minds wandering in

Why Do Our Minds Wander?

A scientist says mind-wandering or daydreaming help prepare us for the future

Tim Vernimmen, Knowable Magazine

When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unpredictable thoughts that crop up when people stop paying attention to their surroundings and the task at hand? Thoughts that couldn’t be linked to any measurable outward behavior?

But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, forged ahead. He used as his tool a downright tedious computer task that was intended to reproduce the kinds of lapses of attention that cause us to pour milk into someone’s cup when they asked for black coffee. And he started out by asking study participants a few basic questions to gain insight into when and why minds tend to wander, and what subjects they tend to wander toward. After a while, he began to scan participants’ brains as well, to catch a glimpse of what was going on in there during mind-wandering.

Smallwood learned that unhappy minds tend to wander in the past, while happy minds often ponder the future . He also became convinced that wandering among our memories is crucial to help prepare us for what is yet to come. Though some kinds of mind-wandering — such as dwelling on problems that can’t be fixed — may be associated with depression , Smallwood now believes mind-wandering is rarely a waste of time. It is merely our brain trying to get a bit of work done when it is under the impression that there isn’t much else going on.

Smallwood, who coauthored an influential 2015 overview of mind-wandering research in the Annual Review of Psychology, is the first to admit that many questions remain to be answered.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Is mind-wandering the same thing as daydreaming, or would you say those are different?

I think it’s a similar process used in a different context. When you’re on holiday, and you’ve got lots of free time, you might say you’re daydreaming about what you’d like to do next. But when you’re under pressure to perform, you’d experience the same thoughts as mind-wandering.

I think it is more helpful to talk about the underlying processes: spontaneous thought, or the decoupling of attention from perception, which is what happens when our thoughts separate from our perception of the environment. Both these processes take place during mind-wandering and daydreaming.

It often takes us a while to catch ourselves mind-wandering. How can you catch it to study it in other people?

In the beginning, we gave people experimental tasks that were really boring, so that mind-wandering would happen a lot. We would just ask from time to time, “Are you mind-wandering?” while recording the brain’s activity in an fMRI scanner.

But what I’ve realized, after doing studies like that for a long time, is that if we want to know how thinking works in the real world, where people are doing things like watching TV or going for a run, most of the data we have are never going to tell us very much.

So we are now trying to study these situations . And instead of doing experiments where we just ask, “Are you mind-wandering?” we are now asking people a lot of different questions, like: “Are your thoughts detailed? Are they positive? Are they distracting you?”

How and why did you decide to study mind-wandering?

I started studying mind-wandering at the start of my career, when I was young and naive.

I didn’t really understand at the time why nobody was studying it. Psychology was focused on measurable, outward behavior then. I thought to myself: That’s not what I want to understand about my thoughts. What I want to know is: Why do they come, where do they come from, and why do they persist even if they interfere with attention to the here and now?

Around the same time, brain imaging techniques were developing, and they were telling neuroscientists that something happens in the brain even when it isn’t occupied with a behavioral task. Large regions of the brain, now called the default mode network , did the opposite: If you gave people a task, the activity in these areas went down.

When scientists made this link between brain activity and mind-wandering, it became fashionable. I’ve been very lucky, because I hadn’t anticipated any of that when I started my PhD, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. But I’ve seen it all pan out.

Would you say, then, that mind-wandering is the default mode for our brains?

It turns out to be more complicated than that. Initially, researchers were very sure that the default mode network rarely increased its activity during tasks. But these tasks were all externally focused — they involved doing something in the outside world. When researchers later asked people to do a task that doesn’t require them to interact with their environment — like think about the future — that activated the default mode network as well.

More recently, we have identified much simpler tasks that also activate the default mode network. If you let people watch a series of shapes like triangles or squares on a screen, and every so often you surprise them and ask something — like, “In the last trial, which side was the triangle on?”— regions within the default mode network increase activity when they’re making that decision . That’s a challenging observation if you think the default mode network is just a mind-wandering system.

But what both situations have in common is the person is using information from memory. I now think the default mode network is necessary for any thinking based on information from memory — and that includes mind-wandering.

Would it be possible to demonstrate that this is indeed the case?

In a recent study, instead of asking people whether they were paying attention, we went one step further . People were in a scanner reading short factual sentences on a screen. Occasionally, we’d show them a prompt that said, “Remember,” followed by an item from a list of things from their past that they’d provided earlier. So then, instead of reading, they’d remember the thing we showed them. We could cause them to remember.

What we find is that the brain scans in this experiment look remarkably similar to mind-wandering. That is important: It gives us more control over the pattern of thinking than when it occurs spontaneously, like in naturally occurring mind-wandering. Of course, that is a weakness as well, because it’s not spontaneous. But we’ve already done lots of spontaneous studies.

When we make people remember things from the list, we recapitulate quite a lot of what we saw in spontaneous mind-wandering. This suggests that at least some of the activity we see when minds wander is indeed associated with the retrieval of memories. We now think the decoupling between attention and perception happens because people are remembering.

Have you asked people what their minds are wandering toward?

The past and future seem to really dominate people’s thinking . I think things like mind-wandering are attempts by the brain to make sense of what has happened, so that we can behave better in the future. I think this type of thinking is a really ingrained part of how our species has conquered the world. Almost nothing we’re doing at any moment in time can be pinpointed as only mattering then.

That’s a defining difference. By that, I don’t mean that other animals can’t imagine the future, but that our world is built upon our ability to do so, and to learn from the past to build a better future. I think animals that focused only on the present were outcompeted by others that remembered things from the past and could focus on future goals, for millions of years — until you got humans, a species that’s obsessed with taking things that happened and using them to gain added value for future behavior.

People are also, very often, mind-wandering about social situations . This makes sense, because we have to work with other people to achieve almost all of our goals, and other people are much more unpredictable than the Sun rising in the morning.

Though it is clearly useful, isn’t it also very depressing to keep returning to issues from the past?

It certainly can be. We have found that mind-wandering about the past tends to be associated with negative mood.

Let me give you an example of what I think may be happening. For a scientist like me, coming up with creative solutions to scientific problems through mind-wandering is very rewarding. But you can imagine that if my situation changes and I end up with a set of problems I can’t fix, the habit of going over the past may become difficult to break. My brain will keep activating the problem-solving system, even if it can’t do anything to fix the problem, because now my problems are things like getting divorced and my partner doesn’t want any more to do with me. If such a thing happens and all I’ve got is an imaginative problem-solving system, it’s not going to help me, it’s just going to be upsetting. I just have to let it go.

That’s where I think mindfulness could be useful, because the idea of mindfulness is to bring your attention to the moment. So if I’d be more mindful, I’d be going into problem-solving mode less often.

If you spend long enough practicing being in the moment, maybe that becomes a habit. It’s about being able to control your mind-wandering. Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, which aims to help people change how they think and behave, is another way to reduce harmful mind-wandering.

Nowadays, it seems that many of the idle moments in which our minds would previously have wandered are now spent scrolling our phones. How do you think that might change how our brain functions?

The interesting thing about social media and mind-wandering, I think, is that they may have similar motivations. Mind-wandering is very social. In our studies , we’re locking people in small booths and making them do these tasks and they keep coming out and saying, “I’m thinking about my friends.” That’s telling us that keeping up with others is very important to people.

Social groups are so important to us as a species that we spend most of our time trying to anticipate what others are going to do, and I think social media is filling part of the gap that mind-wandering is trying to fill. It’s like mainlining social information: You can try to imagine what your friend is doing, or you can just find out online. Though, of course, there is an important difference: When you’re mind-wandering, you’re ordering your own thoughts. Scrolling social media is more passive.

Could there be a way for us to suppress mind-wandering in situations where it might be dangerous?

Mind-wandering can be a benefit and a curse, but I wouldn’t be confident that we know yet when it would be a good idea to stop it. In our studies at the moment, we are trying to map how people think across a range of different types of tasks. We hope this approach will help us identify when mind-wandering is likely to be useful or not — and when we should try to control it and when we shouldn’t.

For example, in our studies, people who are more intelligent don’t mind wander so often when the task is hard but can do it more when tasks are easy . It is possible that they are using the idle time when the external world is not demanding their attention to think about other important matters. This highlights the uncertainty about whether mind wandering is always a bad thing, because this sort of result implies it is likely to be useful under some circumstances.

This map — of how people think in different situations — has become very important in our research. This is the work I’m going to focus on now, probably for the rest of my career.

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Let Your Mind Wander

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

Posted February 20, 2024 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Understanding Attention
• Find a therapist to help with ADHD
• Mind wandering is a universal human experience rooted in evolution and brain science.
• Creative thinking and problem-solving happen when people's minds wander.
• 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.

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.

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.

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. , 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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How to Let Your Mind Wander

Research suggests that people with freely moving thoughts are happier. Easy, repetitive activities like walking can help get you in the right mindset.

By Malia Wollan

“Sometimes you just want to let your mind go free,” says Julia Kam, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the Internal Attention Lab at the University of Calgary. Kam became interested in her subject 15 years ago as an undergraduate struggling with her own distracted thoughts during lectures. “I came into the field wanting to find a cure,” she says. But the deeper she got into research, the more she came to appreciate the freedom of an unfocused mind. “When your thoughts are just jumping from one topic to the next without an overarching theme or goal, that can be very liberating,” she says.

