wandering mind and creativity

Creativity and the wandering mind : spontaneous and controlled cognition

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• Section I Spontaneous and controlled processes in creativity 1. Mind wandering: framework of a lexicon and musings on creativity Paul Joseph Barnett and James C. Kaufman 2. Autonomy and control across cognition: insights from creativity, memory, mind wandering, and reasoning research Nathaniel Barr, Roger Beaty and Paul Seli 3. Capturing the dynamics of creative daydreaming Claire M. Zedelius and Jonathan W. Schooler
• 4. The relationships between abstraction and creativity Massimiliano Palmiero
• Section II Mind wandering, consciousness, and imagination
• 5. Imagination and mind wandering: two sides of the same coin? A brain dynamics perspective Mario Villena-Gonzalez and Diego Cosmelli
• 6. Altered states of consciousness and creativity Luisa Prochazkova and Bernhard Hommel
• 7. Creating the "stuff of experience": spontaneous thoughts, memory, and hypnosis in clinical and forensic contexts Steven Jay Lynn, Craig Polizzi, Vladimir Miskovic and Damla Aksen
• Section II Imagination, play, and learning 8. Relations between imagination and creativity Jacqueline D. Woolley, Louise Bunce and Elizabeth A. Boerger
• 9. Pretend play in young children and the emergence of creativity David Whitebread and Lisha O'Sullivan
• 10. Mind wandering, fantasy, and pretend play: a natural combination Sandra W. Russ 11. Exploring the connection between imagination and creativity in academic learning Ronald A. Beghetto and Kathy L. Schuh 12. Productive mind wandering in design practice Charles Dobson and Kalina Christoff 13. Poetry, meaning making, and mind wandering David D. Preiss
• Section V Conclusion
• 14. Fragments from a notebook on novelty and constraint Patrick Colm Hogan.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

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The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming

Kalina Christoff Centre for Brain Health Department of Psychology University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Kieran C. R. Fox is a neuroscientist in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Fox's research focuses on the neural basis of higher human capacities, including meditation, mind-wandering, creativity, and consciousness. He is currently an MD candidate at Stanford's School of Medicine.

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Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? It may be surprising that the seemingly straightforward answers, “from the mind” or “from the brain,” are in fact an incredibly recent, modern understanding of the origins of spontaneous thought. For nearly all of human history, our thoughts—especially the most sudden, insightful, and important—were almost universally ascribed to divine or other external sources. Scientific understanding of spontaneous thought has progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years, but big questions still loom: What, exactly, is spontaneous thought? How does the human brain generate, elaborate, and evaluate its own spontaneous creations? And why do spontaneous thoughts feature so prominently in mental life? This volume brings together views from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, history, education, contemplative traditions, and clinical practice in order to begin to address the ubiquitous, yet still mysterious, spontaneous workings of the mind. The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought is the first book of its kind to bring such highly diverse perspectives to bear on answering the what, why, and how of spontaneous mental phenomena.

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It’s normal for your mind to wander. Here’s how to maximise the benefits

Psychology researcher, Bond University

Associate Professor in Psychology, Bond University

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Have you ever found yourself thinking about loved ones during a boring meeting? Or going over the plot of a movie you recently watched during a drive to the supermarket?

This is the cognitive phenomenon known as “ mind wandering ”. Research suggests it can account for up to 50% of our waking cognition (our mental processes when awake) in both western and non-western societies .

So what can help make this time productive and beneficial?

Mind wandering is not daydreaming

Mind wandering is often used interchangeably with daydreaming. They are both considered types of inattention but are not the same thing.

Mind wandering is related to a primary task, such as reading a book, listening to a lecture, or attending a meeting. The mind withdraws from that task and focuses on internally generated, unrelated thoughts.

On the other hand, daydreaming does not involve a primary, active task. For example, daydreaming would be thinking about an ex-partner while travelling on a bus and gazing out the window. Or lying in bed and thinking about what it might be like to go on a holiday overseas.

If you were driving the bus or making the bed and your thoughts diverted from the primary task, this would be classed as mind wandering.

The benefits of mind wandering

Mind wandering is believed to play an important role in generating new ideas , conclusions or insights (also known as “aha! moments”). This is because it can give your mind a break and free it up to think more creatively.

This type of creativity does not always have to be related to creative pursuits (such as writing a song or making an artwork). It could include a new way to approach a university or school assignment or a project at work. Another benefit of mind wandering is relief from boredom, providing the opportunity to mentally retreat from a monotonous task.

For example, someone who does not enjoy washing dishes could think about their upcoming weekend plans while doing the chore. In this instance, mind wandering assists in “passing the time” during an uninteresting task.

Mind wandering also tends to be future-oriented. This can provide an opportunity to reflect upon and plan future goals, big or small. For example, what steps do I need to take to get a job after graduation? Or, what am I going to make for dinner tomorrow?

Read more: Alpha, beta, theta: what are brain states and brain waves? And can we control them?

What are the risks?

Mind wandering is not always beneficial, however. It can mean you miss out on crucial information. For example, there could be disruptions in learning if a student engages in mind wandering during a lesson that covers exam details. Or an important building block for learning.

Some tasks also require a lot of concentration in order to be safe. If you’re thinking about a recent argument with a partner while driving, you run the risk of having an accident.

That being said, it can be more difficult for some people to control their mind wandering. For example, mind wandering is more prevalent in people with ADHD.

Read more: How your brain decides what to think

What can you do to maximise the benefits?

There are several things you can do to maximise the benefits of mind wandering.

• be aware : awareness of mind wandering allows you to take note of and make use of any productive thoughts. Alternatively, if it is not a good time to mind wander it can help bring your attention back to the task at hand

context matters : try to keep mind wandering to non-demanding tasks rather than demanding tasks. Otherwise, mind wandering could be unproductive or unsafe. For example, try think about that big presentation during a car wash rather than when driving to and from the car wash

content matters : if possible, try to keep the content positive. Research has found , keeping your thoughts more positive, specific and concrete (and less about “you”), is associated with better wellbeing. For example, thinking about tasks to meet upcoming work deadlines could be more productive than ruminating about how you felt stressed or failed to meet past deadlines.

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Mindfulness and creativity: Implications for thinking and learning

Danah henriksen.

a Arizona State University, United States

Carmen Richardson

b Kamehameha Schools, United States

c Kalamazoo Public Schools, United States

• • This thematic literature review investigates the relationship between mindfulness and creativity
• • Mindfulness practices improve skills or habits of mind that can support creativity
• • The mindfulness-creativity relationship is complex, but generally positive
• • Deliberate/mindful mind-wandering can support creativity
• • Purposeful inclusion of mindfulness in learning settings can benefit student learning, creativity and wellbeing

Mindfulness and creativity have both come to the forefront of educational interest—but a better understanding of their relationship and the implications for education is needed. This article reviews the literature on the intersection of these topics in order to understand where and how these two related but distinctive areas of research connect, and how this pertains to the complexity of education settings. Our goal is to understand findings from the literature and consider the implications for educational practice and research, with an eye to how mindfulness can be supportive to learners’ creativity. This thematic review and qualitative analysis of extant literature identifies four themes that speak to the connection between mindfulness and creativity. There is solid evidence to show a generally beneficial and supportive relationship, in that practicing mindfulness can support creativity—but many factors affect this and there are a range of considerations for practice. This article reflects on the key findings of scholarly work on the mindfulness-creativity relationship with interpretative discussion and implications for educational research and practice.

1. Introduction

Existing research on creativity has examined its different relationships, connections, or variables—such as personality skills, neuroscientific or cognitive correlates of creativity, disciplinary knowledge, imagination, bodily thinking, or the ways that creativity emerges in real-world design settings, among others ( Runco, 2014 ). One relatively recent and growing area of literature involves the relationship between mindfulness and creativity ( Kudesia, 2015 ). These two areas have been increasingly discussed in education settings, yet there is little research-based guidance to help consider their interrelationship for teaching and learning. Here, we explore the relationship, and also seek to explore the practical applications and implications for education contexts.

