something else entirely: the vacation he had last month, which sandwich he’s going to buy for lunch, or worrying that he’s going bald.

This ability to focus our attention on something other than the present is really amazing. It allows us to learn and plan and reason in ways that no other species of animal can. And yet it’s not clear what the relationship is between our use of this ability and our happiness.

You’ve probably heard people suggest that you should stay focused on the present. “Be here now,” as Ram Dass advised back in 1971. Maybe, to be happy, we need to stay completely immersed and focused on our experience in the moment. Maybe this is good advice; maybe mind-wandering is a bad thing.

On the other hand, when our minds wander, they’re unconstrained. We can’t change the physical reality in front of us, but we can go anywhere in our minds. Since we know people want to be happy, maybe when our minds wander we tend to go to someplace happier than the reality that we leave behind. It would make a lot of sense. In other words, maybe the pleasures of the mind allow us to increase our happiness by mind-wandering.

Since I’m a scientist, I wanted to try to resolve this debate with some data. I collected this data using trackyourhappiness.org.

How does it work? Basically, I send people signals at random times throughout the day, and then I ask them questions about their experience at the instant just before the signal. The idea is that if we can watch how people’s happiness goes up and down over the course of the day, and try to understand how things like what people are doing, who they’re with, what they’re thinking about, and all the other factors that describe our experiences relate to those ups and downs in happiness, we might eventually be able to discover some of the major causes of human happiness.

This essay is based a 2011 TED talk by Matt Killingsworth.

In the results I’m going to describe, I will focus on people’s responses to three questions. The first was a happiness question: How do you feel? on a scale ranging from very bad to very good. Second, an activity question: What are you doing? on a list of 22 different activities including things like eating and working and watching TV. And finally a mind-wandering question: Are you thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing? People could say no (in other words, they are focused only on their current activity) or yes (they are thinking about something else). We also asked if the topic of those thoughts is pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Any of those yes responses are what we called mind-wandering.

We’ve been fortunate with this project to collect a lot of data, a lot more data of this kind than has ever been collected before, over 650,000 real-time reports from over 15,000 people. And it’s not just a lot of people, it’s a really diverse group, people from a wide range of ages, from 18 to late 80s, a wide range of incomes, education levels, marital statuses, and so on. They collectively represent every one of 86 occupational categories and hail from over 80 countries.

Wandering toward unhappiness

So what did we find?

First of all, people’s minds wander a lot. Forty-seven percent of the time, people are thinking about something other than what they’re currently doing. Consider that statistic next time you’re sitting in a meeting or driving down the street.

How does that rate depend on what people are doing? When we looked across 22 activities, we found a range—from a high of 65 percent when people are taking a shower or brushing their teeth, to 50 percent when they’re working, to 40 percent when they’re exercising. This went all the way down to sex, when 10 percent of the time people’s minds are wandering. In every activity other than sex, however, people were mind-wandering at least 30 percent of the time, which I think suggests that mind-wandering isn’t just frequent, it’s ubiquitous. It pervades everything that we do.

How does mind-wandering relate to happiness? We found that people are substantially less happy when their minds are wandering than when they’re not, which is unfortunate considering we do it so often. Moreover, the size of this effect is large—how often a person’s mind wanders, and what they think about when it does, is far more predictive of happiness than how much money they make, for example.

Now you might look at this result and say, “Ok, on average people are less happy when they’re mind-wandering, but surely when their minds are straying away from something that wasn’t very enjoyable to begin with, at least then mind-wandering will be beneficial for happiness.”

As it turns out, people are less happy when they’re mind-wandering no matter what they’re doing. For example, people don’t really like commuting to work very much; it’s one of their least enjoyable activities. Yet people are substantially happier when they’re focused only on their commute than when their mind is wandering off to something else. This pattern holds for every single activity we measured, including the least enjoyable. It’s amazing.

But does mind-wandering actually cause unhappiness, or is it the other way around? It could be the case that when people are unhappy, their minds wander. Maybe that’s what’s driving these results.

