Daydreaming Is Really Complex Problem-Solving

beefsprocket writes "ScienceDaily reports that 'A new University of British Columbia study finds that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract), finds that activity in numerous brain regions increases when our minds wander. It also finds that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving — previously thought to go dormant when we daydream — are in fact highly active during these episodes. "Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream — much more active than when we focus on routine tasks."'"

Comments

Huh? What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you say something?

Re:Huh? What?

[phantomfive]

My computer isn't wasting time, it's running System Idle Process at 99%!!!

This won't go over well

[pwnies]

Boss: "Stop daydreaming, be productive."
Me: "But I am! By daydreaming I'm even more productive than I would be if I were strictly working on the task assigned to me! Slashdot told me so!"
Boss: "Fantastic, go be productive at another company."

Re:This won't go over well

[Niris]

When comparing two jobs I've had, one with the government where people pretty much do their job and screw around a bit at random times, and another for a bank where everyone took their 15 minute break at the exact same time and everything was scheduled and systematic, I think the job where people just kinda daydream and do whatever every so often gets more done on accident than the corporate job ever did. Plus it's a lot more of a happy environment. I'd rather "go be productive at another company" :D

Re:This won't go over well

[CorSci81]

I find this to be true for myself a lot. I generally find solutions to hard problems I'm working on at completely random times like zoning out on my commute home or out walking around. I get more of the hard/creative part of my job done outside of work hours when I'm not trapped in a boring office and then spend my working hours writing and coding whatever my brain came up with when I get there.

Re:This won't go over well

[Chabo]

Could you grimace so I know you're working?

Re:This won't go over well

[madsenj37]

Killed to death? As opposed to killed to mostly dead?

Re:This won't go over well

[unlametheweak]

Daydreaming, and taking cat-naps at work are also helpful for productivity. Unfortunately Managers don't read science articles, and when they do they dismiss the results as a joke because they think they are smarter than scientists.

Re:This won't go over well

[4D6963]

Me too, I find most of my ideas while either having a shower or doing number 2. Unfortunately I'm French so I don't shower that often, and I don't eat a lot of vegetables so I don't do number 2 often either.

This being said I also found the whole idea for my commercial program while daydreaming at a lecture in college after waking up from a nap on my table.

Re:This won't go over well

[unlametheweak]

I daydream while driving. At first when I realized this it scared the living bajeebus out of me. Eventually I got over it. So this really is not surprising in the least.

What you are experiencing when you drive is probably highway hypnosis which is very common for people to experience and quite normal. It's also one of the reasons that planners and engineers put bumps and gravel on the edges of highways; to "wake" people up if they drift off too much. It's also one of the reasons why seemingly straight roads have slight curves designed into them; so as too not make the driving experience too repetitive. Doing repetitive tasks puts part of your brain in "automatic", which psychologists call "automaticity".

Re:This won't go over well

[fractoid]

That was on a quiet, rural road in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, this could never happen here in California, since the other drivers do stupid, unpredictable things so often that if you're not "actively driving" 100% of the time, you'll be killed to death.

I'm not so sure it couldn't. I often don't remember exact details of my journey home, and it's 45kms sharing roads with Perth drivers, but multiple times I've been tootling along with my brain switched off and snapped out of it to find the car already braking at the limit, or having swerved into another lane (after checking blind spots, even) to avoid some retard who's pulled out in front of me. My guess is that the bits that do the driving are all working perfectly and my brain just doesn't bother recording the run-of-the-mill stuff.

Re:This won't go over well

[Z00L00K]

Using daydreaming and alternate tasks sometimes frees the mind from a locked circle and can give you a new perspective of a problem.

Re:This won't go over well

[Chatsubo]

Once or twice I've taken a 20-30min nap in my car during lunch. I found I was very alert and productive in the afternoon on those occasions. Our company was getting a new office building and was fielding suggestions for conveniences we'd like as developers. I had two suggestions: Tiny, private offices for developers, as suggested by Joel Spolsky (even cited the article). And a bed.

Both suggestions had the managers in stitches, and that was that.

Mutually exclusive?

[Leibel]

"Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness..." and "our brains are very active when we daydream"

These aren't mutually exclusive. It just means our brains are very active on other topics

Re:Mutually exclusive?

[TheRealMindChild]

Why does it have to be another topic? I could be daydreaming about what I am at that moment. Just so much so that my ability to function with the surrounding environment has gone down a noticeable level.

Re:Mutually exclusive?

[FooBarWidget]

That's called concentrating, not daydreaming.

Re:Mutually exclusive?

[Anonymous Coward]

very active on other topics

Boobies?

Is this really surprising to you?

[cowscows]

Daydreaming is basically shutting off (or at least ignoring) the bulk of the sensory inputs into your brain, and letting your imagination run the show for a period of time. Is it really surprising that having to create an ongoing reality that replaces a bunch of those ignored sensory inputs requires the brain to do some serious work? Especially when compared to performing a routine task that you've already done hundreds of times?

Laziness isn't really connected in any meaningful way to how hard your brain is working. I could give my brain a pretty serious workout by staying home, sitting on the couch, and doing crossword puzzles until next thursday, but that's still a pretty lazy way to spend a week.