Mindfulness has recently received attention across scholarly and popular discourse ( King & Badham, 2018 ). It is defined as a state of “nonjudgmental, moment-to-moment awareness” ( Kabat-Zinn, 1990, p.2 ), and has been studied across varied disciplines such as psychology, physiology, healthcare, neuroscience, the arts, and others. Most mindfulness research has examined its potential to regulate stress and improve cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal functioning ( Sedlmeier et al., 2012 ). Scholars have suggested that the effects of mindfulness also relate to other skills and abilities, such as creativity ( Carson & Langer, 2006 ). Creativity is frequently defined as the ability to develop novel and effective ideas, artifacts, or solutions ( Runco, 2014 ). While this so-called ‘standard definition’ represents many existing research definitions, it does not embody the diversity and divergence of ways that creativity has been defined across a range of practices, disciplines and traditions ( Henriksen, Creely, & Henderson, 2019 ). Creativity is a complex area of research and practice, yet neoliberal perspectives have often driven educational discourse on creativity, emphasizing instrumentalist and societal drive toward innovation ( Mehta, Creely, & Henriksen, 2020 ). But perhaps more importantly, creativity is a way of being in the world with substantive value for human-centered wellbeing and expression ( Goff & Torrance, 1991 ).

Both mindfulness and creativity are complex areas that have been independently touted in education practices. Yet there is a need for a synthesis of extant research findings in understanding the mindfulness-creativity relationship and how it matters in learning settings. There is a theoretical reason for presuming an important relationship between them. These are broad ideas with unique connections to emotions, attention, stress, wellness, and awareness of one’s self and the world ( Baas, Nevicka, & Ten Velden, 2014 ). Given the importance both areas have to thinking and learning, and their increasing presence in educational contexts, it is important to understand research on their relationship.

For our purposes in this thematic literature review, we seek to identify themes and trends in the research, and then discuss the implications for educational settings. While mindfulness and creativity individually arise in education discourses, they are rarely linked and there is little to guide teachers in identifying research takeaways for the complexity of learning settings. Very little existing research on the intersection of these topics is actually embedded in classrooms—so we aim to distill significant aspects of the relationship and share implications for teachers and learners.

In a world awash in distraction, stress, and often, distress—all of which can affect creativity and wellbeing—mindfulness becomes a valuable consideration for supporting learners in educational practice. Particularly in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers and learners are experiencing a sense of uncertainty, discomfort, or even trauma. While we do not suggest that mindfulness offers a “fix” for the kinds of systemic inequities or difficulties that many are facing—situations of stress or trauma underscore the value in paying attention to issues that relate to our sense of wellness and humanity, such as mindfulness and creativity.

We begin with background context about mindfulness, then we describe our literature review approach on the creativity-mindfulness relationship. We then qualitatively analyze and describe thematic findings and takeaways from this review. Finally, we discuss the implications for thinking and learning, with conclusions for educational practice and research.

1.1. Background on mindfulness

Mindfulness has roots in longstanding Eastern spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhist philosophy. Buddhist philosophy and practices teach a way of being present in the moment and letting go of the overreliance that humans tend to have on a sense of individualized identity (as a ‘thinker of thoughts’) in favor of a broader connection to a sense of oneness and integration with all things ( Shonin, Van Gordon, & Griffiths, 2014 ). However, Trammel (2017) notes that mindfulness has entered into secular practice and mainstream culture in recent decades. There has been valid concern about the ways in which the authenticity of Buddhist truths might be stripped of their original values through this mainstreaming of mindfulness. However, scholars such as Sun (2014) have noted that this secular recontextualization of mindfulness has supported the emergence of the concept for use in broader social contexts or organizations such as schools, where they can benefit wellbeing for learning. Williams and Kabat-Zinn (2011) suggest that since Buddhist meditative practices are concerned with embodied awareness and cultivating clarity, emotional balance, equanimity, and compassion—all of which can be developed by intentional deployment of attention—that “the roots of Buddhist meditation practices are de facto universal” (p. 1).

The work of Kabat-Zinn (1990) and his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program (developed at University of Massachusetts Medical School) are partly responsible for bringing mindfulness to broader audiences, with intentional development of secular-based practices for health and wellbeing needs. Since then, many programs and studies have documented the physical and mental benefits of mindfulness, inspiring adaptations into schools, prisons, hospitals, veterans centers, and more.

The previously-noted definition of mindfulness can be elaborated as the ability to be fully present, and aware of where we are and what we are doing, without becoming overly reactive or overwhelmed by the present.. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation practices, aimed at building skills for present-moment awareness as a mental habit (e.g. just as physical exercise aims to make the body more healthy even beyond exercise sessions—meditation or mindfulness practices aim to cultivate healthy psychological awareness and wellbeing, beyond the practices themselves). Berkley’s Greater Good Science Center (n.d.) suggests, “Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.” Despite the simple, intuitive nature of such definitions, achieving it is often not simple or intuitive.

O’Donnell (2015) suggests that mindfulness has gained widespread interest precisely because states of distraction, anxiety, suffering, and lack of connection are so common and detrimental. As society veers toward more chaotic, techno-centric, globally-connected and distracted modes, mindfulness offers an antidote to internalized unrest—particularly for learners who face ever expanding sources of difficulty from stress and distraction. The buzz of popular interest and excitement around the concept has increased, such that mindfulness appears ubiquitous, from healthcare or corporate settings, to schools and classrooms ( Shapiro, 2009 ).

Researchers have sought to study interventions related to different components of mindfulness, often through the central practice of meditation. Because meditation offers specific practices for awareness of one’s own thoughts, it provides an intervention to study the development and effects of mindful states, helping people connect with thoughts and emotions in the present moment ( Shapiro, 2009 ). Research has demonstrated that by developing awareness about one’s own mind and the present moment, people experience less anxiety, more positive emotions and engagement, and other mental and emotional benefits ( Weinstein, Brown, & Ryan, 2009 ). In becoming more aware of their thinking, learners in particular become more skilled at navigating thought processes in psychologically healthy ways ( Bennett & Dorjee, 2016 ). Importantly, it also connects to creative thinking skills ( Kudesia, 2015 ).

While creativity and mindfulness may work synergistically, the relationship is complex. Researchers and practitioners in educational contexts require a better sense of a nascent but growing body of literature to understand implications for the future of research and practice.

2. Methods for review

We explore scholarly literature at the intersection of mindfulness and creativity to understand how it relates to thinking and learning settings. This is a thematic literature review and our work is guided by the following questions:

• ● What is the nature of the mindfulness-creativity relationship as outlined in existing research and literature?
• ● Based on the literature on mindfulness and creativity, what are the implications for teaching and learning settings? And what takeaways and ideas can be used to inform educational practice?

2.1. Approach and rationale for review

A thematic literature review is not based around the progression of time in a body of work as a chronological review might be ( Yun, Lee, & Kim, 2019 ), nor does it describe the emergence of a body of work as a narrative review might ( Bower & Gilbody, 2005 ). Instead, a thematic review is organized based on topics, issues, ideas, or takeaways from within a relevant body of work ( Hart, 2018 ). Unlike meta-reviews or systematic reviews, such as the one conducted by Lebuda, Zabelina, and Karwowski (2016) , we do not aim to extract empirical data findings to quantify the relationship.

We elected a thematic approach for important reasons. Our purpose was to narrow the scope of inquiry and dive into a qualitative exploratory analysis of relevant work on creativity and mindfulness skills. Such an approach provides space to explore insights from literature and then consider how broader takeaways might be used to inform practice. A thematic review was also deemed most appropriate because extant literature on this topic is not fully representable as systematized data, constraining the ability to present literature as a quantified ‘dataset’ for empirical dissection ( Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003 ). Although high-quality, quantifiable studies do exist in this space [see Lebuda et al. (2016) ] we wished to consider a more open swath of literature, including not only quantitative, but also theoretical, practical or qualitative works that are not amenable to systematic analysis. To allow for a comprehensive stance toward relevant literature, our review is framed in an exploratory, thematic way. This allowed us to go deeper into varied stances to later use these in discussion of implications and applications. We also aimed to be methodical about our search processes, using review criteria/approach as described.

