Learning how to daydream can be a valuable skill. Contrary to the “Get your heads out of the clouds” of grade school, daydreaming can improve your life.
Note: The science for this article comes from The Richness of Inner Experience: Relating Styles of Daydreaming to Creative Processes by Claire Zedelius and Jonathan Schooler.
What is Daydreaming?
Daydreaming in scientific literature is described as “engaging in stimulus-independent, task-unrelated thoughts and images” and is commonly described as a stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when attention drifts to the more personal and internal direction.
How Much of Time is Spent Daydreaming
47% of people’s waking time consists of daydreaming, a Harvard study by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found.
The Benefits of Daydreaming
Nearly half of the hours spent awake are lost in a miasma of daydreaming. Spending your time daydreaming isn’t bad. Daydreaming can lead to improved mood (thinking about a vacation instead of focusing on the drive into work) and can lead to creative thoughts. The question then becomes, how can this daydreaming be improved to lead to be more constructive in daily life?
Beyond just the fact that daydreaming takes up so much time, people who daydream constructively report more creative thoughts, happier moods, and even improved emotional regulation. Meanwhile, people who do not constructively daydream report problems concentrating, and increased negative emotions.
Being conscious of how much time is spent daydreaming is the first step in using some of that time to generate more creative ideas for work, life, and relaxation.
Need help getting creative? Check out our guide on how to be innovative like Da Vinci to bring out your best ideas!
Divergent and Convergent Thinking
IDEO, one of the world’s leading creative design firms, uses what they call, “design thinking” when coming up with their creative design pieces. They use divergent thinking first. Divergent thinking is using dissimilar pieces of information to make a choice, and then they pull it all together with convergent thinking where choices are made, and the idea is narrow.
Using two different thinking patterns provides insight into the two ways that problems are typically solved since the IDEOs method captures both processes in one.
Analytical problem solving is an incremental and conscious process, where problems are worked in a step by step fashion, in an orderly process. IDEO splits between Divergent and Convergent thinking is analytical, and the processes to generate ideas is systematic, focusing on pulling dissimilar ideas (building blocks and voting ) and making them convergent to create one new idea (a modular voting booth that enables blind citizens to vote at a voting booth).
The second process is insight, which is characterized by the spontaneity with which an idea springs to mind. These are often called “aha” or “eureka” moments. Aha, moments are where divergent thinking is helpful. These aha moments seem to come out of nowhere, but they are linking between dissimilar ideas applied in a new way. Such as children’s building blocks and voting booths, letting the two ideas come together in a new way that makes it possible for blind citizens to vote.
Daydreaming .vs Mind-Wandering
Imagination can be broken down into two types.
Daydreaming: Entails engaging in spontaneous thoughts unrelated to one’s current task. Daydreaming is thinking about being a pirate, feeling the sea breeze when instead there are math problems that should be tackled.
Mind-Wandering: is a type of daydreaming where there is a task being accomplished while focusing on something else. Mind-wandering is planning a vacation while scrubbing mashed potatoes off a plate after dinner. The task, washing dishes, is still be done, but the mind is occupied with another task.
The Three Types of Daydreaming Styles
Singer and Schonbar’s research has laid the foundation for all daydreaming research to this day. They identified three main categories of daydreaming styles.
(1) Positive-constructive daydreaming: Characterized by pleasant thoughts, vivid imagery, planning, and interpersonal curiosity.
(2) Guilty-dysphoric daydreaming: Consists of unpleasant emotions such as guilt, fear of failure, and aggressive inclinations.
(3) Poor attentional control: Characterized by fleeting daydreams and general difficulty focusing attention on internal or external events.
Based on the above, Positive-constructive day-dreaming is the style to develop. The people who feel like they lack attention and experience negative moods while daydreaming are using guilt and poor attentional control methods, which explains why they so negative about their thoughts.
People who experience positive emotions, increased creative thought and improved emotional regulation use the positive-constructive daydreaming style.
How to Develop a Positive-Constructive Daydreaming style
Srini Pillay wrote a whole book on the idea of developing the positive-constructive daydreaming style called Tinker Dabble Doodle Try.
The process for fostering Positive-constructive daydreaming involves using the daydreaming time to focus on creating alignment of dissimilar ideas. The process goes like the below.
- Start planning: Dedicate time on the calendar for mind wandering
- Turn your attention inward: do not engage the senses, simply focus on your internal thoughts as you block out the external world.
