Go Ahead and Daydream

Give yourself permission to daydream. It grants your mind and heart the freedom to imaginatively roam around the fulfillment of your desires. And rather than being a form of laziness, new research suggests letting your mind wander can actually activate parts of the brain associated with problem-solving.

By studying brain activity of participants inside an MRI while engaged in differing tasks, researcher Kalina Christoff and colleagues discovered how the brain functions during daydreaming. Christoff said, “This study shows our brains are very active when we daydream ‑ much more active than when we focus on routine tasks.”

Prior to this study, researches thought the brain's "default network," which is associated with routine mental activity, was the only section of the brain remaining active when the mind wandered. But in this study, the brain's "executive network," which is linked with high‑level, complex problem‑solving, also lit up in the subjects.

"When you daydream, you may not be achieving your immediate goal ‑ say reading a book or paying attention in class ‑ but your mind may be taking that time to address more important questions in your life, such as advancing your career or personal relationships," Christoff said.

Boston Globe columnist, Jonah Lehrer, recently related a dramatic example of what daydreaming can conjure. It was on a Sunday morning in 1974, when Arthur Fry sat in a front pew at his Presbyterian church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fry was an engineer at 3M, as well as a singer in the choir. He had developed a habit of inserting tiny scraps of paper between the pages of his hymnal, so he could quickly locate the right hymn during worship. The irritating problem was, the scraps of paper kept falling out, making Fry lose his place.

Finally, the preacher began to preach. And what do you know, Fry’s mind began to wander – doubtlessly not an uncommon occurrence. Rather than focusing on the pastor’s points, he instead mulled over his bookmark issue. “It was during the sermon,” Fry later recollected, “that I first thought, ‘What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.’” That seemingly stray thought – the byproduct of Fry’s wandering mind – would eventually lead to the Post-It notes, one of the most successful products for office and home of all time.

In Mr. Lehrer’s potent prose: “Daydreaming has never enjoyed so much prestige in our culture. We tend to regard it as unproductive thought, and with all that we have to do, who has time for that? Writers perhaps appreciate the importance of daydreaming better than most, since a fair amount of what they call ‘work’ consists of little more than daydreaming edited. Yet anyone who reads for pleasure should prize it too, for what is reading but second hand daydreaming? Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward. Regardless of the result, the very process of daydreaming is actually a psychological necessity. It is through our daydreams that we acquire some sense of what we are about. They are where we try out alternative futures and practice our voices before committing ourselves to words and deeds. Daydreaming is where we go to cultivate the self out of the earshot of other people. Without daydreams, the self is apt to shrink down to the size and shape of the estimation of others.”

Only through daydreaming can you catch a glimpse of just how vast you really are.