2.2. Criteria and process for literature search

The research we reviewed is situated mostly within psychology or education. Our sources of literature were primarily drawn from two main databases, those being: 1.) Science Direct , and 2.) Scopus —as these two databases comprise a significant swath of ‘mainstream’ research papers in English. Additionally, we performed a search of both Google and Google Scholar to ensure that nothing was missed in the primary research database searches and to identify any useful non-empirical pieces.

We began by identifying keywords and search terms, which we selected based on the scope of study and the literature; we then chose the search strings most appropriate for the study ( Charmaz, 2003 ). We were able to keep the search relatively straightforward by pairing keywords and terms that precisely defined one of four areas: ‘ mindfulness’ , ‘ meditation’ , ‘ creativity’, or ‘ creative thinking .’ This yielded articles or studies that specifically referenced the theory/terminology within the text ( Grant & Booth, 2009 ).

This initial scoping process produced copious results, many of which were outside the scope of our topics ( Paré & Kitsiou, 2016 ). Common search terms of “mindfulness” and/or “meditation” and “creativity” yielded hundreds, in some instances thousands, of articles. By narrowing the scope using database functions, to include only articles that used both key terms as foci in titles and/or abstracts, we were able to clarify and tighten the search. This makes sense, as inquiry-driven intersection of these constructs has mostly emerged within recent decades and is a comparatively small space in the larger arena of creativity research. We then sifted through articles to identify work exploring the relationship between the constructs.

Our review criteria were agnostic as to the types of sources included, and this article explores varied academic sources, including books, chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles. However, peer-reviewed empirical journal articles encompass most of the sources reviewed, allowing us to focus on understanding the state of the field of research findings, without entirely excluding important ideas that emerged in other sources.

2.3. Approach to thematic analysis

To assess and distill the key ideas from the literature into useful takeaways, we sought to extract ideas/findings and categorize them into “meaning units” ( Moustakas, 1994 ). Therefore, we engaged in several rounds of collective thematic coding from the articles identified, using a shared digital space to collectively document key findings identified in every piece of literature used ( Saldaña, 2015 ).

We first familiarized ourselves with the ‘data,’ which in this case were the key ideas/findings in varied studies or papers ( Moustakas, 1994 ). Through shared discussions of meaning-making, we coded thematically, by looking across the findings for patterns of organization ( Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). This resulted in takeaways that were less specific than most thematic coding, because the documented findings tended to focus around several broad areas that categorized the research on mindfulness and creativity—such as the generally positive nature of the relationship, or the observed lack of applied research. Several iterations of organized coding brought us to four themes that emerged from the literature. These were driven by our stated questions and are shared in the findings and discussion.

2.4. Limitations

There are limitations in this work. First, we limited most of our examination to two databases, including Science Direct and Scopus, supplemented by peripheral searches of Google and Google Scholar as supplementary sources to check for additional work. Although these were selected because they are comprehensive sources of academic scholarship in English, encompassing most major and smaller journals that cover creativity research, there is still a limitation of scope.

Further, we would note that personal bias is always a potential issue in thematic review, and transparency is important. Our own interest in the topics as educational researchers could have influenced the process of analysis, as researchers naturally bring in their own preconceptions, assumptions or interests. Though we tried to minimize this effect through multiple rounds of reading and discussion, the possibility of bias influencing analysis exists.

3. Findings

We identified four broad thematic areas. The first theme describes how mindfulness enhances creativity. The second theme addresses the factors that complicate the nature of the relationship . The third theme addresses the relationship between mindfulness, mind-wandering and creativity ; and finally, the fourth theme concerns the need for more applied educational research on mindfulness and creativity . These are described in greater detail in the sections below.

3.1. Theme 1: mindfulness enhances creativity

Much literature suggests that the nature of the mindfulness-creativity relationship is positive and promising—in that mindfulness can enhance creativity. Research demonstrates that mindfulness improves a person’s ability to concentrate ( Sedlmeier et al., 2012 ), decreases the fear of being judged, and enhances open-minded thinking while reducing aversive self-conscious thinking ( Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007 ). These points map directly onto key characteristics of creative habits of working, thinking, and being in the world, including: relaxation or flow states (improved concentration), risk-taking (requiring a lack of fear about judgment), and curiosity or open-mindedness/openness to experience (reducing self-conscious experience) ( Prabhu, Sutton, & Sauser, 2008 ). Logically, these effects suggest that mindfulness supports the skills associated with creativity, and research findings suggest that high levels of self-reported mindfulness correlate to creative practices ( Colzato, Szapora, & Hommel, 2012 ).

Many aspects of ‘trait mindfulness,’ or skills that are facilitated by mindfulness training, increase creativity. For example, mindfulness is associated with the ability to change perspectives by expanding empathy and open-mindedness ( Carson & Langer, 2006 ). It also increases a person’s capacity to respond to situations in a non-habitual fashion—which is at the crux of creativity ( Moore & Malinowski, 2009 ). Mindfulness training’s ability to reduce fear of judgment is conducive to creativity; as is its ability to improve working memory ( Chiesa, Calati, & Serretti, 2011 ). Specifically, experienced meditators are better problem solvers and have better verbal creativity ( Greenberg, Reiner, & Meiran, 2012 ). Jedrczak, Beresford, and Clements (1985)) found that meditation of any length strengthens creativity—even short meditation breaks. Thus, ontologically, mindfulness has the potential effect of improving or enhancing creativity by building skills or ways of being that support creativity. The ontological nature of the relationship show promise for educational settings where developing creativity is challenging. Anxiety, fear of risk or failure, and self-consciousness about one’s own thinking are often detrimental to classroom creativity—which opens up the possibility that mindfulness might offer practices that ameliorate barriers to learner’s creativity.

In their meta-review, Lebuda et al. (2016) hypothesized a positive relationship between mindfulness and creativity, wherein the former supports the latter. Their meta-analysis examined peer-reviewed, quantitative studies with direct measures of mindfulness and creativity—aiming to measure the relationship between the two and consider the role of moderators. Their study estimated the correlation between mindfulness and creativity at r = .22 (r = .18 without correction for attenuation). This suggests a significant correlation, with a small-to-medium effect size. Across all studies they found no evidence of publication bias, concluding that the estimation of the relationship is accurate and robust. This aligns with the proposed beneficial role of mindful meditation in creative thinking. The moderators included in their analysis clarify some important questions about the nature of this relationship. For instance, there were no differences between correlational and experimental studies—in both types of studies the effect size of the association was the same. This suggests not only a correlation between mindfulness and creativity, but more importantly reveals that developing mindfulness through meditation increases creativity—e.g. it goes beyond correlation into causation. This causal connection is something that educators and schools can potentially look to as they seek to address mounting calls to support students’ creativity, and as they also try to manage the socio-emotional needs of students in our tense and distractible society.

Despite this, varied kinds of moderators, such as the type of meditation practiced and the multifaceted character of mindfulness, create challenges in untangling the mindfulness creativity relationship ( Baas et al., 2014 ). The inherent complexity and emergent or experiential nature of both mindfulness and creativity could also be a confounding factor. Much like creativity, mindfulness is complex and involves different skills, such as: attention/observation, ability to act with awareness, capacity for nonjudgmental description, and ability to refrain from immediate evaluation. There is also no commonly agreed-upon mechanistic model of creative processes that could confirm how different types of meditations might affect such processes. All of this leaves educational practitioners with some foundations to work from in that mindfulness does seem to support creativity—but also some contested ground to navigate, in which the relationship can be nuanced by different contextual factors.