- Do something low-key: this generates mind wander, which is constructive to improving creative ideas. The book recommends doodling as an activity, I like to do light chores while my mind wandering.
- Overcome the vomit response: a study by Jennifer Muller found people hate their ideas. The first reaction will be rejecting creative ideas as not good enough. Acknowledge you won’t like the ideas, but keep going anyways, creative thinking is all about pushing through and generating new ideas.
Is Positive Constructive Daydreaming the Only Helpful Daydreaming?
No. In many ways are daydreaming, or mind-wandering can be helpful. Picking your technique is about knowing which one to tap into for the specific need. Daydreaming and mind wandering both have their place to help develop creative thought.
I like Dr. Pillay’s ideas of fostering the Positive-Constructive Daydreaming style, and it helps bring systems and processes to daydreaming. Plus, using this style avoids negative rumination and sporadic attention.
However, there is still a place for daydreaming to complement more structured daydreaming approaches.
Fostering creative insight with Daydreaming
1. Focus internally
when thoughts are turned inward, instead of focusing on external stimulus, the mind can shelter itself for ideas. By focusing internally during a daydream, much like with positive-constructive daydreaming, the outside world has less influence on the thoughts. Letting the mind pull in from its internal library for ideas. Leading to those aha moments.
2. Use when feeling positive:
Daydreaming is associated with improved creative thought with the happier the starting mood a person is in. When you are feeling happy, it is a good time today to foster insights, because the mind is more relaxed, and is putting less-pressure on itself to come up with a solution.
Trying to be more positive? check out our guide on how to be more optimistic!
3. Mood repair
The benefit of daydreaming is it can be used for mood-repair. Thinking of happier times or a fun upcoming event increases the current state mood. Once that mood is up, we can return to the task at hand.
4. Finding dissimilar ideas
Insights seemingly come from nowhere, but they are a combination of ideas. By lettering the mind explores the similarities between building blocks and voting booths, the modular idea came to IDEO. This is a form of insight generation, as the mind wanders, it can pull together the ideas.
5. Incubate
Incubating is the process where you start a task or idea and leave it. When you return, new insights will emerge, because the mind was silently working on the tasks while we were off doing other things. This is often why writers leave off mid-sentence, as they can come back and start writing with improved clarity and insight.
Fostering analytical thought with Daydreaming
1. Keep it broad
Analytical thinking is about rejecting bad ideas and continuing to go forward with the good ones. However, by starting too narrow and rejecting too many ideas at once, the brain starts to shut-off the creative side and goes into problem-solving mode. By using thinking, like divergent thinking, allows for a structured way to come up with new ideas while still systematically work towards the solution.
2. Keep it negative
Negativity can be good. It can serve as a sign that things are not the way they should be, and we are dissatisfied with them. Negativity and improved analytical thought go together because a negative or neutral mind can see all the flaws in a problem, and systematically work to get rid of them
3. But not too negative:
However, do not flip too much the other way. Where it becomes a negative rumination, this is not good for creative thoughts or even our mood. Instead, focus on the critical mindset that is more neutral and less personally satisfied with how things are.
4. Structured creative thought
Set-out a structured brainstorming session before every creative task, such as writing, brainstorming, or drawing. Start with a visualization exercise where you vividly imagine memories and current experiences and let these images trigger further images. This can help improve original thinking, this was done for three weeks in a study, and the students who conducted these exercises produced more original stories than their peers who did not practice this exercise.
5. Do not go back
In a study, people who daydream while ruminate on the same thought report lessened emotional states and narrow attention of focus, which decreases creative thinking. Instead, always go forward with ideas, if you already had the thought, instead of entertaining again, think “I’ve already been here, time to keep going”, imagine you are walking on a beach and can only go forward to search for new shells (ideas).
Key Take-Aways
- Humans spend a lot of time daydreaming. Constructive daydreaming can lead to improved creativity, mood, and overall well-being. While destructive or negative daydreaming can cripple creativity and cause negative emotions.
- Creativity is made up of insights and analytical processes, and daydreaming and mind-wandering
- To promote constructive daydreaming, use the positive constructive style as a start t foster creative thought
- Continue to use daydreaming to foster both insight and analytical methods as both are important for the creative thought processes
Action Item
Set aside time in the next three days to have a positive constructive style brainstorming session. Focus on something that needs creative thought and make work on it.
