do, their thoughts tend to become disordered and their moods negative (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi 1992; Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1984; Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi 1990). As the neuropsychologist George Miller said, “The mind survives by ingesting information” (Miller 1983, p. 111); when there is no information to keep it in an ordered state, the mind begins to lose control of attention, at least temporarily. As with most such generalizations, this rule does not apply to everyone: Individuals who have learned to control their minds even in the absence of external inputs of information—by learning
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