Off with the fairies? