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“A lot of scientists and people in everyday culture define mind-wandering in a very narrow sense, of the mind moving away from the current ask at hand. For me, that’s a very industrialist, capitalist, narrowing definition of a freely moving mind.”

How to think about thought (download full article)

“Our experiences form our lives – past, present, and future – and left to wander, our mind will process them into stories and meaning.” But a cultural emphasis on goal-driven thinking, which happens in another part of the brain, “disconnects us from the fullness of our experience.”

“Even though the name for it [the default mode network] is ‘default,’ the processes it engages in are anything but, because they’re very active and very internally oriented. And its in those moments that we sometimes have new ideas that end up being much more creative and novel than what we were able to achieve while trying to work on a task.”

“We need to become relaxed enough mentally in order to not try to be productive or reach some goal. With habitual activities we engage in with some regularity, we don’t feel guilty about letting our minds wander—that’s when the mind can reach new places.”

“People always get surprised when they realize they get interesting, novel ideas at unexpected times because our cultural narrative tells us we should do it through hard work, it’s a pretty universal human experience.”

“In my most recent work, I’ve argued that mind wandering is (instead) the manner in which the mind moves. Just like we could wander in physical space; when the mind wanders, it roams freely throughout our own mental space.”

“Unbridled freedom of thought and spontaneity could be hugely important for creativity, but it’s only half of what’s necessary,” Christoff says. “The other half is to be incredibly critical and in a very constrained way evaluate the products.”