Researchers have found that people spend up to 50 percent of their time mind-wandering. Some internal thinking can be detrimental, especially the churning, ruminative sort often associated with depression and anxiety. Try instead to cultivate what psychologists call freely moving thoughts. Such nimble thinking might start with a yearning to see your grandmother, then careen to that feeling you get when looking down at clouds from an airplane, and then suddenly you’re pondering how deep you’d have to bore into the earth below your feet before you hit magma. Research suggests that people who do more of that type of mind-wandering are happier.

Facilitate unconstrained thinking by engaging in an easy, repetitive activity like walking; avoid it during riskier undertakings like driving. You’ll find it harder to go free-ranging if you’re myopically worried about something in your personal life, like an illness or an argument with a spouse.

For a recent study, Kam hooked subjects up for an electroencephalogram and then had them do a mundane task on a keyboard while periodically asking them about their thoughts. She was able to see, for the first time, a distinct neural marker for freely moving thoughts, which caused an increase in alpha waves in the brain’s frontal cortex. This is the same region where scientists see alpha waves in people doing creative problem-solving. We live in a culture that values work and productivity over almost everything else, but remember, your mind is yours. Make space to think in idle ways unrelated to tasks. “It can replenish you,” Kam says.

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• Review Article
• Published: 22 September 2016

Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework

• Kalina Christoff 1 , 2 ,
• Zachary C. Irving 3 ,
• Kieran C. R. Fox 1 ,
• R. Nathan Spreng 4 , 5 &
• Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna 6  

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume  17 ,  pages 718–731 ( 2016 ) Cite this article

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In the past 15 years, mind-wandering has become a prominent topic in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Whereas mind-wandering has come to be predominantly defined as task-unrelated and/or stimulus-unrelated thought, we argue that this content-based definition fails to capture the defining quality of mind-wandering: the relatively free and spontaneous arising of mental states as the mind wanders.

We define spontaneous thought as a mental state, or a sequence of mental states, that arises relatively freely due to an absence of strong constraints on the contents of each state and on the transitions from one mental state to another. We propose that there are two general ways in which the content of mental states, and the transitions between them, can be constrained.

Deliberate and automatic constraints serve to limit the contents of thought and how these contents change over time. Deliberate constraints are implemented through cognitive control, whereas automatic constraints can be considered as a family of mechanisms that operate outside of cognitive control, including sensory or affective salience.

Within our framework, mind-wandering can be defined as a special case of spontaneous thought that tends to be more deliberately constrained than dreaming, but less deliberately constrained than creative thinking and goal-directed thought. In addition, mind-wandering can be clearly distinguished from rumination and other types of thought that are marked by a high degree of automatic constraints, such as obsessive thought.

In general, deliberate constraints are minimal during dreaming, tend to increase somewhat during mind-wandering, increase further during creative thinking and are strongest during goal-directed thought. There is a range of low-to-medium level of automatic constraints that can occur during dreaming, mind-wandering and creative thinking, but thought ceases to be spontaneous at the strongest levels of automatic constraint, such as during rumination or obsessive thought.

We propose a neural model of the interactions among sources of variability, automatic constraints and deliberate constraints on thought: the default network (DN) subsystem centred around the medial temporal lobe (MTL) (DN MTL ) and sensorimotor areas can act as sources of variability; the salience networks, the dorsal attention network (DAN) and the core DN subsystem (DN CORE ) can exert automatic constraints on the output of the DN MTL and sensorimotor areas, thus limiting the variability of thought; and the frontoparietal control network can exert deliberate constraints on thought by flexibly coupling with the DN CORE , the DAN or the salience networks, thus reinforcing or reducing the automatic constraints being exerted by the DN CORE , the DAN or the salience networks.

Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering — how mental states change over time — have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that also includes creative thought and dreaming. This dynamic framework can shed new light on mental disorders that are marked by alterations in spontaneous thought, including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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The authors are grateful to R. Buckner, P. Carruthers, M. Cuddy-Keane, M. Dixon, S. Fazelpour, D. Stan, E. Thompson, R. Todd and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, and to A. Herrera-Bennett for help with the figure preparation. K.C. was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) (RGPIN 327317–11) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (MOP-115197). Z.C.I. was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellowship, the Balzan Styles of Reasoning Project and a Templeton Integrated Philosophy and Self Control grant. K.C.R.F. was supported by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. R.N.S. was supported by an Alzheimer's Association grant (NIRG-14-320049). J.R.A.-H. was supported by a Templeton Science of Prospection grant.

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Kalina Christoff & Kieran C. R. Fox

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Kalina Christoff

Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

Zachary C. Irving

Department of Human Development, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, Cornell University,

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A mental state, or a sequence of mental states, including the transitions that lead to each state.

A transient cognitive or emotional state of the organism that can be described in terms of its contents (what the state is 'about') and the relation that the subject bears to the contents (for example, perceiving, believing, fearing, imagining or remembering).

Thoughts with contents that are unrelated to what the person having those thoughts is currently doing.

Thinking that is characteristically fanciful (that is, divorced from physical or social reality); it can either be spontaneous, as in fanciful mind-wandering, or constrained, as during deliberately fantasizing about a topic.

A thought with contents that are unrelated to the current external perceptual environment.

A deliberate guidance of current thoughts, perceptions or actions, which is imposed in a goal-directed manner by currently active top-down executive processes.

The emotional significance of percepts, thoughts or other elements of mental experience, which can draw and sustain attention through mechanisms outside of cognitive control.

Features of current perceptual experience, such as high perceptual contrast, which can draw and sustain attention through mechanisms outside of cognitive control.

The process of spontaneously or deliberately inferring one's own or other agents' mental states.

Flexible combinations of distinct elements of prior experiences, constructed in the process of imagining a novel (often future-oriented) event.

A type of dreaming during which the dreamer is aware that he or she is currently dreaming and, in some cases, can have deliberate control over dream content and progression.

The ability to produce ideas that are both novel (that is, original and unique) and useful (that is, appropriate and meaningful).

A method in which participants are probed at random intervals and asked to report on aspects of their subjective experience immediately before the probe.

Different ways of categorizing a thought based on its contents, including stimulus dependence (whether the thought is about stimuli that one is currently perceiving), task relatedness (whether the thought is about the current task), modality (visual, auditory, and so on), valence (whether the thought is negative, neutral or positive) or temporal orientation (whether the thought is about the past, present or future).

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Christoff, K., Irving, Z., Fox, K. et al. Mind-wandering as spontaneous thought: a dynamic framework. Nat Rev Neurosci 17 , 718–731 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.113

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It’s normal for your mind to wander. Here’s how to maximise the benefits

Psychology researcher, Bond University

Associate Professor in Psychology, Bond University

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Have you ever found yourself thinking about loved ones during a boring meeting? Or going over the plot of a movie you recently watched during a drive to the supermarket?

This is the cognitive phenomenon known as “ mind wandering ”. Research suggests it can account for up to 50% of our waking cognition (our mental processes when awake) in both western and non-western societies .

So what can help make this time productive and beneficial?

Mind wandering is not daydreaming

Mind wandering is often used interchangeably with daydreaming. They are both considered types of inattention but are not the same thing.

Mind wandering is related to a primary task, such as reading a book, listening to a lecture, or attending a meeting. The mind withdraws from that task and focuses on internally generated, unrelated thoughts.

On the other hand, daydreaming does not involve a primary, active task. For example, daydreaming would be thinking about an ex-partner while travelling on a bus and gazing out the window. Or lying in bed and thinking about what it might be like to go on a holiday overseas.

If you were driving the bus or making the bed and your thoughts diverted from the primary task, this would be classed as mind wandering.

The benefits of mind wandering

Mind wandering is believed to play an important role in generating new ideas , conclusions or insights (also known as “aha! moments”). This is because it can give your mind a break and free it up to think more creatively.

This type of creativity does not always have to be related to creative pursuits (such as writing a song or making an artwork). It could include a new way to approach a university or school assignment or a project at work. Another benefit of mind wandering is relief from boredom, providing the opportunity to mentally retreat from a monotonous task.

For example, someone who does not enjoy washing dishes could think about their upcoming weekend plans while doing the chore. In this instance, mind wandering assists in “passing the time” during an uninteresting task.

Mind wandering also tends to be future-oriented. This can provide an opportunity to reflect upon and plan future goals, big or small. For example, what steps do I need to take to get a job after graduation? Or, what am I going to make for dinner tomorrow?

Read more: Alpha, beta, theta: what are brain states and brain waves? And can we control them?

What are the risks?

Mind wandering is not always beneficial, however. It can mean you miss out on crucial information. For example, there could be disruptions in learning if a student engages in mind wandering during a lesson that covers exam details. Or an important building block for learning.

Some tasks also require a lot of concentration in order to be safe. If you’re thinking about a recent argument with a partner while driving, you run the risk of having an accident.

That being said, it can be more difficult for some people to control their mind wandering. For example, mind wandering is more prevalent in people with ADHD.

Read more: How your brain decides what to think

What can you do to maximise the benefits?

There are several things you can do to maximise the benefits of mind wandering.

• be aware : awareness of mind wandering allows you to take note of and make use of any productive thoughts. Alternatively, if it is not a good time to mind wander it can help bring your attention back to the task at hand

context matters : try to keep mind wandering to non-demanding tasks rather than demanding tasks. Otherwise, mind wandering could be unproductive or unsafe. For example, try think about that big presentation during a car wash rather than when driving to and from the car wash

content matters : if possible, try to keep the content positive. Research has found , keeping your thoughts more positive, specific and concrete (and less about “you”), is associated with better wellbeing. For example, thinking about tasks to meet upcoming work deadlines could be more productive than ruminating about how you felt stressed or failed to meet past deadlines.

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• Daydreaming
• Concentration
• Mind wandering

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How mind-wandering may be good for you, new research suggests that mind-wandering can serve important functions for our performance and well-being..

When writing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wander, hoping the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was troubled by studies that found an association between mind-wandering and problems like unhappiness and depression —and even a shorter life expectancy . This research suggests that focusing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spacing out—which I personally love to do—is not.

Now, new studies are bringing nuance to this science. Whether or not mind-wandering is a negative depends on a lot of factors—like whether it’s purposeful or spontaneous, the content of your musings, and what kind of mood you are in. In some cases, a wandering mind can lead to creativity, better moods, greater productivity, and more concrete goals.

Here is what some recent research says about the upsides of a meandering mind.

Mind-wandering can make you more creative

It’s probably not a big surprise that mind-wandering augments creativity—particularly “divergent thinking,” or being able to come up with novel ideas.

In one study , researchers gave participants a creativity test called the Unusual Uses Task that asks you to dream up novel uses for an everyday item, like a paperclip or a newspaper. Between the first and second stages, participants either engaged in an undemanding task to encourage mind-wandering or a demanding task that took all of their concentration; or they were given a resting period or no rest. Those participants who engaged in mind-wandering during the undemanding task improved their performance much more than any of the other groups. Taking their focus off of the task and mind-wandering, instead, were critical to success.


“The findings reported here provide arguably the most direct evidence to date that conditions that favor mind-wandering also enhance creativity,” write the authors. In fact, they add, mind-wandering may “serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.”

As a more recent study found, mind-wandering improved people’s creativity above and beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles.

Mind-wandering seems to involve the default network of the brain, which is known to be active when we are not engaged directly in tasks and is also related to creativity.

So perhaps I’m right to let my focus wander while writing: It helps my mind put together information in novel and potentially compelling ways without my realizing it. It’s no wonder that my best inspirations seem to come when I’m in the shower or hiking for miles on end.

Mind-wandering can make you happier…depending on the content

The relationship between mind-wandering and mood may be more complicated than we thought.

In one study , researchers pinged participants on a regular basis to see what they were doing, whether or not their minds were wandering, and how they were feeling. As in an earlier experiment , people tended to be in a negative mood when they were mind-wandering. But when researchers examined the content of people’s thoughts during mind-wandering, they found an interesting caveat: If participants’ minds were engaged in interesting, off-task musings, their moods became more positive rather than more negative.

As the authors conclude, “Those of us who regularly find our minds in the clouds—musing about the topics that most engage us—can take solace in knowing that at least this form of mind-wandering is associated with elevated mood.”

It may be that mood affects mind-wandering more than the other way around . In a similar study , researchers concluded that feeling sad or being in a bad mood tended to lead to unhappy mind-wandering, but that mind-wandering itself didn’t lead to later bad moods. Earlier experiments may have conflated mind-wandering with rumination—an unhealthy preoccupation with past failures that is tied to depression.

“This study suggests that mind-wandering is not something that is inherently bad for our happiness,” write the authors. Instead, “Sadness is likely to lead the mind to wander and that mind-wandering is likely to be [emotionally] negative.”

A review of the research on mind-wandering came to a similar conclusion: Mind-wandering is distinct from rumination and therefore has a different relationship to mood.


Compassion Meditation

Strengthen feelings of concern for the suffering of others

Can we actually direct our mind-wandering toward more positive thoughts and away from rumination? It turns out that we can! One study found that people who engaged in compassion-focused meditation practices had more positive mind-wandering. As an added bonus, people with more positive mind-wandering were also more caring toward themselves and others, which itself is tied to happiness.

Mind-wandering may improve job performance

Taking a break from work can be a good thing—perhaps because our minds are freer to wander.

Mind-wandering is particularly useful when work is mind-numbing. In one study , participants reported on their mind-wandering during a repetitive task. Participants who engaged in more mind-wandering performed better and faster, decreasing their response times significantly. The researchers speculated that mind-wandering allowed people to go off-task briefly, reset, and see data with fresh eyes—so that they didn’t miss sudden changes.

In another study , researchers aimed to figure out what parts of the brain were implicated in mind-wandering and discovered something unexpected. When their frontal lobes were stimulated with a small electrical current to boost mind-wandering, people’s performance on an attention task slightly improved.

Of course, not every job calls for mind-wandering. A surgeon or a driver should stay focused on the task at hand, since mind-wandering could be detrimental to both . On the other hand, even for them it might be rejuvenating to take a mind-wandering break after their workday is over, leading to more focused attention the next time around.

Mind-wandering may help us with goal-setting

It seems like mind-wandering would be detrimental when it comes to planning for the future. In fact, some research suggests mind-wandering can improve goal-setting.

In a recent neuroscience experiment , participants did an undemanding task and reported on the content of their thoughts as researchers scanned their brains with fMRI. Afterwards, they wrote for 15 minutes about personal goals or TV programs (the control group). Then, they repeated these two tasks—the undemanding one and writing about goals or TV.

More on Mind-Wandering

Explore whether mind wandering makes you unhappy or less caring .

Discover how to focus a wandering mind .

Read Rick Hanson’s seven tips for paying attention .

Read a skeptical scientist’s take on the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering .

Analyzers unaware of the study’s purpose were asked to assess the concreteness of participants’ goal-setting and TV program descriptions. The result? People with wandering minds—who probably started musing about what they really wanted in life after the first writing session—ultimately came up with more concrete and higher-quality goal descriptions in the second session. Over the course of the experiment, their brains also showed an increase in connectivity between the hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex—areas implicated in goal-setting.

Research has also found that, the more people engage in mind-wandering during a task, the more they are willing to wait for a reward afterwards. According to the researchers, this suggests that mind-wandering helps delay gratification and “engages processes associated with the successful management of long-term goals.”

On the other hand, some research suggests mind-wandering makes us less “gritty”—or less able to stay focused on our goals to completion—especially if it is spontaneous rather than deliberate. So, it may be important to consider where you are in the process of goal creation before deciding mind-wandering would be a good idea.

None of this suggests that mind-wandering is better for us than being focused. More likely, both aspects of cognition serve a purpose. Under the right circumstances, a wandering mind may actually benefit us and possibly those around us. The trick is to know when to set your mind free.

About the Author

Jill Suttie

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

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Mind-Wandering With and Without Intention

1 Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Evan F. Risko

2 Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Daniel Smilek

Daniel l. schacter.

The past decade has seen a surge of research examining mind-wandering, but most of this research has not considered the potential importance of distinguishing between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering. However, a recent series of papers has demonstrated that mind-wandering reported in empirical investigations frequently occurs with and without intention, and more critically, that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering are dissociable. This emerging literature suggests that to increase clarity in the literature, there is a need to reconsider the bulk of the mind-wandering literature with an eye toward deconvolving these two different cognitive experiences. In this review, we highlight recent trends in investigations of the intentionality of mind-wandering and outline a novel theoretical framework regarding the mechanisms underlying intentional and unintentional mind-wandering.

The Intentionality of Mind-Wandering

Research on mind-wandering has seen a massive increase in recent years, spreading to a wide variety of psychological domains including those examining cognition [ 1 – 10 ], neuroscience [ 11 – 16 ], education [ 17 – 20 ], creativity [ 21 , 22 ], clinical populations [ 23 – 26 ], and workplace functioning [ 27 ], to name a few. The rapidly growing body of research on mind-wandering was largely stimulated by Smallwood and Schooler’s [ 28 ] integrative review of related concepts such as ‘task-unrelated imagery and thoughts (TUITs)’ [ 29 ] and ‘stimulus-independent thought’ [ 30 ]. Although the unification of these related concepts under the single term ‘mind-wandering’ has proven to be exceptionally useful in stimulating research, the field has now advanced to a point where it is necessary to make finer distinctions and to consider different types of mind-wandering [ 31 ]. One such distinction, originally advanced prior to the recent surge of research focused on “mind-wandering,” is that between intentional task-unrelated thought and unintentional task-unrelated thought [ 32 ] (see Box 1 ). Although this distinction has been largely ignored since its inception, an emerging area of research focused on the intentionality of mind-wandering has clearly demonstrated the practical and theoretical utility of making this distinction. In this review, we discuss this recent trend, and make the case that the distinction between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering is becoming, and ought to continue to be, a prominent focus in research on mind-wandering.

