Eureka!

Collage- Daydream

Why is it that my creative ideas breed when I'm resting in bed, eating meals, brushing teeth, showering, walking to the bus stop, on public transport and even when I'm sitting on the loo?

Is it that as soon as we are doing everyday activities our minds get bored in our rituals so we like to take our minds on a holiday, fantasising about all sorts?

I do think that some of our best ideas originate from the act of daydreaming. In 1980 William James, founder of American psychology, wrote that "when absorbed in intellectual attention we become so inattentive to outer things as to be ‘absent-minded,’ ‘abstracted,’ or ‘distraits.' All revery or concentrated meditation is apt to throw us into this state that transient lapses in the control of attention may lead to a shift in attention from the external world to internal mentation.” In an experiment researchers noticed that brain structures in participants became more active- in between tasks. These structures turned off as soon as the participants began to engage in tasks that were the original focus of the research. The technical term is “stimulus independent thought,” a thought about something other than events that originate from the outside environment. Stimulus independent thoughts is the content of mind wandering.