3.2. Theme 2: a relationship with complicating factors

Given the complexity of these areas it is not surprising that research also indicates a complicated relationship between the two. Different types of meditation (which are a vehicle for mindfulness) have differential relationships to creativity. Two of the main techniques discussed frequently in the literature on mindfulness include open-monitoring meditation and focused-attention meditation . Open-monitoring is the practice of observing and attending to any sensation or thought without focusing on any specific task or concept. Focused-attention meditation instead trains the participant to focus their attention and awareness to a particular task, item, thought or stimuli ( Colzato et al., 2012 ). These mindfulness skills can influence creativity differently. For example, while open-monitoring may increase creative thinking, some have found that focused-attention meditation may be either unrelated to creativity, or in certain instances may impede performance on creativity tests ( Zedelius & Schooler, 2015 ). For educators interested in facilitating a kind of mindfulness-supported creativity, that may leave questions as to which types of meditation to use in classrooms.

The Lebuda et al. (2016) meta-analysis noted that beyond the positive connection where mindfulness enhances creativity, there are areas of uncertainty. For instance, the Horan (2009) longitudinal study showed inconsistencies in the meditation-creativity relationship using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, a measure that distinguishes between verbal and figural dimensions of creativity. Specifically, groups practicing transcendental meditation showed significant gains in figural flexibility and originality, but no improvements in verbal creativity. This is interesting in teasing apart the relationship, however, it begs the question: To what degree would or should such individualized tests of creativity matter within the sociocultural dynamics of many learning settings?

Colzato et al. (2012) dissected the complexities by evaluating the impact of both types of meditation upon creativity tasks for either divergent or convergent thinking . Divergent thinking involves solving problems with many possible solutions—as opposed to convergent thinking, which involves solving problems with a more focused and narrowing approach. The researchers studied whether different types of meditation induce people toward particular cognitive-control states related to creativity. They hypothesized that open-monitoring meditation encourages divergent thinking and focused-attention meditation induces convergent thinking. Thus, open-monitoring meditation would be expected to improve divergent thinking but not convergent thinking (both of which were assessed by the AUT (Alternative Uses Task) creativity assessment).

Their data demonstrated that people excelled in the divergent thinking task after doing open-monitoring meditation. Although convergent thinking performance improved after focused-attention meditation, the increase was not significant. Interestingly, their measures of mood scores showed that both types of meditation elevated mood. Because elevated mood facilitates divergent rather than convergent thinking (elevated mood may even interfere with convergent thinking) mood effects might have been a confounding factor. In short, the focused-attention meditation may have improved convergent thinking, while the relaxing aspect of the procedure potentially could hamper it. Regardless, they identified a key mindfulness-creativity connection, showing the relationship between open-monitoring meditation and divergent thinking.

These findings point to some degree of nuance beyond the general assertion that mindfulness strengthens creativity. This suggests that if we are to seek more mindful creativity practices in schools, then it is important to consider what types of creative tasks or thinking might be called for in the given context, and consider what types of meditation practices might be beneficial.

3.3. Theme 3: mindfulness, mind-wandering and creativity

We have focused on the nature of the mindfulness-creativity relationship, which raises an important issue for this relationship—namely, mind-wandering. The relationship between mind-wandering to these areas is more uncertain and complicated than the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. Mind-wandering seemingly runs contrary to mindfulness, yet mind-wandering reliably correlates with creative thinking and creative achievement ( Baird et al., 2012 ). This is an issue for educators considering different facets of mindfulness practices, as it may affect creativity and related factors.

Mind-wandering is “a common everyday experience in which attention becomes disengaged from the immediate external environment and focused on internal trains of thought” ( Schooler et al. 2014, p. 1 ). It is differently important to both mindfulness and creativity. If mind-wandering is associated with getting lost in thought without realizing it—then mindfulness has an inverse purpose, bringing attention and awareness to thoughts in order to disentangle from them. Creativity has been positively associated with mind-wandering that stimulates novel ideas or fresh connections ( Baird et al., 2012 ).

Existing research points to a connection between mind-wandering and deficits in task performance or problems with task completion. However, mind-wandering may be beneficial in some areas, such as planning for the future, positive stimulation via interesting thoughts, and notably, creativity. Learners with ADHD often score higher on laboratory measures of creativity and assessments of creative arts achievement ( White & Shah, 2011 ), though they may struggle with some traditional tasks and outcomes of schooling.

Schooler et al. (2014) tested the mindfulness-creativity relationship directly, by assessing individual differences in mindfulness (via the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale or MAAS) as compared to measures of creative problem-solving performance (via the Remote Associates Test or RAT). They showed a negative correlation between mindfulness scores and RAT performance, and at first assumed that being less mindful helps one be more creative. However, they refined this interpretation by considering different strategies that can be used to solve the RAT problems. Creativity researchers have long been intrigued by the fact that the same creative problems can either be solved through analytic thought, or through spontaneous insight referred to as “Aha” experiences of insight/intuition ( Fleck & Kounios, 2009 ). Prior research has shown that analytic and insight problem-solving methods are associated with markedly different patterns of brain activity. For instance, default mode network activity in the brain is related to solving problems with insight/intuition ( Kounios et al., 2008 )—while the default mode network tends to quiet down through mindfulness.

Schooler et al. (2014) hypothesized that mindfulness might be related to creative analytic problem solving. To test this, after each problem they asked participants whether they had solved it mostly analytically or mostly with insight. They found that trait mindfulness correlated negatively with insight problem solving, but not with analytic creativity—suggesting that creative solutions can benefit from mindfulness, but specifically through a more analytically creative process. Others have actually found that insight problem solving can be enhanced through mindfulness. Ostafin and Kassman (2012) found that certain types of open-monitoring meditation improved insight problem solving. They noted that:

Insight problem solving is hindered by automated verbal-conceptual processes. Because mindfulness meditation training aims at “non-conceptual awareness,” which involves a reduced influence of habitual verbal–conceptual processes on the interpretation of ongoing experience, mindfulness may facilitate insight problem solving.

This helps to clarify how mindfulness can support creativity in terms of mind-wandering. The Schooler et al. (2014) body of work also makes assumptions which may limit the scope of their findings. For instance, they position mindfulness and mind-wandering in opposition to each other, and then carry this assumption out experimentally. However, while mindfulness and mind-wandering are often very different, they need not be mutually exclusive across all forms of practice—and in the messy spaces of implementation and educational practice, it is very possible that such ideas could coalesce. It might suggest that mindful meditations involving both conscious awareness and nonjudgment of thoughts could allow mindful mind-wandering in learning practices.

Certain forms of mind-wandering can be mindful/deliberate, while others are more uncontrolled/spontaneous. The role of these mental states on creativity was explored by Agnoli, Vanucci, Pelagatti, and Corazza (2018)) , who distinguished five constitutional dimensions of mindfulness: observing, acting with awareness, describing, nonreactivity, and non-judging. Results showed that mind-wandering and mindfulness predicted creative behavior both alone and in combination. Via path analysis they explored the value in distinguishing between deliberate and spontaneous mind-wandering. Deliberate mind-wandering positively predicted creative performance; however, spontaneous mind-wandering negatively associated with creative performance. Interestingly, more deliberative mind-wandering showed beneficial interaction effects with mindfulness toward producing creative and original ideas. This suggests that deliberate mind-wandering is a productive characteristic for creative work and potentially for creative learning in classrooms, which is supported by mindfulness.

Preiss and Cosmelli (2017) explored mindful mind-wandering for creativity using illustrative cases of creative writers and their processes. They noted that while their writers discussed the concepts of mind-wandering and creating in different ways, these were most often characterized by deliberation and awareness of their own mind. They termed this as, “mindful mind-wandering,” which nurtures creativity and differs from the absent-minded daydreaming of other mind-wandering:

Professional creators develop a sense of identity that is strongly grounded on their awareness of the mind wandering process. As authors become more expert, they gain a better understanding of the creative process and apprehend its phenomenological nature. Specifically, they become mindful mind wanderers (p. 303).