Differences between Unintentional and Intentional Mind-Wandering

An early distinction between unintentional and intentional task-unrelated imagery and thoughts (TUITs) was advanced over 20 years ago by Giambra and colleagues [ 29 , 32 , 39 ]. Giambra [ 29 ] noted “TUITs may occupy awareness because they capture our attention – an uncontrolled shift – or because we have deliberately shifted our attention to them – a controlled shift” (p. 2). He also identified several ways in which these two types of attentional shifts differ. According to Giambra [ 29 ]:

“Voluntary shifts of attention to TUITs would seem to involve higher orders of control in information processing or be motivationally determined and to be benign because of their controlled nature. However, involuntary shifts of attention from the task at hand to TUITs would seem to involve lower orders of control in information processing and not [be] motivationally determined; in addition, involuntary shifts may be less benign because they are uncontrolled” (p. 2).

To these differences between intentional and unintentional TUITs (or mind-wandering), we could also add possible differences in subjective experiences. Unintentional episodes of mind-wandering lack a distinct moment of conscious initiation, and during these episodes, participants are likely not meta-cognitively aware that they are mind-wandering. Consequently, once the episode is detected, the participant might experience surprise, vexation, and the feeling of a lack of control. In contrast, intentional episodes of mind-wandering are associated with a conscious moment of intention to initiate (or to continue) a mind-wandering episode. Moreover, intentional mind-wandering likely includes metacognitive awareness of its occurrence (at least at some point during the episode) and is therefore unlikely to be associated with surprise at or vexation, or the feeling of a lack of control.

Interestingly, although unintended, episodes of unintentional mind-wandering are nevertheless experienced as being authored by the individual (in the sense of authorship noted by [ 80 ]) and are thus accompanied by a sense of agency. In other words, unintentional mind-wandering is not experienced as being derived from an alien source, but as originating within the individual. In this way, unintended mind-wandering is similar to non-deliberate action. With respect to non-deliberate action, Bayne and Levy [ 81 ] note: “Few of our actions derive from processes of conscious deliberation, and there is no reason to think that those actions that are non-deliberative are any less authored than those that are.” Nevertheless, an interesting direction for future research is to examine how people’s feeling of authorship (i.e., agency) differs between intentional and unintentional bouts of mind-wandering.

Mind-Wandering Can Occur With or Without Intention

Although mind-wandering was initially defined as off-task thought that occurs either with or without intention [ 28 ], some researchers have assumed that the mind-wandering they have examined in their investigations occurred without intention [ 2 , 11 , 33 – 38 ]. At face value, this seems to be a reasonable assumption. That is, when participants enter the laboratory, there is a tacit assumption that they will do their best to attend to the assigned tasks. Hence, in cases where participants report the experience of mind-wandering during task completion, it would be reasonable for a researcher to assume that this mind-wandering occurred despite the participants’ best intentions to remain focused on the task (i.e., that it occurred unintentionally). Notwithstanding the apparent soundness of this assumption, it has been challenged by recent studies that have validated and extended previous work [ 32 , 39 ] showing that, in the laboratory, people’s mind-wandering episodes are frequently engaged with intention [ 40 – 44 ].

The finding that people frequently report intentional mind-wandering was revealed in a series of experiments that examined rates of mind-wandering while participants completed behavioral tasks. To capture moments during which people intentionally and unintentionally mind-wandered, these experiments have relied upon a variant of the commonly used experience-sampling technique, which involves periodically presenting participants with “thought probes” while they complete an ongoing task. Although thought probes traditionally require participants to periodically report whether they are focused on the current task or mind-wandering, to examine the intentionality of mind-wandering episodes, recent studies have required participants to instead report whether they were (1) focused on the task, (2) intentionally mind-wandering, or (3) unintentionally mind-wandering [ 40 , 44 ]. Despite the fact that some researchers have come to assume that laboratory-based mind-wandering reflects unintentionally engaged off-task thought, 34% to 41% of the mind-wandering that participants reported while completing these laboratory tasks has been engaged with intention ([ 41 , 45 ], respectively). Although other studies have found comparatively less intentional mind-wandering in laboratory tasks [ 40 ], the fact that, in at least some tasks, a substantial portion of mind-wandering occurs intentionally suggests that participants may not be particularly motivated to complete some psychological tasks, or that they may perceive the tasks to be sufficiently easy that they believe they can afford to mind-wander without hindering performance (see Box 2 ).

Implications of the Finding that People Frequently Intentionally Mind-Wander

That participants frequently intentionally mind-wander is important because it indicates that they may, in some (but not all) situations, have low motivation to perform the kinds of tasks that are frequently used by mind-wandering researchers. This is, however, somewhat ironic because many researchers have largely been interested in examining unintentional mind-wandering [ 33 – 35 , 82 – 89 ], and to this end, they have often presented participants with tedious and boring tasks to elicit unintentional mind-wandering (e.g., sustained-attention and vigilance tasks; [ 14 , 67 , 90 – 95 ]). However, given that (1) people’s level of motivation tends to be rather low when they experience boredom [ 96 , 97 ], and (2) decreases in motivation levels are associated with increases in intentional mind-wandering [ 41 ], it might be that the common employment of boring tasks in the context of research on mind-wandering has inadvertently elicited intentional mind-wandering. The implication, then, is that researchers who are specifically interested in examining unintentional mind-wandering might want to more carefully consider the type of tasks they choose to administer in their investigations.

Although rates of intentional mind-wandering appear to be particularly high in cases where researchers employ relatively boring tasks – as is typically done in research investigating mind-wandering – it appears that intentional mind-wandering also rears its head during other, ostensibly less boring, tasks that might be of interest in other domains of psychological research. For instance, one study [ 45 ] showed that participants viewing a video-recorded lecture in the laboratory reported intentional mind-wandering to roughly 10% of thought probes (with similar rates of intentional mind-wandering reported during reading tasks; [ 51 ]). Because thought probes provide an estimate of the total amount of time participants spend mind-wandering during laboratory tasks, this finding indicates that participants spent about 10% of their time deliberately disengaging from the task in the service of mind-wandering, or about three of the 30 minutes that it took to complete the task. Thus, beyond having implications for the field of mind-wandering, the finding that people intentionally mind-wander in the laboratory while completing various psychological tasks might be important for the field of psychology as a whole. Indeed, although it is commonly assumed that participants are motivated to be attentive to the psychological tasks they are given, it appears that they spend a considerable amount of time deliberately thinking about things other than the task.

Complementing these state-level findings, research that has investigated rates of mind-wandering at the trait level has revealed a similar pattern of results. Because investigations of mind-wandering at the trait level are concerned with peoples’ reports of their everyday experiences of mind-wandering, these studies have often assessed the intentionality of mind-wandering by administering questionnaires that require people to retrospectively report the extent to which they have engaged in intentional and unintentional mind-wandering in their daily lives [ 23 , 42 , 46 , 47 ], although some researchers have more directly assessed rates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering in daily life, while people were engaged in everyday activities ([ 48 – 50 ]; see Box 3 ). Critically, research administering such questionnaires has reported that people frequently engage in intentional mind-wandering in everyday life, and that these rates actually exceed those of unintentional mind-wandering [ 42 , 46 , 47 ]. Moreover, recent research has shown positive correlations between state- and trait-level reports of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering [ 42 ]: That is, individuals who more frequently report intentional mind-wandering in their everyday lives also more frequently report intentional mind-wandering when probed during behavioural tasks in the laboratory. Likewise, individuals who more frequently report unintentional mind-wandering in their everyday lives tend to report more unintentional mind-wandering in the laboratory. Importantly, this work has provided evidence for the construct validity and the generalizability of both trait and state indices of mind-wandering.

Intentional and Unintentional Mind-wandering in Everyday Life

One study [ 48 ] examined people’s rates of mind-wandering in everyday life by administering a ‘daily-life experience-sampling protocol’ that required participants to respond, via a Palm Pilot PDA, to questionnaires pertaining to their cognitive activity as they went about their daily routines. In particular, over the course of a week, between noon and midnight, participants’ Palm Pilots would beep to signal them to complete eight questionnaires. Critically, included among the questionnaires was an item pertaining to participants’ rates of intentional mind-wandering: “I allowed my thoughts to wander on purpose.” This item, presented in any cases where participants indicated that they were mind-wandering, was endorsed with a mean response of 4.06 on scale from 1 to 7 (1 = not at all, 7 = very much), suggesting that in everyday life, intentional mind-wandering is a relatively common event.

In more recent work investigating mind-wandering in everyday life, researchers [ 49 ] examined the intentionality of mind-wandering of students enrolled in a large undergraduate course. Students enrolled in the course were queried about their mind-wandering during almost every class across an entire semester. Importantly, at various points throughout the lectures, students were asked to report whether they were “on task,” “intentionally mind-wandering,” or “unintentionally mind-wandering.” Results indicated that participants reported mind-wandering roughly 34% of the time, with slightly more than half of their mind-wandering episodes occurring intentionally (see Figure I ). Thus, again, this finding suggests that in everyday life, people frequently experience intentional mind-wandering.

Mean proportion of the thought probes to which participants responded that they were engaging in overall (either intentional or unintentional), intentional, or unintentional mind-wandering (squares), as well as individual data points for each student included in the analysis (circles). Error bars reflect 95% confidence intervals. Adapted from [ 49 ].

