By Scott Barry Kaufman
Daydreaming often gets a bad reputation.
While yes– researchers have associated “lapses of attention” with memory loss and depression, here’s the thing: not all daydreaming is a lapse of attention. Sure, when we need to pay attention to the outside world, it can be helpful to quiet the inner monologue. But much of our lives are spent in solitude, alone with our thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and inner strivings. It’d be quite shocking if daydreaming– an activity that consumes as much as 50% of our waking lives — wasn’t adaptive.
Well, it can be. But context matters. An emerging approach suggests that there are indeed many benefits of wool-gathering, but they depend on other factors such as the current goal, the thought content of daydreams and individual differences. In other words, depending on your momentary goal (paying attention to a boring lecture vs.dreaming up content for your next novel), who you are (neurotic vs. open to your inner experience) and what kind of thoughts enter your mind (ruminative vs. positive), daydreaming can either be disruptive or immensely helpful for achieving our personal goals.
Certainly, many people have recurring, ruminative thoughts that they wish would go away. And mindfulness can help with that. But as it turns out, most people daydream about the future as an attempt to resolve current concerns and uncompleted personal goals. Critically, most of this reverie involves other people.
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