bodhi tree swaying

I’ve long advocated the usefulness of “creative daydreaming.” In fact I wrote a piece on Wildmind several years ago that touched on the subject, which I suspects is a bit taboo with some meditation teachers who are stuck with the idea that we should let go of all thinking.

Anyway, there was an interesting article recently in the New York Times, called Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind, confirming the notion that daydreaming can be a creative act. Fortunately research is being done on the topic, and there are some interesting results:

During waking hours, people’s minds seem to wander about 30 percent of the time, according to estimates by psychologists who have interrupted people throughout the day to ask what they’re thinking. If you’re driving down a straight, empty highway, your mind might be wandering three-quarters of the time…

From one third to three quarters of our time being …

It’s ironic that just as science is beginning to discover how creativity works, it is (in the US at least) in the midst of a marked decline. A Newsweek article reports that while IQ has been steadily rising, generation by generation, creativity began to decline steeply after 1990.

It’s a fascinating article (that I’m only half-way through), but in case one day you ever need to remind yourself what creativity was, here’s how it used to work:

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available

…