Dissociating Intentional and Unintentional Mind-Wandering

Although the foregoing research has clearly demonstrated that people experience and report intentional and unintentional mind-wandering at both the trait and state levels, it is important to evaluate whether these two types of mind-wandering behave differently. Showing that unintentional and intentional mind-wandering are sometimes dissociable would indicate the importance of distinguishing between the two and present an important challenge for previous research working under the assumption of a unitary (unintentional) view of mind-wandering. Importantly, recent research has shown that these two types of mind-wandering are sometimes (although not always [ 47 ]) dissociable in that they are (1) uniquely associated with certain individual-differences variables [ 25 ], and (2) differentially influenced by certain experimental manipulations [ 44 , 51 ].

Individual Differences in Intentional and Unintentional Mind-wandering

Research examining possible dissociations of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering at the individual-differences level has shown that these two types of mind-wandering sometimes independently predict variables of theoretical interest. For example, intentional and unintentional mind-wandering have been found to be differentially associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; [ 23 ]) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; [ 25 ]). In particular, whereas individuals reporting higher rates of unintentional mind-wandering also report more symptoms associated with ADHD and OCD, research has failed to observe a relation between rates of intentional mind-wandering and ADHD/OCD symptomatology. In addition, it has been shown that people’s level of motivation to perform well on a given task is negatively associated with rates of intentional mind-wandering during that task, whereas the link between motivation and unintentional mind-wandering appears to be less robust [ 41 , 45 ].

Collectively, this research has demonstrated that there are cases in which individual-differences variables are more strongly associated with unintentional than intentional mind-wandering (e.g., ADHD and OCD), and conversely, cases in which such variables show the exact opposite pattern of results (e.g., motivation). Moreover, there has been at least one demonstration of a situation in which an individual-differences variable shared opposing unique associations with intentional and unintentional mind-wandering. Specifically, whereas rates of intentional mind-wandering uniquely positively predict people’s tendency to be non-reactive to their inner experiences (an aspect of mindfulness), rates of unintentional mind-wandering uniquely negatively predict this same factor [ 47 ]. Taken together, these dissociations indicate that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering are sometimes uniquely associated with certain individual-differences variables, which suggests the importance of separately assessing trait levels of these two types of mind-wandering.

State-Level Dissociations of Intentional and Unintentional Mind-wandering

Recent research has also shown that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering can behave quite differently under certain experimental manipulations. For example, one study [ 51 ] combined a re-reading manipulation with a thought-probe measure of mind-wandering and found that individuals mind-wandered more while re-reading compared to an initial reading. If the researchers had stopped there, they would have concluded, in line with extant literature, that rereading makes it more difficult to prevent our minds from unintentionally wandering away from the task. Although this is not an unreasonable conclusion to draw, it turns out to be incorrect: Follow-up experiments using probes that indexed the intentionality of mind-wandering revealed that the effect of re-reading on mind-wandering was driven completely by an increase in intentional mind-wandering, and that re-reading had no influence on unintentional mind- wandering.

In a similar vein, it was recently demonstrated that manipulations of task difficulty can have opposing effects on intentional and unintentional mind-wandering: whereas participants reported more intentional mind-wandering in an easy task than in a difficult task, they reported more unintentional mind-wandering in a difficult task than in an easy task [ 44 ]. This latter finding is particularly important because it reinforces the idea that the standard practice of conflating intentional and unintentional mind-wandering will likely produce underspecified or even incorrect conclusions, as it would have in the re-reading study discussed above. Indeed, although rates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering varied across the easy and the difficult condition, there was no difference in rates of mind-wandering across conditions when the intentionality of the episodes was ignored (as is the standard practice in the field). Hence, had the researchers not distinguished between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering, they would have drawn the incorrect conclusion that the task-difficulty manipulation did not affect rates of mind-wandering. Importantly, given that the vast majority of research on the topic of mind-wandering has not distinguished between intentional and unintentional types, this and other related findings suggest the possibility that some of the conclusions drawn in previous studies were incorrect or at least underspecified.

Taken together, the foregoing findings provide evidence that (1) challenges the notion that mind-wandering is a unitary construct that exclusively reflects unintentional thought, and (2) suggests that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering reflect unique, dissociable constructs that can behave differently in empirical investigations (see Figure 1, Key Figure ).

(A) Mean proportion of the thought probes to which participants reported overall mind-wandering (the sum of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering), intentional mind-wandering, or unintentional mind-wandering. Error bars are ± 1 SEM . Adapted from [ 41 ]. (B) Mean proportion of mind-wandering type (intentional, unintentional) reported during an easy and a difficult sustained-attention task. Participants reported more intentional mind-wandering in the easy than in the difficult condition, and conversely, more unintentional mind-wandering in the difficult than in the easy condition. Error bars are ± 1 SEM . Adapted from [ 44 ] (reprinted with permission from Psychological Science). (C) Scatterplot showing a non-significant relation between mean trait-level reports of intentional mind-wandering (residualized on trait-level reports of unintentional mind-wandering) and mean attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomatology, assessed by the Adult Self-Report ADHD scale (ASRS). Adapted from [ 23 ] (reprinted with permission from Springer Nature Publishing Group). (D) Scatterplot showing a significant positive relation between mean trait-level reports of unintentional mind-wandering (residualized on trait-level reports of intentional mind-wandering) and mean ADHD symptomatology, assessed by the ASRS. Adapted from [ 23 ] (reprinted with permission from Springer Nature Publishing Group).

Intentionality in Existing Models of Mind-Wandering

As one might surmise from the discussion above, to date the topic of intentionality has not been addressed in theoretical models of mind-wandering. Although this absence of intentionality does not necessarily commit these models to the idea that intentional mind-wandering does not exist, it does carry with it the implicit assumption that separate mechanisms are not required to explain the maintenance and occurrence of these two types of mind-wandering. For example, one prominent model of mind-wandering, known as the Executive-Control-Failure account [ 2 ], posits that mind-wandering results from a failure of working memory to control or suppress interfering thoughts. Here, the focus on “failures of control” suggests that this model was specifically intended to provide an explanation of unintentional mind-wandering (although there remains the possibility that this model was intended to accommodate both intentional and unintentional mind-wandering while attributing both types of mind-wandering to the same mechanism; i.e., a failure of control). Either way, specific consideration of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering has, to date, been absent from this model.

Another prominent model, known as the Attentional-Resources account [ 28 ], posits that instead of reflecting a failure of executive control, mind-wandering actually requires the engagement of executive-control resources for its sustenance. This account remains agnostic with respect to the role of intentionality in mind-wandering; hence, it does not specify any unique mechanism(s) associated with intentional and unintentional mind-wandering, nor does it make predictions regarding the intentionality of mind-wandering.

Lastly, a more recently advanced theoretical framework for mind-wandering, referred to as the Process-Occurrence Framework [ 52 ], distinguishes between the initiation and the continuation of a mind-wandering episode, linking the Executive-Control-Failure account to the moment of initiation, and the Attentional-Resources account to the continuation of the episode. Although this framework has provided much clarity in the literature by resolving the apparent conflict between the Attentional Resource and Executive Control Failures accounts, it does not appear to add any specification regarding the role of intentionality of mind-wandering that goes beyond the two former accounts.

As presently construed, then, the dominant models of mind-wandering can be argued to suggest that, although mind-wandering may occur both intentionally and unintentionally, these two types of mind-wandering do not require separate theoretical treatment. Of course, this interpretation is largely based on the tendency of existing models to refrain from explicitly addressing the distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering, not the explicit denial of the existence of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering. Nonetheless, an important direction for the literature on mind-wandering will be to determine whether a single set of mechanisms can be used to explain these two types of mind-wandering.

A Framework for Understanding Intentional and Unintentional Mind-Wandering

In considering the potential mechanisms underlying intentional and unintentional mind-wandering, it may be useful to build on an existing distinction between volitional and reflexive shifts of attention, which has played a major role in general theories of human attention [ 53 ]. For instance, Kahneman’s [ 54 ] classic Capacity Model of Attention includes an “allocation policy” that controls the distribution of “available capacity” to various tasks, and this allocation policy is believed to be governed by several factors including “enduring dispositions which reflect the rules of involuntary attention” and “momentary intentions” (p. 11). Similarly, theories of spatial attention distinguish between endogenous and exogenous shifts of attention among different types of content [ 55 ]: Endogenous shifts of attention are said to be volitional and guided by “top-down” goals, whereas exogenous shifts are believed to reflect involuntarily shifts of attention initiated by salient external stimuli in a “bottom-up” manner (e.g., an abrupt onset; [ 56 ]).

The distinction between volitional and reflexive attention in existing theories of human attention can be thought of as corresponding to intentional and unintentional mind-wandering in the following way: Intentional control over mind-wandering and endogenous control over attention would both be characterized as involving a ‘willful’ or ‘volitional’ shift to some content, which is internal in the former case and external in the latter case [ 57 ]. At the same time, unintentional mind-wandering and exogenous control of attention would both reflect the process of attentional capture, despite people’s best attempts to focus their attention on their current task. In the case of exogenous capture, the “capturing” stimulus is thought to be an external stimulus (e.g., a loud noise). However, in the case of unintentional mind-wandering, this ‘stimulus’ could be a node of high activation in one’s semantic network that is, at the time, below the threshold of awareness [ 2 ]. These nodes of high activation (or perhaps low threshold) might correspond to current concerns [ 58 ] or recently primed concepts [ 59 ].

