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#Post#: 13352--------------------------------------------------
For a more productive life, daydream
By: luvcats Date: May 19, 2014, 10:07 am
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I am the biggest daydreamer that I know. Okay, if I wasn't maybe
I would of learned something in school LOL. Oh well, being the
dreamy type makes me happy. So does this story.
CNN) -- In 1990, a 25-year-old researcher for Amnesty
International, stuck on a train stopped on the tracks between
London and Manchester, stared out the window for hours. To those
around her, no doubt rustling newspapers and magazines, busily
rifling through work, the young woman no doubt appeared to be
little more than a space cadet, wasting her time, zoning out.
But that woman came to be known as JK Rowling. And in those idle
hours daydreaming out the train window, she has said that the
entire plot of the magical Harry Potter series simply "fell
into" her head.
Mark Twain, during an enormously productive summer of writing in
1874, spent entire days daydreaming in the shade of Quarry Farm
in New York, letting his mind wander, thinking about everything
and nothing at all, and, in the end, publishing "The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer."
Such creative breakthroughs in leisurely moments are hardly
unique to literature. Physicist Richard Feynman idly watched
students in the cafeteria goof off by spinning plates. For the
fun of it, he began to make calculations of the wobbles. That
"piddling around," as he called it, led to developing the
Feynman diagrams to explain quantum electrodynamics, which
resulted in a Nobel Prize.
Legend has it not only that Archimedes had his "eureka!" moment
about water displacement while relaxing in the tub, but that
Einstein worked out the Theory of Relativity while tootling
around on his bicycle.
Though Protestant work ethic-driven Americans have tended to
worry about the devil holding sway in idle time, it turns out
idle time is crucial for creativity, innovation and breakthrough
thinking. And now we know why. Neuroscience is finding that when
we are idle, our brains are most active.
It all has to do with something called the brain's default mode
network, explains Andrew Smart, a human factors research
scientist and author of the new book, "Autopilot, the Art &
Science of Doing Nothing."
The default mode network is like a series of airport hubs in
different and typically unconnected parts of the brain. And
that's why it's so crucial. When the brain flips into idle mode,
this network subconsciously puts together stray thoughts, makes
seemingly random connections and enables us to see an old
problem in an entirely new light.
Using brain scans, psychologists John Kounios and Mark Beeman
have found that just before that moment of insight, the brain
turns inward, what they call a "brain blink," and lights up an
area believed to be linked to our ability to understand the
poetry of metaphors. A positive mood and taking time to relax,
they found, were critical precursors to these a-ha! moments.
That's not to say that being idle all the time is the answer.
Sir Isaac Newton was steeped in the study of physical science
when he sat in his garden in a "contemplative mood," idly
sipping tea after dinner one evening, noticed an apple fall
straight to the ground, and came up with the Law of Gravity.
"To be most creative, you need this oscillation between deep
study with focused attention and daydreaming, which is why you
may have your great ideas when you're in the shower," Smart told
me. "They can come into your consciousness when you're not
busy."
Smart himself typically takes long, leisurely walks during the
workday and carries a notebook with him to capture any
interesting thoughts or ideas that his default mode network may
burble to the surface
Most employers frown on such behavior. But if they're smart,
they wouldn't.
One recent study of the pharmaceutical industry by Bernard Munos
of the InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation
and William Chin, former dean of research at Harvard Medical
School, for example, found that, despite massive research and
development budgets, the number of potential breakthrough drugs
introduced in the past decade has dropped roughly in half. Why?
Because companies became obsessed with cautious efficiency, they
argue, rather than in often risky, dreamy innovation.
"Companies pressure workers to be in the office, to work all the
time. But at the same time, they're really interested in
innovation, which comes from letting go," Smart said. "But you
can't have it both ways."
Just think. The Wright Brothers closed up their busy bicycle
shop in Ohio, decamped to the beach in North Carolina and in
this playful, leisure time, invented the airplane. Bill Gates
escapes to a cabin in the woods for "think weeks."
Google, Facebook and LinkedIn give employees some version of "20
percent time" -- affectionately known as "employee goof off
time." And giving workers time to daydream, experiment and
follow a passion without worrying about failure has resulted in
some of their most innovative and successful products, such as
Gmail and AdSense, an advertising program that Wired reports now
produces about a quarter of Google's revenue
Hard as it is to believe in our modern, work-worshipping
culture, idleness, leisure time, daydreaming and time away from
the hurly-burly, the drudgery of routine and the endless nose to
the grindstone, is not only essential for innovation, it is, in
fact, what has created civilization.
Art, literature, inventions, innovation, philosophy -- one could
argue nearly all that is transcendent about our flawed human
species -- has come as a result of a delicate balance between
the uninterrupted time in leisure to daydream, to set the
default mode network free, and the concentrated time at work to
make those flights of whim and fancy something real.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his famous 1932 essay, "In
Praise of Idleness," advocated a four-hour workday and more
leisure time for all. Daydreaming, imaging the possibility of a
better world in leisure time, he argued, not only cultivated
arts, science and culture, but liberated the oppressed and
birthed new, democratic systems of governance. Without leisure,
he wrote, "mankind would never have emerged from barbarism."
It's a crucial truth that is increasingly getting lost as our
work hours climb. Workers in the U.S. put in among the most
extreme hours of any advanced economy on the planet -- as
economic uncertainty and fear of the future keep us firmly
planted at our desks, the better to show the boss what good
workers we are in advance of the next round of downsizing.
Our antiquated laws give no overwork protection to knowledge
workers, and as advances in technology, as much as they are
designed to free us, keep us instead tethered to the office,
checking texts and e-mails, returning work calls everywhere and
all the time, leaving us feeling perpetually "on call" and never
quite able to get away from it all.
Work, and this insidious work creep says leisure scholar Ben
Hunnicutt, is now how Americans tend to answer the existential
questions of who we are and how we find meaning in life. And in
so doing, we have created a world that has no time for something
as seemingly silly and unproductive as daydreaming and leisure
time.
And that's where we're wrong.
Just imagine, what if, instead of staring out the window, that
Amnesty International researcher stuck on a train dove into a
thick ream of cases to catch up on? Or, if it were today,
whipped out her smartphone and tackled the backlog of e-mails in
her inbox, diverting herself occasionally with a game of Candy
Crush?
Or would we all have been too busy to stop and notice just how
much smaller the world is without magic?
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