We’re lucky in this data in that we have many responses from each person, and so we can look and see, does mind-wandering tend to precede unhappiness, or does unhappiness tend to precede mind-wandering? This gives us some insight into the causal direction.

As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there’s no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. Mind-wandering precedes unhappiness but unhappiness does not precede mind-wandering. In other words, mind-wandering seems likely to be a cause, and not merely a consequence, of unhappiness.

How could this be happening? I think a big part of the reason is that when our minds wander, we often think about unpleasant things: our worries, our anxieties, our regrets. These negative thoughts turn out to have a gigantic relationship to (un)happiness. Yet even when people are thinking about something they describe as neutral, they’re still considerably less happy than when they’re not mind-wandering. In fact, even when they’re thinking about something they describe as pleasant, they’re still slightly less happy than when they aren’t mind-wandering at all.

The lesson here isn’t that we should stop mind-wandering entirely—after all, our capacity to revisit the past and imagine the future is immensely useful, and some degree of mind-wandering is probably unavoidable. But these results do suggest that mind-wandering less often could substantially improve the quality of our lives. If we learn to fully engage in the present , we may be able to cope more effectively with the bad moments and draw even more enjoyment from the good ones.

About the Author

Matt Killingsworth

Matt Killingsworth

Matt Killingsworth, Ph.D., is a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar. He studies the nature and causes of human happiness, and is the creator of www.trackyourhappiness.org which uses smartphones to study happiness in real-time during everyday life. Recent research topics have included the relationship between happiness and the content of everyday experiences, the percentage of everyday experiences that are intrinsically valuable, and the degree of congruence between the causes of momentary happiness and of one's overall satisfaction with life. Matt earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University.

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ScienceDaily

Mind is a frequent, but not happy, wanderer: People spend nearly half their waking hours thinking about what isn’t going on around them

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects' thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.

The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described in the journal Science .

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind," Killingsworth and Gilbert write. "The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."

Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn't going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain's default mode of operation.

To track this behavior, Killingsworth developed an iPhone web app that contacted 2,250 volunteers at random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.

Subjects could choose from 22 general activities, such as walking, eating, shopping, and watching television. On average, respondents reported that their minds were wandering 46.9 percent of time, and no less than 30 percent of the time during every activity except making love.

"Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities," says Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. "This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present."

Killingsworth and Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, found that people were happiest when making love, exercising, or engaging in conversation. They were least happy when resting, working, or using a home computer.

"Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people's happiness," Killingsworth says. "In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged."

The researchers estimated that only 4.6 percent of a person's happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing, whereas a person's mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 percent of his or her happiness.

Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects' mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.

"Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to 'be here now,'" Killingsworth and Gilbert note in Science. "These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

This new research, the authors say, suggests that these traditions are right.

Killingsworth and Gilbert's 2,250 subjects in this study ranged in age from 18 to 88, representing a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations. Seventy-four percent of study participants were American.

More than 5,000 people are now using the iPhone web app the researchers have developed to study happiness, which can be found at www.trackyourhappiness.org .

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Materials provided by Harvard University . Original written by Steve Bradt, Harvard Staff Writer. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

  • Matthew A. Killingsworth, Daniel T. Gilbert. A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind . Science , 2010; 330 (6006): 932 DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439

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Let Your Mind Wander

Experience the benefits of daydreaming in creativity and problem solving..

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  • Mind wandering is a universal human experience rooted in evolution and brain science.
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  • Mind wandering also allows individuals to simulate the future and script their range of responses.

Comedian Steven Wright deadpanned, “I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.” With that quip, he encapsulated the universal human experience of mind wandering .

Our minds are never idle. When not focused on doing a specific task or achieving a goal, we daydream, fantasize , ruminate, reminisce about something in the past, or worry about something in the future.

In fact, research with thought-sampling techniques has shown that an average of 47 percent of our time is spent with our mind wandering. 1 Think of it: nearly half our waking hours!

Research also suggests that mind wandering is not time wasted but a constructive mental tool supporting creativity, problem-solving, and better mood.