From this perspective, the reported dissociations between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering could be re-interpreted as reflecting the engagement of different attentional-control networks. For example, the selective effect of re-reading on intentional mind-wandering could be construed as an endogenous shift of attention away from the reading that is prompted by the realization that comprehension of the text during the second reading should require fewer attentional resources and less effort [ 60 ]. Furthermore, the relation between OCD/ADHD and unintentional mind-wandering could reflect the more frequent occurrence of salient, and thus exogenously attention-capturing, self-generated thoughts in these special populations.

In addition to providing a framework for explaining existing results, drawing parallels between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering, and endogenous and exogenous shifts of attention (respectively) could lead to novel predictions. For example, these two modes of attentional control have been associated with two distinct neural systems (for reviews, see [ 61 , 62 ]), with endogenous control being associated with a dorsal frontoparietal network (including the frontal eye fields and the intraparietal sulcus/superior parietal lobule) and exogenous control being associated with a ventral frontoparietal network (including the temporoparietal junction and the ventral frontal cortex). Given these findings, it seems possible that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering also engage distinct neural systems, with the possibility that there might even be some overlap between these networks and the exogenous/endogenous networks involved in spatial shifts of attention (see Box 4 ).

Mind-Wandering and the Brain

A growing body of work has identified various brain regions that are most active during episodes of mind-wandering relative to periods of on-task thought. A recent meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies examining mind-wandering [ 35 ] confirms that the brain regions involved in overall mind-wandering overlap with areas associated with default-mode-network (DMN; a network that is active when participants do not have a task to complete), as well as the frontoparietal-control network (a network associated with executive control). The areas involved in mind-wandering, and those typically involved in the DMN and frontoparietal-control network, are shown in Figure I (taken from [ 35 ]). The idea that frontal executive-control regions are involved in mind-wandering is also supported by recent studies showing that transcranial-direct-current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the lateral prefrontal cortex can modulate the amount of reported mind-wandering [ 33 , 98 ].

The involvement of the control network in mind-wandering is particularly noteworthy. It has been argued that the control network is coopted by the mind-wandering episode, such that the “executive control regions guide, evaluate, and select among the various spontaneous streams of thoughts, memories, and imaginings offered up to consciousness by the DMN” [ 35 ]. If mind-wandering is exclusively unintentional, as sometimes assumed, then the idea that control regions support mind-wandering is important because executive processes are often associated with intentional direction of thought. Indeed, co-operation between the frontoparietal control network and the DMN, similar to that observed during mind-wandering, has been reported in goal-directed cognitive tasks such as autobiographical planning [ 99 ].

However, it is important to note that the neuroimaging and tDCS studies that implicate control regions in mind-wandering did not distinguish between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering. In light of the prevalence of intentional mind-wandering in laboratory tasks, and given the boring conditions typically experienced in neuroimaging studies, it seems reasonable to assume that at least some of the observed mind-wandering has been largely intentional. This observation raises the interesting possibility that activation of the executive-control regions might be mostly reflective of intentional, rather than unintentional, mind-wandering. Indeed, consideration of the fact that mind-wandering can involve intentional or unintentional modes of control, together with the observation that there are two modes of control over spatial attention [ 55 ], suggests the possibility that the existing neuroimaging findings have conflated two distinct control networks (intentional and unintentional). Thus, an important direction for future research will be to assess the potentially distinct neural correlates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering.

Significant meta-analytic clusters of brain activity associated with periods of mind-wandering (green clusters) contrasted with the DMN (blue) and frontoparietal control network (red). Meta-analytic activity associated with mind-wandering shows marked overlap with both the DMN and frontoparietal control network. DMN and frontoparietal control network masks are based on aggregate data from 1000 subjects, as reported by [ 100 ]. Taken from [ 35 ].

Moreover, construing intentional and unintentional mind-wandering as reflecting the action of different control networks raises the interesting issue of what factors might influence these different modes of control. For instance, intentional mind-wandering might be heavily influenced by factors such as (1) an individual’s level of intrinsic motivation to complete a task (i.e., whether tasks are ‘have-to’ or ‘want-to’ tasks; [ 63 , 64 ]), (2) an individual’s level of interest in a task [ 65 ], (3) an individual’s metacognitive beliefs about the extent to which mind-wandering influences performance, and (4) an individual’s ability and inclination to strategically mind-wander during moments of low task demand [ 37 , 66 , 67 ]. In contrast, unintentional mind-wandering might be more heavily influenced by (1) the amount of unused resources available for task-unrelated processing [ 68 ], (2) the gravity of personal concerns [ 58 ], (3) ‘opportunity costs’ that arise while completing a task [ 69 ], and (4) an individual’s decision to take an ‘active’ (intense) or ‘passive’ (relaxed) stance towards attentional control in a given situation [ 54 ]. It is important to note, however, that we are not ruling out the possibility that some of the foregoing factors might influence both intentional and unintentional mind-wandering; indeed, there is good reason to believe that many factors will have some effect on both modes of control. For instance, low motivation to complete a particular task might lead to deliberate shifts of attention toward mind-wandering and also make it easier for activation in the semantic network to unintentionally attract attention, thus pulling attention from a primary task.

In discussing parallels between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering, and endogenous and exogenous shifts of attention, it should be noted that intentionality during mind-wandering need not be restricted to the initiation of a mind-wandering episode. Indeed, control over the distribution of resources likely dynamically unfolds over time [ 70 ]. As such, intentional mind-wandering can also manifest as an allowance of the continuation of a previously unintentionally progressing episode (e.g., endogenous maintenance of attention at a location that was arrived at exogenously). Similarly, unintentional mind-wandering can manifest as an intended episode of mind-wandering that has gone beyond an intended stopping point (e.g., exogenous maintenance of attention at a location that was arrived at endogenously).

The Practical Benefits of Assessing the Intentionality of Mind-Wandering

Beyond having important theoretical implications, the finding that people frequently engage in intentional mind-wandering might play a pivotal role in practical research aimed at developing methods to reduce the occurrence of mind-wandering. Although mind-wandering has been associated with certain beneficial outcomes (e.g., autobiographical planning, creativity [ 71 ]), it has also been associated with numerous serious negative consequences (e.g., car accidents, deficits in reading comprehension, problems with workplace functioning [ 71 ]). Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that researchers have been eager to develop methods with which rates of mind-wandering can be reduced in daily life. To date, a few such methods have been identified. First, working under the theory that mind-wandering is sometimes the result of unfulfilled goals hijacking one’s attention, one study showed that instructing people to formulate specific plans aimed at resolving their unfulfilled goals led to a subsequent reduction in mind-wandering or “intrusive thoughts” [ 72 ]. In another study, researchers had participants engage in mindfulness meditation, showing that this practice minimized subsequent rates of mind-wandering [ 73 ].

As researchers continue to investigate methods with which to reduce the occurrence of mind-wandering, it will be important for them to consider how different methods of remediation might vary in their effectiveness depending on whether the mind-wandering in question is intentional or unintentional. In particular, the specific methods that minimize the occurrence of these two types of mind-wandering might well differ. For example, in the context of a lecture, unintentional mind-wandering might be reduced by increasing the salience of the presented material [ 74 , 75 ], perhaps by including stimulating presentation slides or interesting videos. Thus, carving mind-wandering at this joint might provide fruitful grounds for future research to identify methods of remediation.

Concluding Remarks and Future Perspectives

The findings reviewed here provide strong evidence to suggest that people’s minds wander both with and without intention. This research has revealed that unintentional and intentional mind-wandering are differentially associated with various individual-differences variables, and can be dissociated experimentally. These dissociations suggest that these two types of mind-wandering might be associated with different underlying mechanisms. Although speculative at present, these different underlying mechanisms might profitably be viewed as being analogous to the long-held distinction between exogenous and endogenous attentional control.

The emergence of the distinction between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering has also opened the door to numerous opportunities for future research. At the most basic level, the majority of research to date has used dichotomous probes to measure mind-wandering: a methodology that we now know glosses over the distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering. Thus, revisiting this work with this distinction in mind promises valuable new insights. For example, individual differences in working memory are known to be related to rates of mind-wandering: Understanding whether working memory is related to unintentional, intentional, or both types of mind-wandering would provide valuable constraints on existing theory (i.e., the Executive-Control Failure Account; [ 2 ]). Beyond revisiting important past work, thinking about the intentionality of mind-wandering provides both a new perspective on old questions and brings into focus completely novel lines of inquiry. In terms of providing a new perspective on old questions, the distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering could help disambiguate patterns of brain activation associated with mind-wandering ( Box 4 ). In terms of generating novel questions, placing intentional mind-wandering under the microscope raises new questions about how metacognition or meta-attention might contribute to rates of mind-wandering (See Outstanding Questions ).