Research and practice suggest that despite what initially appears to be conflicting dynamics, mind-wandering and mindfulness can enhance each other toward creativity. Mindfulness in conjunction with mind-wandering may allow the mental wanderer more awareness and potential to imagine and think creatively—which may benefit creative imagination in learners’ skills and practices.

3.4. Theme 4: a need for applied and educational research

Finally, in reviewing the mindfulness-creativity relationship in scholarly literature for praxis, we noted a lack of educational literature in this space, which signals a need for more applied but still empirical research for thinking and learning settings. Fisher (2006) suggests that these topics may be most vital for young people in schooling:

For many children childhood is not a carefree time. In a materialistic, competitive world they are subject to many of the same stresses and strains as adults. They are bombarded by an information overload of words, images and noise. They are prey to the frustration and anger of others and often experience negative emotions more deeply and intensely than adults (p. 148).

Fisher notes that these kinds of stressors are commonly recognized as blocks to learning and creativity, making mindfulness a potentially beneficial approach and psychological support for creativity. He highlights a historical link harkening to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed that a quiet mind offered an opening to the creative muse.

Notably, meditation engages the mind in non-verbal ways, which learners do not always have the opportunity to use in schools. While the conscious mind is caught up in language, the brain’s linguistic structures can restrict the scope of human knowledge and action. Meditation may offer an experience of the mind that is not purely linguistic, expanding learners’ creativity by tapping into subconscious and intuitive thought. Claxton (1997) called this the “under-mind” and Malcolm Gladwell (2005) referred to it as the “adaptive subconscious.” Such intuitive experience is essential to learners’ creativity and requires a present-moment focus and freedom from distracting fears and desires.

Much of this connection between children in schools and mindfulness and creativity is still theoretical; and while the existing research is promising, it is greatly limited in volume and scope. As mindfulness has become more prevalent in real-world learning settings, more empirical research is needed to understand the mindfulness-creativity link and practices for learning settings ( Osten-Gerszberg, 2017 ).

A limited number of studies have considered the connection between increased creative outcomes and mindfulness in applied settings outside of university labs or psychological experiments, across disciplines. In education, Justo, Mañas, and Ayala (2014)) studied this with high school students, to analyze the impact of an extracurricular mindfulness program upon the figural creativity levels of a group of 50 teenagers. The authors used an experimental group of high school students who participated in the mindfulness training program, and a control group who did not. The results of the Torrance Test showed significantly higher levels of creativity in the treatment group, after a 10-week mindfulness intervention (of 1.5 h of training a week, with 30 min of daily meditation).

The school-based intervention focused on flow meditation ( Franco, 2009 ), which is meant to set thoughts free rather than control them, by nonjudgmentally noting any spontaneous thoughts that appear in mind. This technique does not aim to redirect thoughts back to an object of foci (the breath, etc.), but to develop attention and allow full awareness of whatever appears in consciousness, noticing the transience and impermanence of thoughts (e.g. a kind of meditation on thoughts). Though the study did not provide an effect size, their results are still promising as a step toward empirical support for mindfulness and creativity in educational environments. In their work, achievement goals and self-determination influenced mastery experience in creativity via mindful learning, which also has implications for teaching.

Yeh, Chang, and Chen (2019) investigated mindful learning and creativity among a younger school population of elementary students. They sought to understand mindfulness within digital game-based creative learning, using the Langer (2000) concept of mindful learning as a flexible state of mind in which people are actively engaged with the present, aware of new things, and sensitive to context. They developed an original training program for creativity and an instrument for measuring mindful learning during game-based learning. Their study focused on how players’ traits would influence their mastery experience during digital creativity game-based learning. Results suggested that mindful learning can support creativity within a game-based learning system; and participating students became more confident in their own creativity competences. This is interesting, because creative confidence has been found to be a driver of creative potential ( Beghetto, 2006 ). In educational settings, the notion of creative confidence is not often addressed, as many traditional education contexts are uncomfortable with the kinds of risk of failure associated with creativity, or do not promote the confidence to work through such discomfort toward creative ends. Thus, support for creative confidence, via mindfulness, may be an interesting pathway for future study.

4. Discussion of findings for education

The research we have described can serve to provide the field of education with ideas to utilize mindfulness to support learner creativity and well-being in educational settings. While the connection between mindfulness and creativity is complex, there is enough evidence to show a generally beneficial and supportive relationship between the two, wherein practicing mindfulness can support creativity. In the next section we discuss implications for the field of education.

4.1. Allowing purposeful mind-wandering

One way that educators can support students is through the teaching of mindful mind-wandering strategies. Preiss and Cosmelli (2017) describe how an awareness of the mind-wandering process is an essential component of the creative process. The more aware people are of these processes and of their own mind’s activities, the more capable they become to notice and attend to creative ideas in productive ways. Educators can help students become mindful mind-wanderers by teaching a creative process that includes stages where students purposefully diverge from the task or topic at hand. Rather than being “off-task” students may be purposefully led through activities that guide them through deliberate acts of mind-wandering ( Agnoli et al., 2018 ).

Intentional mind-wandering can stimulate novel ideas or fresh connections. The most important component here is intentionality. Open-monitoring meditation and flow meditation, as described earlier, allow the mind to notice thoughts or sensory stimuli without trying to change them. This awareness component of noticing may be beneficial for giving the mind space to expand, while also cultivating present moment awareness and observation. If educators can support students in being more aware of the type of mind-wandering they engage in they may be able to provide a valuable skill for metacognitive awareness.

While focused attention has its benefits and is necessary for concentration particularly around analytic creative problem solving, in terms of insight problem solving it can potentially be limiting to “Aha” moments or bursts of creative thought. Therefore, breaking up time used to solve problems with more open mindfulness inspired activities can be helpful when learners in any context get stuck. This may, in fact, be a metacognitive skill that educators can explicitly teach— in understanding how to allow for mental breaks or a shift in awareness, which may lead to higher levels of insight-related creative thought, helping learners to overcome challenges where they get stuck. Dijksterhuis and Meurs (2006) found that too much focused deliberation on problems blocks creativity, whereas strategic distraction improves it. Thus, there may be creative potential to mindfully observe one’s own mind-wandering, and allow it, observing where it goes and what it does.

Agnoli et al. (2018) found that high levels of originality were also associated with high levels of deliberate mind-wandering. Therefore, generating creative and original ideas is linked with the re-creation, redirection and reflection of thought. This has implications for how educators engage students in creative processes, suggesting consideration of how they are supporting students’ mind-wandering.

4.2. Time and space for meditation in curriculum

The simple act of meditating has been shown to benefit creativity in learning settings ( Holm, 2015 ). Practicing being more mindfully aware through meditation, even for a short amount of time each day, impacts learning holistically. Brief meditation breaks provide the downtime needed for creativity to be enhanced after returning to the task at hand. These breaks also may positively impact teachers who struggle to maintain their students’ focus in the midst of increasing curricular demands. Puccio et al. (2017) suggest that mindfulness involves the self-awareness of individuals within organizations, communities and group practices. Therefore is not just an individual pursuit, but it impacts the sociocultural settings and complex ecosystems in which people live, work, learn, and play—which underscores its importance within the ecologies of classrooms and schools.

Supporting the development of learners through the mindfulness-creativity connection, Fisher (2006) lays out the case for mindful meditation for children in schools, predicated upon the ways that mindfulness can expand creative thinking—and the degree to which young people often need these kinds of skills for wellbeing. The more general positive effects on student well-being may have other unmeasured values for creative thinking. It could be argued that in a stressful world, being able to learn strategies to increase well-being are an essential part of social-emotional learning and productive creativity.

4.3. Supporting creative thinking and reducing judgment or fear

There are more experiences and strategies that potentially support creativity and divergent thinking than we could cover here. Ideation to guide learners through processes of generating creative and original ideas may also be supported by intentional and mindful mind-wandering. In addition, open-ended tasks are an approach to supporting creativity in content learning, in that multiple solutions are both allowed and expected. Yet while such approaches have been identified as a key way to support student creativity ( Jeffrey & Craft, 2004 ), simply doing such types of activities in learning settings does not guarantee that learners will engage in creative thinking or even feel comfortable doing so.