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Creativity Benefits From Mind Wandering

Mind wandering can be negative and obsessive and present obstacles to accomplishing goals . Left to their own devices, people may gravitate toward the negative.

But that is only part of the story. Many reveries are welcome, playful, creative daydreams to be nourished. Mind wandering allows us to learn from our imagination . Consequently, mind wandering is critical to “creative incubation,” the background mental work that precedes our insightful “Aha!” moments.

In my lab, we have found that broad and unrestrained mind wandering can also promote better mood among people with mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression .

Learning Through Imagined Experience

Memory stores actual experience. It can also hold the outcome of experiences we imagine or simulated scenarios. I’ll give you an example.

While on an airplane flight once, I was reviewing a paper, and my mind drifted until it landed on the emergency door, which triggered the following simulation: What if the door suddenly opens while we are in the air?

I will need a parachute, I thought. I could probably use the airplane blanket on my lap, but I will not be able to hold on to it in the strong wind—it needs holes. I can use my pen to make the holes. And so on.

This story is far-fetched and funny, but nevertheless, I now have, from an imagined experience, a script stored in my memory that would be helpful should the unlikely event ever happen.

We do this often, and not always about possible catastrophes. By fabricating possible future experiences, we have memories that we can call on to navigate our lives and fall back on to guide our behavior in the future.

Wandering Is the Brain’s Default

One of the most meaningful developments in recent neuroscience is the serendipitous discovery of the brain network that hosts our mind wandering: substantial cortical regions clustered together in the brain’s “ default mode network .”

Wandering is what our brain does by default. So, logic dictates that if our brains dedicate so much energy to mind wandering, mind wandering should play an important role.

There is a trade-off, though. With all the benefits of creative thinking , planning, decision-making , and mood, mind wandering takes us away from the present. Evolution seems to have prioritized our ability to survive and flourish over our ability to cherish the moment.

I remember having lunch at a cafe in Tel Aviv with a visiting professor from Stanford. I greatly admire his work and his personality . At one point in our conversation, he told me he had once heard something that had completely changed him, how he thinks, and how he lives his life, and he wanted to share it with me.

I have no idea what it was. Despite his dramatic introduction, my mind drifted far away as he spoke. I was too embarrassed to tell him I hadn’t caught what he’d said once I realized what had happened. I can only imagine how odd he must have thought it was that I didn’t comment meaningfully on what he’d said but quickly changed the subject.

a wandering mind is an unhappy

Happily, though, I can report that my mind had wandered to something interesting in my own life. Perverse as our mind wandering can be, at least it generally does have a purpose.

Margaret Wiktor / Shutterstock

Put a Wandering Mind to Use

Most of what we do regularly involves some creation or production, from making food to fixing a leaky shower, from writing a letter to gardening. Even thinking is an act of creation. New ideas, inventions, and plans you make while your mind wanders are all products your mind created.

While we cannot direct our mind as to what to wander about, we can strive to fill the mental space of possibilities with what we would have liked to wander about, either because we seek new ideas, because it makes us feel good, or both.

Before I go on a long walk or do any other activity that is not overly demanding, I ask myself what is on my mind. If it is something like the bills I just paid or an annoying email, I try to replace it with something I’d rather spend my mind-wandering stretch on instead.

I might reread a paragraph that caught my interest recently. Or I might bring back a problem that engaged me before I gave up on it or warm up the idea of an upcoming trip so I can fine-tune the details as I simulate the future with my mind.

This post was adapted from M indwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity by Moshe Bar, Ph.D.

1. Killingsworth, M. R., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439

Moshe Bar Ph.D.

Moshe Bar, Ph.D. , is a cognitive neuroscientist and the former Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Mind Wandering Can Be a Good Thing

a wandering mind is an unhappy

Staying focused is important for nearly every human activity, yet we often struggle to do it. When we are unable to focus our thoughts, we say that we are mind wandering. Mind wandering is very common and occurs in every healthy mind. In fact, mind wandering may even reflect the regular way of thinking, unless people make special efforts to prevent it. But is all mind wandering the same? Why does the mind wander, and when? What effect does mind wandering have in our lives? In answering these questions, we will show how mind wandering can even be helpful for things like creativity and learning.