Outstanding Questions Box

• How do people report on the intentionality of mind-wandering? The intentionality of mind-wandering might wax and wane throughout an episode. Thus, when people report on the intentionality of mind-wandering, it is unclear which component of the episode informs this report. For example, reports might be informed by the initiation of the episode, the episode’s most recent segment, or the average time spent mind-wandering with intention. Elucidating the processes involved in informing reports of intentionality is important for our theoretical understanding of mind-wandering, and it will therefore be an important direction for future research.
• Do the methods aimed at reducing mind-wandering differentially affect intentional and unintentional mind-wandering? Researchers have been eager to develop methods with which to reduce the occurrence of mind-wandering. To date, a few such methods have been identified (e.g., mindfulness meditation). Because rates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering behave differently under certain experimental manipulations, it will be important for research to consider how different methods of remediation might vary in their effectiveness depending on whether the mind-wandering in question is intentional or unintentional.
• What are the neural correlates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering? Neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering have not distinguished between intentional and unintentional types. However, in line with the literature on endogenous and exogenous modes of control over attention, intentional and unintentional mind-wandering might be subserved by different attentional networks.
• Does the content of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering differ? Episodes of mind-wandering are known to vary in content (e.g., in terms of temporal focus, valence, etc.). However, it remains unknown whether the content of mind-wandering reliably differs as a function of intentionality.

Another area where the intentional/unintentional distinction could prove useful concerns the link between mind-wandering, on the one hand, and episodic or autobiographical memory and future thinking, on the other. Recent research has revealed numerous similarities between episodic memory and future thinking, including reliance on the default-mode network [ 76 , 77 ], which, as we discuss in Box 4 , has also been linked to mind-wandering. Cognitive studies suggest that during bouts of mind-wandering, people sometimes remember past experiences and, to an even greater extent, imagine future experiences [ 78 ]. However, it is currently unknown whether the relative frequencies of episodic memories and future thoughts differ during incidents of intentional versus unintentional mind-wandering. Indeed, some researchers [ 78 ] have suggested that the focus on future thoughts during mind wandering episodes suggests a possible functional role for mind-wandering in problem solving, but it is unknown whether such functionality is equally characteristic of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering. Finally, recent research on cognitive aging has also suggested a link between mind-wandering and involuntary autobiographical memory retrieval – older adults show reductions in both compared with young adults [ 79 ] – but it is unknown whether the age-related reduction in mind wandering applies to both intentional and unintentional varieties.

The distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering will likely also prove useful beyond the laboratory. For example, it will be important for future work to investigate the possibility that methods aimed at reducing rates of intentional and unintentional mind-wandering might vary in terms of their effectiveness depending on the type of mind-wandering in question. This fine-grained look at the mind-wandering promises more targeted interventions, for example, in the classroom and/or workplace.

Given that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering have been shown to sometimes behave differently, making the distinction between the two would appear to have important implications for most, if not all areas of mind-wandering research. However, we do not intend to suggest that researchers ought to always examine the intentionality of mind-wandering. That said, in cases where the distinction between intentional and unintentional mind-wandering is not made, we believe that it will be important for researchers to restrict any inferences they draw to mind-wandering in more generic terms, and to acknowledge that assessments of intentionality might provide a more nuanced understanding of their findings.

Although investigations of the intentionality of mind-wandering have opened new doors, treading through those doors will not come without its challenges. One significant challenge that strikes at the heart of mind-wandering research in general pertains to whether we can trust individuals’ self-reports of their mental states. In particular, can we trust individuals’ self-reports of whether a given episode of mind-wandering was unintentional or intentional? How might task-demands or social-desirability effects influence responses, and in particular, individuals’ willingness to report intentional mind-wandering? Addressing these issues will be critical if the distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering is to play a central role in the future of mind-wandering research. Notwithstanding these challenges, recent trends in examining the intentionality of mind-wandering promise both exciting future avenues of research and, ultimately, a deeper understanding of the wandering mind.

• Researchers are beginning to recognize the importance of distinguishing between intentional and unintentional forms of mind-wandering.
• The standard practice has been to employ dichotomous probes that ask people to report whether they are “on task” or “mind-wandering,” which conflates intentional and unintentional types of mind-wandering.
• A growing number of studies have shown that people intentionally mind-wander both in laboratory tasks and in everyday life, and that intentional and unintentional mind-wandering are dissociable cognitive experiences.
• Extant theories have largely neglected the distinction between unintentional and intentional mind-wandering and must be amended to include the important role of intentionality.

Acknowledgments

P.S. was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Post-Doctoral Fellowship. E.F.R was supported by funding from the Canada Research Chairs program 04532. D.S. was supported by an NSERC discovery grant 06459. D.L.S was supported by a National Institute on Aging RO1 AG08441.

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Jeff Bezos uses ‘mind wandering’ to boost productivity but what is it?

As dr neerja agarwal, psychologist and co-founder of emoneeds, said mind wandering is a natural cognitive process where our attention shifts from the immediate environment to internal thoughts, memories, or plans..

Jeff Bezos, the mastermind behind Amazon and Blue Origin, has a surprising secret weapon in his productivity arsenal: mind wandering. Unlike the stereotype of the hyper-focused CEO, Bezos embraces letting his mind roam freely during meetings, fostering a culture of “messy meetings” that spark creativity and innovation.

“I don’t keep to a strict schedule,” CNBC Make It quoted the 60-year-old saying. “My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in [mind] wandering.”

What is mind wandering?

Mind wandering, often labelled as “daydreaming” or having a “scattered brain,” is simply the act of your mind drifting away from the immediate task at hand.

As Dr Neerja Agarwal, psychologist and co-founder of Emoneeds, explained, it’s a natural cognitive process where our attention shifts from the immediate environment to internal thoughts, memories, or plans.

Why is mind wandering beneficial?

While it may seem counterintuitive, research suggests that mind wandering can enhance productivity in several ways. Here’s what Dr Agarwal had to say:

Boosts Creativity: Freeing your mind allows the subconscious to make connections and generate unexpected ideas.

Improves Problem-Solving: Stepping away from the problem can help you return with a fresh perspective and novel solutions.

Enhances Memory Consolidation: Mind wandering allows the brain to solidify memories and information learned earlier.

Reduces Stress: Taking a mental break can alleviate stress, leading to improved focus and cognitive performance.

Dr Agarwal further emphasised how mind wandering helps the brain rest and recharge. When we engage in mind wandering, we prevent mental fatigue and burnout, allowing us to return to focused tasks with renewed energy. Additionally, mind wandering can facilitate creative thinking by allowing the brain to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.

How to embrace mind wandering for productivity

Inspired by Bezos ‘ approach, here’s how you can incorporate mind wandering into your workday, according to Dr Agarwal:

Schedule “Thinking Breaks”: Plan short breaks throughout your day where you allow your mind to wander freely.

Ditch the Multitasking: Focus on one task at a time, allowing your mind to fully engage before taking a break.

Embrace Nature: Go for a walk or spend time outdoors. A change of scenery can spark new ideas.

Engage in Mindful Doodling: Doodling can be a form of active mind wandering that can unlock creative solutions.

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What is mind wandering? 5 ways it is beneficial for you

Ever get lost in thought while washing dishes or find yourself miles away during a meeting? That's mind wandering, and it's far more common than you might think. It's the phenomenon where our attention drifts away from the present moment to internal thoughts, memories, or future plans.

What is mind wandering?

Mind wandering refers to the phenomenon where our thoughts drift away from the task at hand to unrelated topics, memories, or future plans. It's like daydreaming, where your mind floats to unrelated thoughts, feelings, or images. While it can sometimes disrupt focus, it can also be a source of creativity and unexpected insights. Embracing mind wandering can offer numerous advantages for our well-being and cognitive functioning. Here are five ways in which mind wandering can be beneficial for you.

Creative insight:

One of the most notable benefits of mind wandering is its connection to creativity. When our minds wander, they have the freedom to explore different ideas and connections, unconstrained by the limitations of focused attention. This mental wandering can lead to creative insights and innovative solutions to problems. Research has shown that individuals who frequently engage in mind wandering tend to score higher on measures of creativity. Allowing your mind to wander can thus spark new ideas and perspectives that may not have emerged through focused thinking alone.

Enhances problem-solving:

Sometimes, stepping away from a problem allows us to see it from a different angle. When we return to a work with new perspective, mind wandering might help us digest information subconsciously and produce "aha!" moments. It can also help us identify patterns and make connections that might not be apparent when we're focused solely on the immediate problem.

Self-reflection and insight:

Mind wandering provides an opportunity for self-reflection and introspection. When our thoughts wander, we may find ourselves contemplating our values, goals, and aspirations. This introspective process allows us to gain insights into our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. By exploring our inner world during moments of mind wandering, we can develop a deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. This self-awareness can lead to personal growth and enhanced decision-making skills.

Reduces stress and fatigue:

Constant focus can be mentally draining. Mind wandering acts as a mental break, allowing your brain to relax and recharge. This can improve your mood, reduce stress levels, and enhance overall cognitive function. Taking short mental breaks throughout the day can actually lead to increased productivity in the long run.

