The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness
“If you couldn’t do it,” Jonathan told me, “so many other things would go out of the window.” He has found that the more you let your mind wander, the better you are at having organized personal goals, being creative, and making patient, long-term decisions.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
The brain, flooded with multiple bits of sensory data, thoughts, feelings and impulses, cannot focus, and the mind or body cannot be still. In short, the policeman is asleep.
Gabor Maté • Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder
“stimulus-independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation.
Jon Kabat-Zinn • Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation
Your mind, given free undistracted time, will automatically think back over everything it absorbed, and it will start to draw links between them in new ways. This all takes place beneath the level of your conscious mind, but this process is how “new ideas pop together, and suddenly, two thoughts that you didn’t think had a relationship suddenly hav
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