Devoted distraction

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200903/devoted-distraction

Zoning out, spacing out, out-to-lunch, wool-gathering, building castles in the air. How many pejorative terms do we need to get the idea that daydreaming is an activity we don't think too highly of? And how many schoolkids have been reprimanded or teased for letting their minds meander when a teacher wanted them to focus on Something Important?

Yet, says neurologist Marcus Raichle of Washington University in St. Louis, "Everybody does it, they know they do it, and it's easy for people to relate to." In fact, psychologists and neuroscientists estimate that we spend between 15 and 50 percent of our waking hours daydreaming—that is, straying away from focused tasks or external stimuli to inner thoughts, fantasies, and feelings. And when our brain has nothing else in particular to do, it turns on and kicks into high intensity a whole neural network dedicated to reviewing what we already know and imagining possible worlds—in other words, daydreaming.

Until recently, however, daydreaming was considered not merely a waste of time but almost pathological: Old psychology textbooks warn that excessive daydreaming can propel one into insanity, and during the First World War, a United States army questionnaire included the statement "I daydream frequently" to screen out neurotic recruits. Even today, we're so down on distractibility, especially in the classroom, that we medicate kids who are prone to it.

Throughout the 20th century, "Only a handful of people were investigating daydreaming," says psychologist Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It was largely overlooked by mainstream psychology."