Mindwandering is a book by Moshe Bar. The subtitle is “How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity”.
Notes
- A key point in the book is a distinction between different types of mindwandering.
- When our thoughts wander broadly and quickly, this can improve our mood and increase creativity.
- In contrast, rumination is a pattern of returning to a particular topic (often an unpleasant one) and dwelling on it without reaching a conclusion or making progress. Spending a large amount of time in rumination can be associated with mental health problems.
- The author’s research suggests that we can deliberately encourage the broad form of mindwandering. Some ways to do this are: practice making creative associations between words to create a list, read lots of information quickly, and try to think of an interesting subject to think about before going out for a walk (particularly if you suspect you may be tempted into rumination instead).
Reflections
I’m interested in trying some of the exercises in this book for the Testing Creativity Advice category.
Category: Notes and Reflections