Encourage Daydreaming

Page 18 Science Tuesday

Neuroscience research has shown that mind wandering lights up connections across a series of interacting brain regions known as the default mode network (DMN). 

For some of us, this comes naturally and is the foundation of creative thought.  For others, it needs to be nurtured and encouraged, and is usually at loggerheads with the mundane tasks of the day. In healthy doses, it can be fertile ground for innovation and vision.  Daydreaming should be encouraged.  Not to the detriment of productivity, but to the benefit of it. 

There is an unsettling lack of creative thought in our society as we trudge our way through the order.  Those of us blessed (or cursed) with daydreaming ability should mentor.  Pause is an important part of this.  Teach people to listen, pause, daydream, then act, or maybe don’t act.

Daydreaming is not sleepwalking.  Daydreaming is not disinterest.  Daydreaming is an exercise in imagining potential.  I suppose what I am really saying is that free-form assessment and thought should be a prerequisite for, well, everything.  Data doesn’t always expose the reason for why we do what we do, nor can we fully understand ourselves and others by looking at statistics.  The mind is vast and malleable.  Daydream and think.