A wandering mind is something that
is often associated with daydreaming, slacking, and being unproductive. Contrary
to this belief, mind wandering is a type of attention that is important in deep
thinking.
As your mind wanders, it creates new connections between things that you may not think of otherwise. Think of it like when you lose your keys. You become so focused on finding them that your eyes just pass over them in plain sight. You step away to look elsewhere, but then later come back to find your keys in a place you had looked before. Similarly, when your mind wanders you are essentially stepping away from your train of thought and while you’re away or when you return, you find an answer to your problem.
There are three crucial things that occur when your mind wanders:
- You slowly make sense of the world through the lens of what you’re focusing on to fully understand it.
- You make new connections, getting a fuller grasp of the topic which can create resolutions.
- Your mind will go over past experiences to try to predict the future, to make connections to predict what will happen.
Together, these elements can lead a person into deeper thinking. When I have engaged in these habits while reading, I have found that my general understanding of what I read is better than when I haven’t. For me, my mind wanders a lot when I read, and I have felt scatter brained in the past because of it. Since becoming aware of the benefits to mind wandering, I have found myself instead enjoying it when I find my mind wandering.
A challenge against mind wandering is the fact that our society tells us that you are not being productive unless you are singularly focused on one activity. While our brains are not truly capable of multi-tasking, your brain needs to switch between tasks to have a greater understanding of the task at hand. It needs the shifts in focus to make connections to have full comprehension. If you never let your brain wander, chances are that your knowledge of things will remain superficial because your brain is never given the opportunity to think about things thoroughly.
If you want to fully understand something, you must give your brain room to roam and stretch its legs, you must let it wander. Allowing your brain to wander promotes creativity and can only help with your comprehension of topics. While you do not want to let your brain wander so far that it brings you to distractions, it is still an important part of deep thinking. For example, even though it truly has barely anything to do with the topic, mind wandering made me think of the song Never Did No Wanderin’ by The Folksmen, from the movie A Mighty Wind.
For kicks and giggles, please enjoy The Folksmen’s musical stylings!
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