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Is Daydreaming A Bad Thing?

Creative thoughts from daydreaming.
Were you ever told off at school for daydreaming? Staring out of the window? Do you ever sit as a passenger in a car or train or plane and let your mind wander?

Well, actually research from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that daydreaming is not a bad thing. It can actually mean that you are creative and smart. They suggest that people with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering.

Some of my best ideas come when I am a passenger in a car. I find being a passenger VERY boring and will often sit there and think about ideas for new stories or courses or better ways I can teach my students.

A more efficient brain also means that when you are performing easy tasks, you still have the brain capacity to think about other things and let your mind wander.

Schumacher et al at the Georgia Institute of Technology studied 100 people by measuring their brain patterns on an MRI machine. The participants were asked to focus on a stationary object for five minutes. They looked at how the brain worked when at rest and then measured the participants’ intellectual and creative abilities. They also answered a questionnaire about how much their mind wandered on a daily basis. They found that people who daydream frequently scored higher scores on creative and intellectual ability and had a more efficient brain system.

Schumacher suggests that one way to tell if your brain is efficient is that you can zone in and out of conservations without missing important points. He said, "Our findings remind me of the absent-minded professor - someone who's brilliant, but off in his or her own world, sometimes oblivious to their own surroundings, … or school children who are too intellectually advanced for their classes. While it may take five minutes for their friends to learn something new, they figure it out in a minute, then check out and start daydreaming."

Therefore, daydreaming can actually be a positive thing, showing high levels of brain efficiency, creativity and intelligent.

So next time you find yourself daydreaming, perhaps it is because your brain is not fully occupied and you could be doing more with your creativity and intelligence. 

Tracey Jones
Psychology and Creative Writing Tutor
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[19/04/2024 14:24:24]