What is mind-wandering?
A recent study (1) measuring dimensions of mindfulness describes mind-wandering as three-fold: it happens without our effort, the activity is not focused on any particular object and the person who is wandering is unaware of the activity (1). If you have ever read a book and then realized that you have no idea what you just read, then you can be sure you know what mind-wandering is.
Is mind-wandering bad or good?
Science hasn’t yet solved the bad and good dilemma of the mind-wandering. Science, however, accumulated more evidence on negative mind-wandering effects than positive.
Many religious and spiritual practices, as well as self-help advice on productivity, encourages to keep your mind focused, “to be present”. The following passage from Buddhist text also indicates the possible drawback of the wondering mind. “Monks, I know not of any other single thing so intractable as the untamed mind. The untamed mind is indeed a thing untractable. "Monks, I know not of any other thing so tractable as the tamed mind. The tamed mind is indeed a thing tractable. <…>” The Book of the Ones (2).
The price we pay for mind-wandering
The biggest negative effect commonly cited is the loss of performance. A review study (3) concluded that wandering mind might be responsible for a failure in academic success, loss in performance during reading and cognitive ability. Mind-wandering seems to bring trouble in goal-oriented tasks in general (4).
“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost” (5). The emotional costs we pay for mind-wandering are negative moods (3) and lower happiness (5). When our mind wanders researcher register an increased activity in a brain region called default mode network (4,6). The default mode network shows increased activity in depressed patients (7), so it is not surprising we have an emotional cost associated with mind- wandering.
So what is the mind-wandering for?
By now we know, that mind-wandering makes us unhappy and it reduces our productivity. This doesn’t sound like a really great mechanism that we should have kept during our evolution? So why did we keep it?
We don’t really have a say in what the evolution leaves us with. What the process "cares" is how to increase our fitness at any cost. Happiness is arbitrary, an illusion that we seek to keep us motivate to be in the wheel of an evolutionary process.
Nobody can be certain why mind-wandering increases our fitness, but it could be that this mechanism evolved to helps us in building stronger social connections, better corporation plans and anticipate future. It also might be potentially useful in relieving boredom (3) and pain (8). Perhaps one of the most relevant benefits of mind-wandering in our society is creative thinking and learning. Mind-wandering might help to find novel solutions to some life problems (9) and provide meaningful insights (10) after the incubation period (3).
Is there a way to tame our wandering mind?
It might look by now that we are slaves of evolution. We keep spinning on the wheel of evolution with no way out. But the great thing about evolution that it has left us with many mechanisms to increase our success. One of such mechanism is our brain flexibly.
Brain flexibility allows us to recognize that we are all following the agenda of evolution, but we have a choice which parts we subscribe too. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Buddha has told us there is a way out of suffering. Research (4 ) is catching up with what Buddhist knew for centuries: we can tame wandering mind through meditation. Any type of mindfulness meditation can decrease activity in your default mode network (4) helping you to be more focused on the task and with higher awareness (1).
References
1. Lutz A, Jha AP, Dunne JD, Saron CD. Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist. 2015;70(7):632–658.2. Taming the Mind: Discourses of the Buddha, edited by The Buddhist Publication Society. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel051.html
3. Mooneyham BW, Schooler JW. The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: A review. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2013;67(1):11–8.
4. Brewer JA, Worhunsky PD, Gray JR, Tang Y-Y, Weber J, Kober H. Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011;108(50):20254–20259.
5. Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010;330(6006):932.
6. Mason MF, Norton MI, Van Horn JD, Wegner DM, Grafton ST, Macrae CN. Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science. 2007;317(5834):1–7.
7. Sheline YI, Barch DM, Price JL, et al. The default mode network and self-referential processes in depression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009;106(6):1942–1947.
8. Kucyi A, Salomons T V, Davis KD. Mind wandering away from pain dynamically engages antinociceptive and default mode brain networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2013;110(46):18692–18697.
9. Baars BJ. Spontaneous repetitive thoughts can be adaptive: Postscript on “mind wandering”.Psychological Bulletin. 2010;136(2):208-210.
10. Morewedge CK, Giblin CE, Norton MI. The (perceived) meaning of spontaneous thoughts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2014;143(4):1742–1754.