Some of the most notable barriers to creativity are either fear or judgment—or fear of judgment—which is often the case for learners in school settings. Creativity inherently brings social risk, and people frequently report feeling uncertain about offering up new ideas for fear they might be judged or thought to be strange ( Beghetto, 2007 ). Given the social pressures for students in K12 and higher education contexts, it is critical that creative environments reduce fear or anxiety around judgment. The nonjudgmental awareness of mindfulness meditation is an important skill supporting this.

Educators often note that in attempting more creative lessons, students may be uncomfortable in open-ended, project-based spaces that lack single-correct-answer approaches. Since learners today grow up in standards-based high-stakes testing environments, teachers sometimes report that they can be nervous or uncomfortable with ambiguity ( Olivant, 2015 ). Opening up thinking and allowing for more divergent elements is important, and the connection between divergent thinking and open-monitoring meditation suggests that this might be a useful practice, particularly for instances when ideation and multiple possibilities are important.

By aiming to non-judgmentally expand awareness, mindfulness presents opportunities to open social acceptance of creative thinking and intellectual risk-taking in learning settings. As learners come to expect different ideas and solutions from themselves and their peers without judgment, there may be a decrease in the fear or risk associated with presenting novel ideas, thus enhancing creative thinking ( Brown et al., 2007 ).

5. Conclusion

This literature review investigated findings around the relationship between mindfulness and creativity with focus on educational contexts—scoping the field in a thematic, qualitative exploration of the research into mindfulness and creativity. Summing up the relationship between these two areas is challenging due to their complexity. The most accurate summation may be to point to the generally positive but also complex nature of the relationship—with much research suggesting that mindfulness enhances creativity, as well as areas that are more nuanced depending on contextual factors. We have explored the connection to mind-wandering around mindfulness and creativity—and the possibility of using mindfulness to support deliberative mind-wandering (vs. spontaneous mind-wandering) toward expanded creativity in learning. Finally, we have emphasized the relative lack of applied and/or educational studies around mindfulness and creativity, and the need for more research in this area to inform educational practice across contexts.

The theoretical foundations connecting mindfulness and creativity are strong, with regard to observing and understanding the world and noticing more possibilities without being clouded by mental blinders. This is exemplified by Justo et al. (2014) :

Mindfulness is a technique which allows introspective and perceptual awareness, encouraging the awareness towards our psychological processes and habits. It increases the interhemispheric communication, which is typical of creativity states, since the individual who meditates is able to perceive more and more subtle details of the stream of consciousness and mental processes (p. 233).

Empirically, research in this area has demonstrated promise but there is much room to develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationship. Going beyond correlation, meta-analysis has empirically inferred causation, suggesting that mindfulness training supports, strengthens, and expands creative thinking ( Lebuda et al., 2016 ). Mindfulness and creativity are not yet fully understood in many ways, and both are inherently complicated and variable areas unto themselves.

In investigating the relationship, the context, variables, and moderators or potential interactions are important. For instance, mindfulness generally supports creativity—but there are some concerns about the way it affects mind-wandering and the resultant effects on creativity. More nuanced and recent research has teased this apart to further break down mind-wandering into different types (spontaneous and deliberate) each of which affect creativity differently ( Agnoli et al., 2018 ). This remains a somewhat new and still relatively unexplored area of empirical work.

The number of potential moderators, such as different types of mindfulness and meditation, is a challenge for researchers seeking to dissect the relationship. For instance, it is likely that different practices, such as open-monitoring vs. focused-awareness meditations, play a role at different stages of the creative process. Thus, there are gaps in the literature in regards to fully understanding these different roles and different moderators. In order to apply mindfulness and creativity in practical education settings, more sustained, applied and ongoing research is needed.

For educators, it is vital to see more research on mindfulness and creativity embedded in real-world contexts, particularly in learning settings. This would support better understanding of the intersection of these constructs in-situ—or a more robust understanding of mindfulness and creativity ‘in the wild,’ beyond labs or testing situations. When we combine the correlational and causal links between creativity and mindfulness, there are important implications for learning psychology around creativity and creative education—both for creative abilities and self-concept.

In practice, helping educators to understand how different types of mindfulness might support their students across different needs and tasks could be beneficial; and this may be true in other contexts of thinking, learning and development. Existing research points to a promising intersectionbut we would suggest that more action research approaches in classroom settings could benefit our empirical-practical understandings. Mindfulness and creativity are critical to wellbeing and development at individual and societal levels, so understanding them in context is essential. The future of human thinking, wellness, and progress demands no less.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Danah Henriksen: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Carmen Richardson: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Kyle Shack: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Mind-Wandering May Be Good For You

When writing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wander, hoping the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was troubled by studies that found an association between mind-wandering and problems like unhappiness and depression —and even a shorter life expectancy . This research suggests that focusing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spacing out—which I personally love to do—is not.

Now, new studies are bringing nuance to this science. Whether or not mind-wandering is a negative depends on a lot of factors—like whether it’s purposeful or spontaneous, the content of your musings, and what kind of mood you are in. In some cases, a wandering mind can lead to creativity, better moods, greater productivity, and more concrete goals.

Here is what some recent research says about the upsides of a meandering mind.

Mind-wandering can make you more creative

It’s probably not a big surprise that mind-wandering augments creativity—particularly “divergent thinking,” or being able to come up with novel ideas.

In one study , researchers gave participants a creativity test called the Unusual Uses Task that asks you to dream up novel uses for an everyday item, like a paperclip or a newspaper. Between the first and second stages, participants either engaged in an undemanding task to encourage mind-wandering or a demanding task that took all of their concentration; or they were given a resting period or no rest. Those participants who engaged in mind-wandering during the undemanding task improved their performance much more than any of the other groups. Taking their focus off of the task and mind-wandering, instead, were critical to success.


“The findings reported here provide arguably the most direct evidence to date that conditions that favor mind-wandering also enhance creativity,” write the authors. In fact, they add, mind-wandering may “serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.”

As a more recent study found, mind-wandering improved people’s creativity above and beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles.

Mind-wandering seems to involve the default network of the brain, which is known to be active when we are not engaged directly in tasks and is also related to creativity.

So perhaps I’m right to let my focus wander while writing: It helps my mind put together information in novel and potentially compelling ways without my realizing it. It’s no wonder that my best inspirations seem to come when I’m in the shower or hiking for miles on end.

Mind-wandering can make you happier…depending on the content

The relationship between mind-wandering and mood may be more complicated than we thought.

In one study , researchers pinged participants on a regular basis to see what they were doing, whether or not their minds were wandering, and how they were feeling. As in an earlier experiment , people tended to be in a negative mood when they were mind-wandering. But when researchers examined the content of people’s thoughts during mind-wandering, they found an interesting caveat: If participants’ minds were engaged in interesting, off-task musings, their moods became more positive rather than more negative.

As the authors conclude, “Those of us who regularly find our minds in the clouds—musing about the topics that most engage us—can take solace in knowing that at least this form of mind-wandering is associated with elevated mood.”

It may be that mood affects mind-wandering more than the other way around . In a similar study , researchers concluded that feeling sad or being in a bad mood tended to lead to unhappy mind-wandering, but that mind-wandering itself didn’t lead to later bad moods. Earlier experiments may have conflated mind-wandering with rumination—an unhealthy preoccupation with past failures that is tied to depression.

“This study suggests that mind-wandering is not something that is inherently bad for our happiness,” write the authors. Instead, “Sadness is likely to lead the mind to wander and that mind-wandering is likely to be [emotionally] negative.”

A review of the research on mind-wandering came to a similar conclusion: Mind-wandering is distinct from rumination and therefore has a different relationship to mood.