Strengthens memory:

Mind wandering often involves replaying past memories or mentally rehearsing future events. This mental rehearsal helps solidify memories and strengthens neural pathways. It can also aid in planning and goal setting, as we envision the steps needed to achieve our desired outcomes.

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Jeff Bezos Uses "Mind Wandering" To Boost Productivity. Here's What It Is

The Blue Origin founder said he gives his team members time to bounce ideas off each other - a process he called a "messy meeting".

Jeff Bezos explained how mind wandering boosts productivity.

Do you ever find your thoughts drifting off to distant lands when you are supposed to be focused on a task? Well, if that happens with you, you're experiencing the phenomenon known as mind wandering, and it's not just a distraction - it's your brain's way of unleashing its creative potential. This is something that one of the world's richest men Jeff Bezos also follows, according to CNBC . The Amazon founder said during a podcast that mind wandering gives himself and his teams ample time for creative thinking, unlike time blocking that involves setting strict time blocks for all his meetings and engagements.

"I don't keep to a strict schedule. My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in mind wandering," he said at the 'Lex Fridman Podcast' .

"When I sit down in a meeting, I don't know how long the meeting is going to take if we're trying to solve a problem. The reality is we may have to wander for a long time... I think there's certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit-balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth," said Mr Bezos.

The billionaire said most people think wandering is inefficient, but studies have shown that a divergent mind can actually boost a person's productivity.

Researchers say when your mind wanders, it explores new ideas, connections and possibilities that you may not have considered otherwise. This free-flowing mental state leads to breakthroughs in problem-solving and innovation.

Mind wandering also provides a much-needed escape from the stresses of everyday life. Whether you're daydreaming about your next vacation or pondering the mysteries of the universe, allowing your mind to wander can be incredibly therapeutic, promoting relaxation and mental well-being.

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Mr Bezos analyses the idea that first appears in his mind. After initial scrutiny, he presents them to others, the billionaire said during the podcast.

"I will often say, 'Look, it is going to be really easy for you to find objections to this idea, but work with me'. Because it's really easy to kill new ideas in the beginning. So, you need to forewarn people and say, 'I know it's going to take a lot of work to get this to a fully formed idea. Let's get started on that. It'll be fun'," said Mr Bezos.

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Why Jeff Bezos holds 'messy meetings' at Amazon: 'I believe in mind wandering'

Billionaire jeff bezos has a unique way of boosting his own, and colleagues', productivity and it is called ‘mind wandering’..

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, takes a different approach to scheduling the working day compared to many other executives. Instead of filling his schedule with back-to-back meetings and strict time blocks, Bezos prioritizes giving himself and his teams enough time for creative thinking. He believes in allowing space for ideas to develop and discussions to unfold naturally, rather than adhering strictly to a rigid schedule.

In an episode of Lex Fridman Podcast in 2023, he said, “I don’t keep to a strict schedule,” and added, “My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in [mind] wandering.” He even dubbed it as “messy meeting.”

Read More: Ashneer Grover mocks Kotak Mahindra Bank: ‘LOL! Banks se tech nahi ho rahi’

No specified time allocation was given to them in terms of minutes and hours. It was all kept spontaneous. He explained, “When I sit down [in] a meeting, I don’t know how long the meeting is going to take if we’re trying to solve a problem.”

In these meetings, he highlighted the most important aspect - wandering. He said, “The reality is we may have to wander for a long time ... I think there’s certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit-balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth.”

He recognised this habit may not be widely appreciated by many and some would even call them “inefficient” and prefer the ‘time blocking’ technique, but he said it is backed by studies that show this specific way of holding meetings may actually help increase productivity, creativity and even happiness.

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Time blocking indicates scheduling everything and allocating time for each activity, even mealtimes to get through the day and efficiently accomplish tasks. However, Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos says this strategy, according to some studies, may leave employees stressed out.

Psychologist Jill Suttie indicated in an article, “The trick is to know when to set your mind free,” CNBC Make it reported .

For Bezos it is crucial to let minds wander to better consider the benefits and pitfalls of ideas and if he finds them acceptable, he gets others involved too to add value via group brainstorming sessions.

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He explained to Fridman, “I will often say, ‘Look, it is going to be really easy for you to find objections to this idea, but work with me….’”

To further motivate the team, he would add, “Let’s get started on that. It’ll be fun.’”

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15 episodes

Why would an athlete want to practice mindfulness? In this course, you’ll learn not only why but also how. Discover why mindfulness benefits your fitness and athleticism while being guided through the basics of a mindfulness practice. At the end of 15 sessions, you’ll be a stronger athlete.

Intro to Athletic Mindfulness Freeletics

• Health & Fitness
• 5.0 • 1 Rating

Listen on Apple Podcasts Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

• FEB 21, 2024

About this course

Before starting this course, take a minute to figure out if it’s right for you. Learn about how elite athletes use mindfulness as part of their training, what this course covers, and how exactly it can benefit you. Mindfulness isn’t just new age nonsense. Elite athletes have been using it for years to improve performance. In this course you will: Learn a bit in each session about the benefits of mindfulness, or meditation techniques you’ll practice. Learn the basics of starting a mindfulness practice – from how to find a position, to how to breathe. Get a feeling for how to implement mindfulness techniques into your training.

Finding a position

In this first guided session, learn why finding a comfortable position for meditation is so important, then find the one that works best for you before giving your first mindfulness session a go. Meditation isn’t meant to torture you. So find a position that works for you! Keep in mind: It’s best to sit up straight for your daily practice, but if lying down is all you can manage, that’s OK. Keep your knees below your hips. This helps keep you comfortable and reduces strain on your back. Keep an upright back, but one that's still relaxed.

Focusing on your breath

Take some time to learn why focusing on your breath is a great way to get your mind off distractions. Then try it out! Your breath is always available to focus on. It can help you shift yourself away from distractions or a wandering mind.

Breath and thoughts

Learn why mindfulness has been linked to less injury, and practice focusing on your breath as thoughts arise. Great job finishing this third session. Keep using focus on the breath to help a distracted mind.

Breath and the wandering mind

Keep up the motivation for this intro course with a session that lets you feel the difference between focusing on your breath and letting your mind wander. How did it feel to let your mind switch between focus and wandering? Even if your thoughts seem difficult to manage, don’t worry. Practicing mindfulness can help change that.

Observing the body

Ever get overwhelmed with negative thoughts? What athlete hasn’t? Learn a trick to break the cycle with a body observation session. Every athlete faces difficult thoughts – doubt, anxiety, or nerves – whether they’re doing Freeletics at home, or competing on the international stage. Checking in with your body is a great way to manage those thoughts and break the vicious cycle.

Customer Reviews

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Jeff Bezos Reveals His Unconventional Approach To Productivity: 'I Believe In Wandering'

Jeff Bezos shared his unconventional approach to productivity, which involves allowing his mind to wander during meetings. This strategy, he believes, fosters creativity and problem-solving.

What Happened : Bezos, the founder of Amazon AMZN and Blue Origin , revealed his unique approach to productivity in a recent episode of the “Lex Fridman Podcast.”

Bezos, who is currently the second-richest person globally, according to Forbes, does not adhere to a strict schedule or time blocks for meetings. Instead, he encourages creative thinking by allowing his mind to wander during meetings, which can often extend beyond their planned duration.

"I don't keep to a strict schedule," Bezos said, in an episode first released in December. "My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in [mind] wandering."

“A lot of people feel like wandering is inefficient," he added.

He advocates for “messy meetings” where ideas are freely exchanged, and there is no set end time. Bezos believes that this approach, which some may consider inefficient, can actually enhance productivity, creativity, and happiness.

"When I sit down a meeting, I don't know how long the meeting is going to take if we're trying to solve a problem," Bezos said. "The reality is we may have to wander for a long time … I think there's certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit-balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth." He added that "a lot of people feel like wandering is inefficient." 

Bezos’s approach is supported by a 2016 study that found allowing the mind to wander can significantly improve creativity. He suggests that taking breaks from a structured routine to let the mind wander can be an effective way to solve problems that seem unsolvable.

See Also: Elon Musk Agrees Every American Household Will Have A $1,000-Per-Month Home Robot In 7 Years’ Time

Why It Matters : Bezos’s approach to productivity is in line with his innovative thinking and risk-taking, as evidenced by his recent ventures.

In January, it was reported that Bezos’s net worth had increased by $70 billion in 2023, reaching $177 billion. This remarkable growth was attributed to his strategic investments and business decisions.

Bezos’s financial acumen was further demonstrated in March when he sold $8.5 billion worth of Amazon stock and saved $600 million in taxes by relocating to Florida. This move allowed him to redirect a portion of his wealth into Blue Origin, his space exploration venture, showcasing his commitment to innovation and exploration.

Bezos’ net worth has also been a topic of discussion. Despite a fierce competition with Tesla CEO Elon Musk , Bezos reclaimed the title of the world’s wealthiest individual with a net worth of $200 billion.

Read Next: Elon Musk Reacts To Tucker Carlson Saying There’s ‘Ton Of Evidence’ That Aliens Live Among Us: ‘With 6000 Satellites Orbiting Earth, I Think I Would Know’

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