Why Daydreaming Can Spur Creativity

If you daydream while you're washing dishes or watching TV, you're not alone. Harvard researchers found that people let their minds wander for almost 47 percent of their waking hours. 

Rather than writing off daydreaming as a head-in-the-clouds attempt to escape reality, a growing body of research shows that it is an essential cognitive tool. 

In an August 2012 study published in Psychological Science, 145 students were given two minutes to come up with novel uses for objects such as toothpicks and bricks. When students who were given a short break that encouraged daydreaming returned to the task, they came up with 41 percent more possibilities than students who were not given the chance to daydream between activities. 

"There appears to be a link between creativity and mind-wandering," notes lead researcher Jonathan Schooler, professor of psychology and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to creativity, researchers have also linked daydreaming with improved problem solving, curiosity, attention, constructive planning and enhanced social skills.

Daydreaming activates the default mode network, a set of brain regions that includes the posterior cingulate cortex, retrosplenial cortex and parts of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that make up the core structural network of the brain.  

According to Schooler, the default mode network, which is associated with memories and imagination, is turned off when you're very focused on a task, which could be one of the reasons studies have linked daydreaming to lower scores in reading comprehension, academic performance, IQ and task-related processing. 

The costs of mind-wandering aside, Schooler believes the practice has "tremendous evolutionary value." Mind-wandering, he asserts, may have led to the idea to turn a stick and stone into a spear.

"Daydreaming takes advantage of our amazing brains that are able to engage in mental time travel that can lead to the kind of innovation that can be achieved only when we transcend our current circumstances," Schooler says.

For older adults, daydreaming may be more challenging. A March 2012 study published in Psychology and Aging asked 54 young adults and 62 older adults to complete tasks that required sustained attention; older adults reported daydreaming at a rate of 16 percent (compared with 44 percent of younger adults).

"These focused tasks may be more cognitively demanding for older adults, giving them less capacity for their minds to wander," Schooler says.

To promote creativity, Schooler suggests seeking out opportunities to daydream, including taking daily walks or gardening — both activities that are nondemanding enough to promote a wandering mind.