Mind Wandering and Its Consequences

Any student knows that it can be hard to keep attention focused. For instance, when you are supposed to be listening to your teacher, you may find your mind drifting away. You might look out the window, make plans for after school, or think about nothing at all! Sadly, if students let their attention drift too far or for too long, they may miss what the teacher is saying—much to the dismay of teachers everywhere!

This experience is very interesting to scientists, many of whom also struggled to focus in school. Sustained attention is the term used to describe the ability to keep focused on whatever activities we are trying to do. We know that sustained attention is very important for many different things—like learning and remembering. We also know that sustained attention often fails and attention shifts to unrelated thoughts—this is called mind wandering [ 1 ]. Mind wandering is surprisingly common. Some studies find that people may spend nearly half their day mind wandering.

The effects of mind wandering can vary a lot. Sometimes there are no effects at all ( Figure 1 ). Think about drinking a glass of water: this task is simple and happens often, allowing you to drink without much effort or spilling, even if your mind is wandering. This kind of behavior is automatic.

Figure 1 - Mind wandering can occur anytime, anywhere—it is a normal part of the way the brain works.

  • Figure 1 - Mind wandering can occur anytime, anywhere—it is a normal part of the way the brain works.
  • Photo by Vanessa Bumbeers on Unsplash .

Other times, mind wandering has minor effects. If you briefly lose focus on your teacher’s voice, you may not hear what was said; but by rapidly focusing on the teacher’s voice again, you can get back on track fairly easily. Finally, there are instances when mind wandering can have very serious results. Imagine crossing the street or riding a bike without focusing on your surroundings.

Because mind wandering is such a common and normal part of daily life, scientists have asked two major questions about it. First, is mind wandering one thing, or are there different kinds? Second, why does mind wandering happen at all?

Question #1: Is All Mind Wandering the Same?

Many studies have tried to discover whether there are different kinds of mind wandering. These studies show that people can lose focus in different ways. Mind wandering can happen on purpose or by accident. Attention can also focus inward (on your thoughts) or outward (on the world around you). Finally, people can lose focus just a little (shallow) or a lot (deep). Do not worry if those sound complicated—we will discuss each one.

The first big difference is whether mind wandering is on purpose or not. Most mind wandering appears to happen on its own, or by accident [ 2 ]. For instance, a surprising sound may capture your attention. Other times, you may just lose focus and have no idea why. That said, mind wandering can also happen on purpose. Consider waiting at a doctor’s office, when you must maintain enough awareness to hear your name being called. At the same time, you will probably allow other thoughts to run through your mind. This “on-purpose” kind of mind wandering is common when doing something easy, or when you do not feel motivated.

Another way of understanding mind wandering is to consider what you are thinking about when you lose focus. This is the difference between internal and external mind wandering [ 3 ]. Perhaps while waiting at the doctor’s office, you start looking out the window to watch people walking by—this focuses on your senses and the world around you and is called external mind wandering . The opposite would be if you focused on your inner thoughts—maybe remembering your last doctor’s visit or planning for what you will do later in the day—and this is called internal mind wandering .

Finally, mind wandering can differ based on how deep vs. shallow it is. One idea [ 4 ] is that there are three levels of mind wandering. The deeper your level of mind wandering, the less connected you are to the world around you. Think of mind wandering as a slinky bouncing down stairs. Unless something stops it, the mind will keep going from shallow mind wandering (the top steps) into the deeper kinds (bottom steps).

The first, most shallow step in mind wandering involves very short and shallow dips in your attention to detail. This is relatively common, like briefly zoning out during class. The effects, however, are usually small. People will usually notice they are mind wandering and choose to refocus their attention.