Compassion Meditation

Strengthen feelings of concern for the suffering of others

Can we actually direct our mind-wandering toward more positive thoughts and away from rumination? It turns out that we can! One study found that people who engaged in compassion-focused meditation practices had more positive mind-wandering. As an added bonus, people with more positive mind-wandering were also more caring toward themselves and others, which itself is tied to happiness.

Mind-wandering may improve job performance

Taking a break from work can be a good thing—perhaps because our minds are freer to wander.

Mind-wandering is particularly useful when work is mind-numbing. In one study , participants reported on their mind-wandering during a repetitive task. Participants who engaged in more mind-wandering performed better and faster, decreasing their response times significantly. The researchers speculated that mind-wandering allowed people to go off-task briefly, reset, and see data with fresh eyes—so that they didn’t miss sudden changes.

In another study , researchers aimed to figure out what parts of the brain were implicated in mind-wandering and discovered something unexpected. When their frontal lobes were stimulated with a small electrical current to boost mind-wandering, people’s performance on an attention task slightly improved.

Of course, not every job calls for mind-wandering. A surgeon or a driver should stay focused on the task at hand, since mind-wandering could be detrimental to both . On the other hand, even for them it might be rejuvenating to take a mind-wandering break after their workday is over, leading to more focused attention the next time around.

Mind-wandering may help us with goal-setting

It seems like mind-wandering would be detrimental when it comes to planning for the future. In fact, some research suggests mind-wandering can improve goal-setting.

In a recent neuroscience experiment , participants did an undemanding task and reported on the content of their thoughts as researchers scanned their brains with fMRI. Afterwards, they wrote for 15 minutes about personal goals or TV programs (the control group). Then, they repeated these two tasks—the undemanding one and writing about goals or TV.

More on Mind-Wandering

Explore whether mind wandering makes you unhappy or less caring .

Discover how to focus a wandering mind .

Read Rick Hanson’s seven tips for paying attention .

Read a skeptical scientist’s take on the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering .

Analyzers unaware of the study’s purpose were asked to assess the concreteness of participants’ goal-setting and TV program descriptions. The result? People with wandering minds—who probably started musing about what they really wanted in life after the first writing session—ultimately came up with more concrete and higher-quality goal descriptions in the second session. Over the course of the experiment, their brains also showed an increase in connectivity between the hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex—areas implicated in goal-setting.

Research has also found that, the more people engage in mind-wandering during a task, the more they are willing to wait for a reward afterwards. According to the researchers, this suggests that mind-wandering helps delay gratification and “engages processes associated with the successful management of long-term goals.”

On the other hand, some research suggests mind-wandering makes us less “gritty”—or less able to stay focused on our goals to completion—especially if it is spontaneous rather than deliberate. So, it may be important to consider where you are in the process of goal creation before deciding mind-wandering would be a good idea.

None of this suggests that mind-wandering is better for us than being focused. More likely, both aspects of cognition serve a purpose. Under the right circumstances, a wandering mind may actually benefit us and possibly those around us. The trick is to know when to set your mind free.

About the Author

Jill Suttie

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

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May 21, 2012

Allowing the Mind to Wander Aids Creativity

Breaks alone do not bring on inspiration, rather tasks that allow the mind to wander are what foster creativity

By Matt Kaplan of Nature magazine

History is rich with 'eureka' moments: scientists from Archimedes to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are said to have had flashes of inspiration while thinking about other things. But the mechanisms behind this psychological phenomenon have remained unclear. A study now suggests that simply taking a break does not bring on inspiration -- rather, creativity is fostered by tasks that allow the mind to wander.

The discovery was made by a team led by Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler, psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The researchers presented 145 undergraduate students with two 'unusual uses' tasks that gave them two minutes to list as many uses as possible for everyday objects such as toothpicks, clothes hangers and bricks.

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After the two minutes were over, participants were given a 12-minute break, during which they rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering. A fourth group of students had no break. All participants were then given four unusual-uses tasks, including the two that they had completed earlier.

Those students who had done the undemanding activity performed an average of 41% better at the repeated tasks the second time they tried them. By contrast, students in the other three groups showed no improvement. The work will be published shortly in Psychological Science .

"We've traditionally found that rapid-eye-movement sleep grants creative insight. That allowing the mind to wander does the same is absolutely fascinating. I think they are on to something really interesting here," says Sara Mednick, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside.

"This finding really plugs a hole in the literature," agrees John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Participants who engaged in the undemanding task did not do any better than others on unusual-uses tasks that they encountered for the first time in the second round. "The implication is that mind-wandering was only helpful for problems that were already being mentally chewed on. It didn't seem to lead to a general increase in creative problem-solving ability," says Baird.

The upside of zoning out

As well as revealing that breaks on their own do not encourage creative thinking, Baird's work suggests an explanation for one of psychology's great mysteries: why we zone out.

From an evolutionary perspective, mind-wandering seems totally counterproductive and has been viewed as dysfunctional because it compromises people's performance in physical activities. However, Baird's work shows that allowing the brain to enter this state when it is considering complex problems can have real benefits. Zoning out may have aided humans when survival depended on creative solutions.

"There is a real possibility that mind-wandering is so common because evolution has selected for it over time, but before we can come to that conclusion we have to ascertain whether it's genetically determined," says Kounios.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature . The article was first published on May 22, 2012.

“Let Your Mind Wander” to Boost Your Creativity

A wandering mind leads to new and creative ideas..

Posted December 13, 2017

[Note: This post is part of my blog series called "The Writer's Laboratory." See my introductory post for more information]

Each day this week I’m posting simple tips you can use to boost your creativity . Yesterday’s post suggested night dreaming is good for boosting creativity, but so is daydreaming. The more technical term for this childlike experience is “ mind wandering ,” which refers to times when your mind strays from your current situation in favor of unrelated thoughts. So just like dreaming, mind wandering occurs because your inner rider is relaxing its reigns and letting your inner mule decide your destination

Mind wandering is incredibly common— one study found it consumed 47 percent of our waking hours—and happens during nearly every activity (interestingly, sex was the activity least likely to involve mind wandering). Studies on mind wandering mimic that of the sleep research mentioned above. When people are given a problem to solve and then given a break in which their mind could wander, they were more likely to solve the problem creatively. However, these studies suggest that mind wandering doesn’t boost creativity in general, so you need to be thinking about the problem you are trying to solve before the mind wandering occurs.

Given that our mind wanders so often anyway, it may seem that you don’t even need to encourage it. But remember that mind wandering is only beneficial when it occurs during that time when your mind is trying to solve the solution. So its good to learn some mind-wandering techniques so you can use this procedure strategically.

One way to relax your inner rider’s hold on your mind is to generate ideas during your non-optimal time of day. This means that if you are a morning person, consider thinking about ideas in the evening. And if you are a night owl, try mulling your ideas over your morning cup of coffee. This advice seems counterintuitive—we usually think our brain works better during optimal times when it is most alert—but research shows this isn’t always the case. Although analytical thinking (e.g., math problems) may be better during people’s optimal times, research shows creativity is higher during people’s non-optimal times.

Another, perhaps less advisable way, to relax your inner rider is through alcohol. For as long as writers and artists have been around, they’ve been using alcohol (or other mind-altering substances) to uncork their muse. From Beethoven and Picasso to Twain, Hemingway, and Poe—the list goes on and on ( and on ). Stephen King admits his drinking got so bad during the 1980s that he doesn’t even remember writing Cujo . And he admits that his book, The Shining, may have been his unconscious ’ mind telling him he was an alcoholic father long before his conscious mind was willing to admit it (suggesting your inner mule may sometimes act like a real ass, but it often knows more about yourself than you do!). So a word of advice here: It is one thing to use a small amount of alcohol to boost creativity. It is another matter entirely to succumb to alcoholism . So how much is enough? A research study found that a to a blood content level of just .075 was enough to improve people’s creativity (that’s roughly equivalent to two glasses of wine or two beers).

