Where Does Your Mind Wander?
Daydreaming on purpose, drifting off by accident, and how fast you notice
A famous smartphone study found that people spend almost half their waking hours thinking about something other than what they are doing. Later research split that wandering into two very different habits: letting your mind drift because you chose to, and losing the thread when you were trying to stay on it. The first can be a quiet source of ideas. The second is the one that costs you the page you just read.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about ordinary days - reading, meetings, chores, conversations - not about a night when you were exhausted.
What it measures
Two published trait scores - deliberate mind wandering, when you let your thoughts roam on purpose, and spontaneous mind wandering, when they slip away without your consent - plus a related third score: how quickly you notice that your attention has gone. It is not a measure of worry or rumination, which are about what you think; this is about where your attention goes and whether you steered it there.
Based on: Deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering scales (Carriere, Seli & Smilek, 2013)
Possible results
Deliberate wandering
Letting your mind drift because you chose to.
Spontaneous wandering
Losing the thread without meaning to.
Catching the drift
How quickly you notice your mind has gone elsewhere.
Common questions
Is mind wandering bad for you?
It depends which kind. In the well-known smartphone study, people were less happy while their minds wandered than while they were on task. But deliberate wandering during easy tasks costs little and is linked to planning and creative thought. The problem is mostly the involuntary kind at the wrong moment.
How is mind wandering different from overthinking?
Overthinking and rumination are about the content of your thoughts - usually worries or regrets you keep returning to. Mind wandering is about where your attention is, whatever the content: it can drift to a holiday plan, a song or a shopping list. The two can overlap when the mind keeps drifting to the same worry, but most wandering is far more ordinary than that.
Can I train myself to mind-wander less?
You can mostly train yourself to notice sooner, which is the useful part. Short attention practices, fewer interruptions and matching hard tasks to the hours when you are fresh all help. Trying to stop the mind from ever wandering tends to fail and is not desirable anyway - deliberate wandering is where a lot of planning happens.
Sources
- Carriere, J. S. A., Seli, P., & Smilek, D. (2013). Wandering in both mind and body: Individual differences in mind wandering and inattention predict fidgeting. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0031438
- Seli, P., Carriere, J. S. A., & Smilek, D. (2015). Not all mind wandering is created equal: Dissociating deliberate from spontaneous mind wandering. Psychological Research. doi:10.1007/s00426-014-0617-x
- Seli, P., Risko, E. F., Smilek, D., & Schacter, D. L. (2016). Mind-wandering with and without intention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.05.010
- Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. doi:10.1126/science.1192439
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the published deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering scales, so scores are not comparable with their norms. Only the first two bars correspond to those scales; the third, noticing the drift, is a related construct from the same research, not a validated factor of them. Most studies used North American students. This is not a diagnosis of any attention condition; if drifting disrupts daily life, talk to a doctor.