Wandering Minds

The comedian Steve Wright (see his first appearance on "The Tonight Show" here) once quipped, "I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering."  As it turns out, our minds often wander.  We humans spend a lot of time thinking about what's not going on around us, what happened in the past, what may happen in the future, or even what will never happen at all.  Some scientists believe that a wandering mind is our brain's default mode.  The self-help experts would tell us that we should "live in the moment" and "focus on the present", but is that the right answer?  Well, as it turns out, the self-help experts are right.

Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a study a few years ago in Science magazine that sought to answer this exact question (see "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind").  They created an iPhone app that allowed them to create a large database of real-time reports of thoughts, feelings, and actions by people in their everyday lives.  They analyzed 2,250 randomly selected adults who had answered three questions: (1) How are you feeling right now? (2) What are you doing right now? and (3) Are you thinking about something other than what you're currently doing?

What they found was very interesting, at least to me.  First, as expected, people's minds wandered frequently, regardless of what they were doing.  Close to half of the individuals were daydreaming at the time that they answered the survey, even if they were participating in an activity that they enjoyed.  Second, and this was surprising to me, people were less happy when their minds were wandering, again regardless of activity.  Third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of happiness than what they were actually doing.  Killingsworth and Gilbert concluded, "A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

Killingsworth gave a TED talk ("Want to be happier? Stay in the moment!"), in which he claims that society spends literally billions of dollars every year looking for happiness, when the secret to happiness is right there in our grasp.  Do you want to be happy?  Don't let your mind wander.  Stay in the moment.  Focus on the present.  Jason Castro, writing for Scientific American, suggests, "The happy upshot of this study is that it suggests a wonderfully simple prescription for greater happiness: think about what you’re doing."  Castro also cautions us that this might be easier said than done - remember, our brain's default mode is to wander!  Castro adds, "On the plus side, a mind can be trained to wander less. With regular and dedicated meditation practice, you can certainly become much more present, mindful, and content. However, he offers one last caveat - and it's an important one, "But you’d better be ready to work. The most dramatic benefits only really accrue for individuals, often monks, who have clocked many thousands of hours practicing the necessary skills (it’s not called the default state for nothing)."