Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self

by Manoush Zomorodi

While people were lying in scanners in Smallwood’s experiment, their brains continued to “exhibit very organized spontaneous activity.”

Douglas Adams was right. We're part of a fucking computer.

When our mind-wandering is dysphoric, our thoughts drift to unproductive and negative places. We berate ourselves for having forgotten an important birthday or obsess over failing to come up with a clever retort when we needed one. We’re flooded with emotions like guilt, anxiety, and anger. For some of us, it’s easy to get trapped in this cycle of negative thinking. Not surprisingly, this kind of mind-wandering is more frequent in people who report chronic levels of unhappiness. When dysphoric mind-wandering becomes chronic, it can lead people into destructive behaviors like compulsive gambling, addiction, and eating disorders.