Unfortunately, my boss isn't impressed by general problem solving as much as he's impressed by the solving of the specific problems that he's paying me to figure out.

Re:Is this really surprising to you?

[StikyPad]

Daydreaming is basically shutting off (or at least ignoring) the bulk of the sensory inputs into your brain

Many people do the same thing when they're focusing on a particular task. While I'm personally very bad at this (which is perhaps why I'm so easily distracted), several people I know become hyperfocused to the point that they actually don't hear their name being called, or the phone ringing. I don't see how that's any less work for the brain than your definition of daydreaming.

One time I threw a brick at a duck.

Did you yell "brick" or "duck"?

Re:Is this really surprising to you?

[DriedClexler]

Daydreaming is basically shutting off (or at least ignoring) the bulk of the sensory inputs into your brain, and letting your imagination run the show for a period of time.

I accidentally discovered an interesting trick. I don't know if it's related to your point here, but if you get that "daydreaming" look in your eyes, you can stop (or rather, significantly alter) your eyes' saccadal movement (the way that they dart around to get a better model of your environment).

This illusion exploits your saccades to make it look like the snakes are rotating. However, if you start staring at it and get that "glazed" look that will tip people off you're not listening, the snakes stop rotating.

Re:Is this really surprising to you?

[value_added]

I'd say it depends on the task.

Don't think so. Maybe it's mentioned in the article (which I haven't yet read), but whatever focus you think you have expires every 20-25 minutes, if not sooner. That "shutting off", to use the OP's words, is what's key here, not what follows.

Ask yourself how often you've been at work and simply interrupted things to refresh your coffee, or watched something interesting on television and welcomed the commercial break. In movie theatres, who doesn't get up to go for popcorn? Or for the real nerds, watching a porno movie and getting distracted by some computer equipment that happens to be part of the set.

You can pretend you can maintain concentration or focus, but that's a self deceit that yields little that's useful. By contrast, most forms of meditation, for example, encourage following our natural ebbs and flows of concentration, even if what we're striving to focus on is absolutely nothing.

Re:Is this really surprising to you?

[wytcld]

Daydreaming is basically shutting off (or at least ignoring) the bulk of the sensory inputs into your brain, and letting your imagination run the show for a period of time.

Is that how it is for you? For me, daydreaming happens most strongly when I open my sensory inputs, as on the fine spring days we've been having here this past week. It's when the inspiration of the world joins with the directions of my thought, rather than the two pulling in different directions. More often most of the sensory input gets suppressed because it's "distraction," not pertinent to the task assigned by my "executive network" as these academic clowns like to call it in this paper - which is really a pretty good paper, in that they're recognizing that the most powerful thought goes with nature (at least our inner nature - the "default network") rather than against it.

That can also explain why American culture was at its strongest when much of our nation was at the frontier - directly facing nature. The daydream inducing nature of being nature facing may have played as large a role as the discipline inducing nature of taming a wilderness. In civilization you can do quite a bit with no imagination at all. On a frontier, lack of imagination is often the prelude to failure and death. And that imagination had better be damn well keyed to the specifics of the current environment - to a very vital mindfulness.

You don't say..

[stevied]

Please tag "noshitsherlock" ..

I'll be sure to let my boss know...

[pwnies]

that if he wants productivity to soar he has to hire more hot co-workers for me to daydream about.

...annndddd if you guys need me I'll be in my mandatory sensitivity training.

It's true

[sayfawa]

Dreaming up scenarios where my coding skills and knowledge of cutting-edge physics theories gets me women and fame is a really complex thought process. Takes a lot of brain power.

Re:It's true

[tutori]

Don't you mean regular expressions? http://xkcd.com/208/

This isn't surprising

[JoshuaZ]

I certainly come up with some of my best thoughts when daydreaming. I'm tempted to make a joke about how the only better thinking time is when I'm on the toilet. But I'm worried that I'll get modded as a troll.

yes, i was just thinking about this the other day

[circletimessquare]

and I think that...

hmm

mmm

hmmmm

mmm

oh!

anyway, what did you ask?

Daydreaming, introversion and associative horizon

[blahplusplus]

I wonder how common daydreaming is in introverts vs extroverts and those with a large associative horizon.

I'd imagine having a good imagination and constantly working it can lead to impressive creativity and novel ways of viewing problems... but it could also lead to not accomplishing a lot at all because it is just so enamoring.

Re:Huh? What? WHAT THE HELL!

[coryboehne]

Talk about sleeping on the job... I didn't even post this in the right story...

Did you say something?

About right..

However, I wonder if the author has looked into writing books for academic purposes...

Anyone who has a degree knows just how much money is made on textbooks, and the frequency with which they are replaced and updated.

If I was a writer looking to make a living at it, especially in a vertical field, I would seriously consider writing university level textbooks.

At Work

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend half my time daydreaming and half my time doodling.

I do great work.

Problem solving.

[MrCrassic]

I thought that daydreaming, or dreaming in general, was the period where problems that occurred during the day re-manifested themselves...

When I daydream, I usually think of solutions to problems that go on throughout the day.