Perhaps the healthiest way to increase mind-wandering is through mindfulness meditation (specifically the type called “open-monitoring meditation”). In mindfulness mediation, you first focus on opening your breath, then opening your mind to allow any thoughts of sensations to occur. The key is that these thoughts are allowed to pass through your mind without judgment, like clouds floating across the sky (for an excellent beginner’s tutorial by Sharon Salzberg, check out this video ). A study conducted in the Netherlands found that one 45-minute session of open-monitoring meditation increased the number of creative responses given by 40 percent, and it increased the originality of those responses by 400 percent! Plus, meditation has all sorts of other benefits for both your mind and body, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

Check back tomorrow for another tip on how to generate creative ideas! And for more information on The Writer’s Laboratory blog , with simple tips on how to use psychological research to improve your writing, visit www.melissaburkley.com

Melissa Burkley, Ph.D. , is a psychologist and author of both fiction and non-fiction.

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Brief report: the role of mind-wandering (spontaneous vs. deliberate) in directing job boredom towards job satisfaction and counterproductive work behavior

• Published: 02 September 2024

Cite this article

• Garam Kim   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4237-1929 1 ,
• Jeanette Min 1 &
• Eunsoo Choi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1502-4788 1  

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This study aimed to investigate the impact of job boredom on job outcomes, namely, job satisfaction and counterproductive work behavior, focusing on the role of different types of mind-wandering – spontaneous and deliberate mind-wandering. The results showed that deliberate mind-wandering mediates the link between job boredom and job satisfaction, while spontaneous mind-wandering mediates the connection between job boredom and counterproductive work behavior. In essence, when employees experience boredom at work, their spontaneous mind-wandering can lead to harmful behaviors, affecting their colleagues and organizations. On the other hand, deliberate mind-wandering can improve job satisfaction. This study provides valuable insights for managing job boredom and suggests future research directions.

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The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/EK7XD .

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Kim, G., Min, J. & Choi, E. Brief report: the role of mind-wandering (spontaneous vs. deliberate) in directing job boredom towards job satisfaction and counterproductive work behavior. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06629-7

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These Types of People Are the Secret Superheroes Your Business Needs There's a measurable correlation between creativity and exceptional business performance. Creative entrepreneurs blend the best of both worlds — creativity and business — offering a unique, dual approach that could be your key to innovation and growth.

By Shavaun Christian Edited by Kara McIntyre Sep 5, 2024

Key Takeaways

• Combining creativity with entrepreneurship is emerging as a powerful driver for innovation and business growth, validated by studies and top CEOs.
• Creative entrepreneurs bridging the gap between visionary ideas and practical business execution are proving invaluable for fostering empathy, efficiency and improved collaboration within companies.
• Embedding creative talent in leadership roles is not just beneficial but necessary for organizations aiming to excel in today's competitive market, leading to superior financial performance and shareholder returns.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Creative entrepreneurship, a seemingly contradictory term, is a unique and extraordinary combination of skills. The balance of business and creativity is not just a skill stack — it's a superpower that can set one apart in the business world.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky once asked, "Of the 500 companies in the Fortune 500, how many of them are [run by] creative people?" He takes this question even further, asking how many creatives exist on those boards of directors. Chesky noted that he might be one of the only Fortune 500 CEOs who's a designer by trade, having studied industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design.

His creative advantage, honed through his design background, shapes how he runs the $88 billion global home-sharing enterprise. Chesky sees himself as a designer, not a businessperson, and this identity informs how he molds his company to value good design and experiences above all else.

Creatives think differently. Entrepreneurs are resiliently efficient. By hiring entrepreneurial creatives , you bake creativity into the DNA of your organization and open up a world of quantifiable advantages that yield innovation and growth. Here's what you need to know about these secret superheroes, their impact on your bottom line and how to leverage their powers combined.

Related: Small Business Owners Are Taking 3 Creative Actions to Achieve Their Goals in 2024, According to a New Report

Digging into the dichotomy: The creative and the entrepreneur

On the one hand, creatives are often seen as free-spirited dreamers or visionary artists who challenge the norms — judged by their ability to tell stories and evoke emotion through their work. On the other hand, entrepreneurs are often pictured as hard-and-fast or highly competitive executives who hyperfocus on the bottom line. They are judged by their ability to deliver returns for investors or scale the business at any cost.

The archetypes of the creative and the entrepreneur seem like opposites. But when an organization hires leaders who excel in both creativity and entrepreneurship, new layers of empathy and efficiency are unlocked.

Related: How To Use Entrepreneurial Creativity For Innovation

Creativity and the bottom line

A study by the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company established a quantitative measure of creativity to examine the relationship between creativity and business performance. The results of that study showed that "creativity is strongly correlated with superior business performance" — specifically, better financial performance, innovation and growth.

Of the companies that ranked in the top quartile of creativity — as measured by the quantity, breadth and frequency of prestigious awards won over a span of 15 years — 67% of the companies ranked highest for creativity had above-average organic revenue growth, and 70% of those quantifiably creative companies had above-average total returns to shareholders.

Further, the study revealed that " creativity is at the heart of business innovation, and innovation is the engine of growth," supporting the idea that creativity and business growth are powerful dynamics that complement each other well.

The person or organization that possesses both is unstoppable. So, how do you introduce creativity into your business? By hiring creative people.

Related: 5 Secrets to Building Your Super Team of Remote Freelancers — and How to Retain Them

The best of both worlds: Strengths of creative entrepreneurs

Creative entrepreneurs are part in the clouds, part in the numbers. We offer visionary leadership and have an uncanny ability to (quite literally) dream up an outcome. We are also adept at problem-solving, have the business sense to make practical and actionable decisions and embrace systems and frameworks to execute the broader vision.

After a successful creative career in advertising agencies and working brand-side, I can attest to how my business skills, knowledge and confidence asymmetrically expanded when I explored entrepreneurship. I started an ecommerce business that evolved into an award-winning direct-to-consumer candle brand, now expanding into retail across domestic and international markets.

Week over week, I go from curating mood boards, drafting brand guidelines , concepting ad campaigns and writing clever e-mail subject lines, scripts, or long-form content pieces to cross-checking costs and profit margins, reviewing trend forecast reports and researching customs regulations to ensure compliance with product export rules.

My creative mind is constantly being challenged, and in the process, I've melded, formed and strengthened my business mind. These are the kind of "powers combined" you only hear about in action movies, but they are certainly attainable for any creative seeking to evolve their professional experience.

It's equally advantageous for businesses to scout these secret superheroes. When creative people become entrenched in business, it offers a well-rounded view of both worlds, undeniably making the creative work and the company more impactful, innovative and profitable.

3 advantages of the hybrid creative and business mind

For companies interested in embedding innovation and creativity into their culture, process and organization, here are three ways the hybrid creative and business mind is advantageous:

• Increase empathy: A hybrid creative and business mind fosters a deeper understanding of your or your end-client's needs and the creative team's challenges, enabling more empathetic decision-making that will resonate with all stakeholders.
• Improve efficiency: By blending creative problem-solving with business acumen, this merged mindset streamlines processes, reduces bottlenecks, embraces failure and encourages innovative solutions that improve productivity and profitability.
• Better collaboration across departments: This hybrid mindset bridges the gap between creative and operational teams, fostering a shared language and mutual respect that can lead to more cohesive and effective collaboration across your organization.

Baking creativity into business

There's no shortage of team exercises and techniques to help C-suite executives boost creativity within their organizations. But you can't workshop your way into becoming more creative.

Creativity must exist within the heart of your hires and in the soul of your organization. It's not just a nice-to-have but a necessity for fostering innovation and driving growth in today's competitive business landscape.

When you hire and embed creative people into senior and executive leadership roles — and let them exercise their creativity — you grant yourself the unfair advantage of baking creativity into your business' DNA, which has proven to foster innovation and above-average revenue growth and returns. But you have to be forward-thinking enough to take that chance with creative leadership.

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