A recent series of studies concluded that “zoning out”, or allowing your mind to wander is good for you:
The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain’s activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future.
This is definitely good news for me, because it’s something I’ve done my whole life. It’s where I imagine new creative things while I’m mundanely walking from my car into work, or sitting bored in a class. It’s allowed me see other perspectives, discover my testimony, work out arguments, and recognize my place in life.
It’s not always a good thing, mind you. Too much zoning out can detach you from the real world around you. I remember in 5th grade, I was sitting at my desk completely zoned out for some reason. And while I was thinking of something else, a girl had walked in front of me and stopped. I only jarred myself back to reality because I could tell she was looking at me. I lifted my eyes to meet hers and saw a completely disgusted look on her face. While I was zoned out, I was staring at her chest. Now, I wasn’t really staring at her chest (in 5th grade I’m sure there wasn’t a whole lot to stare at anyway), I was staring through her and through the wall behind her, past the parking lot to another world inside my head. But she didn’t know that.
I think one of the problems in society now is the lack of zoning out. We are being feed constant stimulation through TV, computers, cell phones, etc., that it robs us of the repetitive or boring times that are prime to zone out in. A lot of the younger generations have trouble concentrating, NOT because they are zoning out, but because they are text messaging or surfing the internet. It’s actually pretty sad if you zone out about it.