If attention is not refocused, it is likely that mind wandering will progress to the second, medium, level. This involves longer-lasting lapses in attention, which you are less likely to notice. When mind wandering at this medium depth, you can still go through the motions of activities that are familiar to you, like brushing your teeth or eating a meal. These activities are a kind of automatic responding—like a robot that is programmed to do some task but is not really thinking. When the robot makes a mistake, it continues with whatever it was programmed to do.

The final and deepest level of mind wandering involves paying the least attention to the surrounding world. It is marked by the most extreme changes in behavior, like blank stares and missing what others say. In this deeper level, attention is directed internally, or to nowhere at all, which is called mind blanking . This level is most likely to result in serious consequences, like if you are riding a bike or learning to drive ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 2 - Mind wandering can be dangerous, depending on the activity you are participating in.

  • Figure 2 - Mind wandering can be dangerous, depending on the activity you are participating in.
  • For example, failure to maintain focus while biking could lead to a crash. Shallow mind wandering is less risky (you can likely refocus) but deeper mind wandering is far more dangerous. Photo by William Hook on Unsplash .

In sum, different kinds of mind wandering exist. Despite these differences in the types of mind wandering, a common finding is that people struggle with whatever they are doing when the mind wanders [ 5 ].

Question #2: Why Does Mind Wandering Happen?

Much evidence suggests that mind wandering is not a rare mistake, but actually a very normal part of the way the mind works! In other words, the mind will naturally wander unless it is given a specific job [ 2 , 6 ]. In fact, we now know that attention-related disorders like ADHD can be understood as a normal behavior (mind wandering) that is simply happening in an unusually high amount. This knowledge makes it easier to study how much mind wandering is normal and how mind wandering can impact other parts of life, such as emotions and learning [ 7 ].

So why do we mind wander in the first place? The likely reason is that mind wandering serves useful purposes. For instance, mind wandering can help in problem solving, creative thinking, and planning for the future [ 8 ]. Even when you are not trying to think about anything, your mind is still working in the background. Without trying, your mind might start focusing on memories that could help solve a problem in the present. This can be when creative or unusual ideas are made! For instance, a musician might combine different melodies to make something new.

Also, mind wandering can help with learning and memory—specifically for things that are not relevant to the task at hand [ 5 , 8 ]. People who mind wander more show greater learning for this irrelevant information, and the learning is best during periods of mind wandering [ 9 ]. After learning, mind wandering helps strengthen recent memories. This benefit is strongest when the memories are relevant to you personally.

Finally, mind wandering offers a time to “rest” and prepare for upcoming thinking [ 8 , 10 ]. It prevents new information from entering the mind and using up limited attention in processing that new information. When our minds wander, we can then process older information in new ways. Creative ideas can be built and used to plan or solve problems. When our minds wander, our attention can also focus on sources of information that are potentially useful, like thinking about plans for later in the day, for example. When that information is useful, it can be processed and remembered.

The mind actually does a lot when it wanders! So, do not see mind wandering as a mistake. Try to remember how mind wandering redirects your focus. This allows you to learn new things and to process information better. There are times when you should try to focus your attention, like when riding a bike. However, always remember that taking a mental break is healthy. There are many wonderful things in the world that you can notice when you let your mind wander. So, let yourself gaze out the window or stare at clouds, or even close your eyes and simply “be”.

Sustained Attention : ↑ The ability to focus attention while ignoring distractions, over time.

Mind Wandering : ↑ Thinking about anything other than the task you should be focusing on.

External Mind Wandering : ↑ Focusing attention on the world around you, through your senses (sight, sound, and more).

Internal Mind Wandering : ↑ Focusing attention on your inner thoughts, such as recalling memories or planning for the future.

Mind Blanking : ↑ When the mind is not active, and attention is not focused on any particular thoughts.

