In order to make a very personal project I spend time self-reflecting on how my mind and thinking process operates.
Common scenario - after the first 5 or 6 pages of a new book I have to go back to the beginning and read everything again simply because my mind was wandering about something else. Same goes for movies and when I have a conversation with someone - after some time talking about a topic X, I lose focus on that topic and experience task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs). Then I introduce a new topic not necessarily related to the previous one.
This happens multiple times per day, and even though I tried to discipline myself to follow external tasks, on the long run it’s hard to control mind-wandering episodes, either because I totally forget to control myself or simply I have no interest in the conversation.
Mind-wandering is called in neuroscience “the Default mode network” - the default mode of brain function. Boredom can trigger these episodes as well as performing simple tasks like washing the dishes, tooth brushing , driving on a highway for a long period. It is like when reading an article and then open new tabs and shifting all attention to the new tab, leaving the other task unfinished.
This disconnection from the external world is an interesting topic for my work in this class, but what it has to do with Pleasure?
PLEASURE OF THE BRAIN
Like me it is estimated that people spend almost 50% of their time awake mind-wandering or daydreaming (e.g., Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010; Risko, Anderson, Sarwal, Engelhardt, & Kingstone, 2011).
The difference between Daydreaming and Mind Wandering is that the first happens when we are not performing in any other task, for example just sitting on a chair whereas mind wandering happens while we are performing a task such as reading a book or watching a movie etc. and have completely unrelated thoughts to the task we are performing.
The difference between Daydreaming and Mind Wandering is that the first happens when we are not performing in any other task, for example just sitting on a chair whereas mind wandering happens while we are performing a task such as reading a book or watching a movie etc. and have completely unrelated thoughts to the task we are performing.
In Buddhism daydreaming is considered to be an addiction because we lose command of our thoughts, the surrendering to a crave. In fact, for a brief moment when our mind wanders about fantasies and possible future accomplishments we feel a rewarding effect coming from the release of dopamine in the brain.
MENTAL TIME TRAVEL
Mind wandering and daydreaming allow us not only to revisit past experiences but also to project what can happen in the future.
There are a some famous episodes of how mind-wandering changed the course of history. Albert Einstein famously linked his Theory of Relativity to an episode of mind-wandering. Isaac Newton was under a tree when an apple fell which led him to think about the law of gravity. And Darwin used to take walks to roam around and think about things, Darwin's "thinking path".
I started to wonder if Isaac Newton had a smartphone back then would he think about the episode the same way he did, or would rather just take a picture to upload on Instagram or write 140 characters about that episode on Twitter. This thought comes to me every time I take a bus and see how everyone is using smartphones to do trivial things when bus rides and train rides actually have the great capacity of making one's mind wander about inumerous things. I did an exercise to test my previous statement - on purpose I would turn of the phone or just listening to music to see how many things come to my mind in one hour trip to the university. First going through some melancholic moments when I pass the Han river and think about Lisbon. Then I think about people that I know, revisit some past experiences and wander about the next time I will see them. Finally as the bus gets closer to the university, I think about school projects and review some of my ideas. This is actually a fundamental time for me because some ideas I thought were great one day before became blend and boring all of the sudden. So my point here is that through Daydreaming or Mind wandering we can reflect upon ourselves, our social relations, our strives, our accomplishments and so on.
Technology sucks us in. Will it continue to do so in the future? Absolutely.
In modern societies we value people that are "goal-oriented", "focused", "straight to the point" or "straight to business". Daydreaming and Mind wandering have therefore a bad reputation because it's considered to be contra productive or in other words a waste of time. In design schools we talk about design thinking, brainstorm ideas etc. but there is not so much talk about how important is to walk around, think about what is going on around us, and most importantly, to be curious.
What if we could organize our thoughts?
Lately, researches on Mind wandering tend to focus on Meta-awareness and how to "make use" of this episodes, to stay productive. But it seems to me that this is part of a campaign to make people wander less by telling them that people what mind wander a lot are less happy.
It's a pessimistic approach to talk about how people wander less but I wander about the effect that this will take on our future society.
Also another concern I have is about how people are deprived of their opinion simply because the way information is available to people in mass quantities results in a feeling of "overwhelmingness".
It happens because we barely have time to digest all the information so in the end it becomes hard for an individual to have a personal reflection, instead it's easier to classify that information as "good" or "bad", "agreeable" or "disagreeable" and this judgement is influenced by our groups.
“And, like the great damned souls, I shall always feel that thinking is worth more than living”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
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Project
I - visualize our thoughts through Augmented Reality.
I gave the example about how I mind-wander and daydream inside the bus on my way to the university. What if I could actually see what I think, for example instead of seeing Han river, because I'm thinking about Lisbon i see Tagus river instead.
References
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