I’ve never liked that belief about daydreaming though, because I get some of my most creative, imaginative thoughts while daydreaming, and I see it as a valuable tool for coming up with new ideas.
And as it turns out, there is some interesting research to back that up.
Daydreaming is important, neuroscientists have found, because it allows the brain to make novel associations and connections between unrelated ideas; and the freedom to drift allows our brains to imagine abstract, highly imaginative things. As any creative person knows, these are exactly the kinds of states of mind that lead to sessions of brilliant creativity, where ideas can come as fast as you can write them down.
Two Kinds of Daydreamers
In one particular study, it was found that there is a trick to getting the most out of your daydreaming. It turns out that there are two kinds of daydreamers, and one is better than the other:
- Unconscious Daydreamers - Unconscious daydreamers aren’t aware that they’re daydreaming. They daydream, but because they’re unaware of it, any insights they have while daydreaming go unnoticed, and they miss out on all the creative benefits of daydreaming.
- Conscious Daydreamers – Conscious daydreamers are aware of the fact that they are daydreaming. Conscious daydreaming is important because it’s not enough to just daydream, you have to be able to recognize that brilliant flash of insight when it comes along.
This is the crucial difference that seperates those who get brilliant creative flashes from their daydreams from those who just stare off in to space.
How to Go From Unconscious Daydreamer to Conscious Daydreamer
If you find yourself in that unconscious daydreamer group, it’s not such a difficult thing to get to the conscious daydreamer group. Like anything else, it takes practice. As silly as it might sound, just practice daydreaming, and practice being aware of your daydreams.
Another thing that everyone can do too is set aside more time for daydreaming, which means setting aside some distraction free time. Personally, I love to daydream in the shower as there are zero distractions and I find the white noise of the falling water really helps me drift off.
Find a place that works for you and get some serious daydreaming done, you’ll be glad you did.
One More Thing: T.V.
The Boston Globe article where I first heard about this study had a great anecdotal story on the perils of T.V. to the daydreamer:
Teresa Belton, a research associate at East Anglia University in England, first got interested in daydreaming while reading a collection of stories written by children in elementary school. Although Belton encouraged the students to write about whatever they wanted, she was startled by just how uninspired most of the stories were.
“The tales tended to be very tedious and unimaginative,” Belton says, “as if the children were stuck with this very restricted way of thinking. Even when they were encouraged to think creatively, they didn’t really know how.”
After monitoring the daily schedule of the children for several months, Belton came to the conclusion that their lack of imagination was, at least in part, caused by the absence of “empty time,” or periods without any activity or sensory stimulation. She noticed that as soon as these children got even a little bit bored, they simply turned on the television: the moving images kept their minds occupied. “It was a very automatic reaction,” she says. “Television was what they did when they didn’t know what else to do.”
The problem with this habit, Belton says, is that it kept the kids from daydreaming. Because the children were rarely bored – at least, when a television was nearby – they never learned how to use their own imagination as a form of entertainment. “The capacity to daydream enables a person to fill empty time with an enjoyable activity that can be carried on anywhere,” Belton says. “But that’s a skill that requires real practice. Too many kids never get the practice.”
I think there’s a lesson in there for parents as well as aspiring daydreamers. Cheap entertainment like television can be a huge hinderance to daydreaming, and it only underscores the necessity of setting some ‘empty’ time aside to facillitate daydreaming.
Further Reading:
- Important Work Can Be Done While Daydreaming
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