ADHD : ↑ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; a mental health disorder involving many instances of mind wandering.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

[1] ↑ Cheyne, J. A., Solman, G. J. F., Carriere, J. S. A., and Smilek, D. 2009. Anatomy of an error: a bidirectional state model of task engagement/disengagement and attention-related errors. Cognition 111:98–113. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.12.009

[2] ↑ Thomson, D. R., Besner, D., and Smilek, D. 2015. A resource-control account of sustained attention: evidence from mind-wandering and vigilance paradigms. Perspect. Psychol. Sci . 10:82–96. doi: 10.1177/1745691614556681

[3] ↑ Smallwood, J., and Schooler, J. W. 2006. The restless mind. Psychol. Bull . 132:946–58. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.946

[4] ↑ Cheyne, J. A., Carriere, J. S. A., and Smilek, D. 2009. Absent minds and absent agents: attention-lapse induced alienation of agency. Conscious Cogn . 18:481–93. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.01.005

[5] ↑ Blondé, P., Girardeau, J. C., Sperduti, M., and Piolino, P. 2022. A wandering mind is a forgetful mind: a systematic review on the influence of mind wandering on episodic memory encoding. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev . 132:774–92. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.11.015

[6] ↑ Ralph, B. C. W., Smith, A. C., Seli, P., and Smilek, D. 2019. Yearning for distraction: evidence for a trade-off between media multitasking and mind wandering. Can. J. Exp. Psychol . 74:56–72. doi: 10.1037/cep0000186

[7] ↑ Mowlem, F. D., Skirrow, C., Reid, P., Maltezos, S., Nijjar, S. K., Merwood, A., et al. 2019. Validation of the mind excessively wandering scale and the relationship of mind wandering to impairment in adult ADHD. J. Atten. Disord . 23:624–34. doi: 10.1177/1087054716651927

[8] ↑ Schooler, J. W., Smallwood, J., Christoff, K., Handy, T. C., Reichle, E. D., and Sayette, M. A. 2011. Meta-awareness, perceptual decoupling and the wandering mind. Trends Cogn. Sci. 15:319–26. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.006

[9] ↑ Decker, A., Dubois, M., Duncan, K., and Finn, A. S. 2022. Pay attention and you might miss it: greater learning during attentional lapses. Psychon. Bull. Rev . 30:1041–52. doi: 10.3758/s13423-022-02226-6

[10] ↑ Litman, L., and Davachi, L. 2008. Distributed learning enhances relational memory consolidation. Learn Mem . 15:711–6. doi: 10.1101/lm.1132008

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    The var-iance explained by mind wandering was largely independent of the variance explained by the na-ture of activities, suggesting that the two were in-dependent influences on happiness. In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive ...

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    Data captured from the study became the landmark paper "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" . As an undergrad, Killingsworth studied economics and engineering, and worked for a few years as a software product manager -- an experience during which, he says, "I began to question my assumptions about what defined success for an individual, an ...

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    Psychology has traditionally defined all these thought patterns as variations of "mind-wandering.". A review of brain imaging studies challenges the idea that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. (iStockphoto) But a review of brain imaging studies led by researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia offers a new way of ...

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    As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there's no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. Mind-wandering precedes unhappiness but unhappiness ...

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    events that happened in the past, might happen. in the future, or will never happen at all. Indeed, " stimulus-independen t thought " or " mind wan-. dering " appears to be the brain'sdefaultmode. of operation ( 1-3). Although this ability is a re-. markable ev o l u t i o n a r y ac h i e v e m e n t th a t al l o w s.

  16. Mind is a frequent, but not happy, wanderer: People ...

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    What's more, people reported feeling less happy when their minds wandered than when they didn't — even when the tasks at hand weren't enjoyable. "Our main result is that mind wandering on average is associated with less happiness," says Killingsworth. "Unpleasant mind wandering in particular makes the single biggest difference in ...

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    As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there's no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. Mind-wandering precedes unhappiness but unhappiness ...

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    Staying focused is important for nearly every human activity, yet we often struggle to do it. When we are unable to focus our thoughts, we say that we are mind wandering. Mind wandering is very common and occurs in every healthy mind. In fact, mind wandering may even reflect the regular way of thinking, unless people make special efforts to prevent it.

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    iance explained by mind wandering was largely independent of the variance explained by the na-ture of activities, suggesting that the two were in-dependent influences on happiness. In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening

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