Name: The Wandering Mind
Rating: 4.2 (96 reviews)
Author: Michael C. Corballis

What’s in it for me? Stroll through the fascinating field of mind wandering.

We all cherish a little daydreaming for escaping a dreary situation like a traffic jam or a long day on the assembly line. On the other hand, a drifting mind can be extremely annoying when you’re desperately trying to focus on a task. But why do our minds meander off in the first place?

As you’ll learn from these blinks, we really can’t help it, because our brain comes with an in-built wandering mode.

On the face of it, this seems like a great evolutionary disadvantage – wouldn’t it be better to be alert all the time, considering all those saber-toothed tigers and poisonous snakes so eager to kill our ancestors? The following blinks will tell you about advantages that override the pitfalls of being less than constantly vigilant.

In these blinks you’ll also find out

about a man who was stuck in an eternal present;
why some of your precious childhood memories might be wrong; and
how you don’t have to be a psychic to wander into another person’s mind.

A wandering mind isn’t a bad thing; your brain remains active when it woolgathers.

Sometimes our minds don’t cooperate. Have you ever found yourself sitting at your desk with the intention of getting some work done but instead your mind keeps going in other directions? When this happens, don’t assume that your brain isn’t still hard at work.

When your mind wanders, it is using nearly as much energy as when it is focused and concentrating.

This is because only certain regions of your brain are active when focused on a specific task. But when your mind begins to wander, the default-mode network is activated. This network, named by neurologist Marcus Raichle, is spread out across the brain in regions that are not involved with the more direct interaction focused on what’s in front of you.

But despite being spread out, there is still plenty of activity going on.

You can think of your brain as a small town: When there’s a big event at the town square, all the people show up in one location. But afterward, when everyone splits up and goes about their own business, there’s still nearly as much activity, it’s just distributed around town. This is what happens when your mind wanders.

So the wandering mind may have some drawbacks, but it isn’t all bad.

It’s true that a wandering mind can distract you from finishing a task, and research also suggests that it can lead to less happiness and premature aging.

But wait! Mind wandering is also vital to creative thinking and allowing inventors and artists to make the world a better place. Because when your mind drifts it can free-associate and find connections and solutions to problems that might otherwise stay hidden.

Maybe you’ve had inspiration strike while you were spacing out in the shower or, perhaps, on a hike through nature. This is where George de Mestral was inspired to invent Velcro when he was walking along and noticed how burrs stuck to his clothes.

In the next blink, we’ll see how our memory dictates where the wandering mind goes.

We can actually wander into others’ minds, but it has nothing to do with psychic powers.

We don’t have to visit a mystic with a crystal ball in order to figure out what someone else is thinking. In fact, we do it all the time when our mind wanders in a particular direction.

It’s not psychic powers that tell us what is on someone’s mind; it’s our powers of observation and cultural experience that give us this insight. And these abilities come from the same part of our brain that is active when our mind wanders: the default-mode network.

Many people use drugs to get creative, but mind wandering might work just as well – with fewer side effects.

Creativity is a huge asset in both the business and entertainment world. In the search for inspiration, many people have turned to drugs, because substances like LSD, marijuana and opium all have a mind-altering effect that can lead to the wandering mind that results in ingenuity. Dreaming can have the same effect, but is unpredictable – and few people remember their dreams.

From Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe to The Beatles and Steve Jobs, many artists and creative people have used drugs to help them find inspiration and come up with innovative ideas.

Key ideas in The Wandering Mind

About the Author

Michael C. Corballis is a psychologist and author as well as a professor emeritus at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His main fields of research include cognitive neuroscience, memory and the evolution of language. His other books include A Very Short Tour of the Mind and The Recursive Mind.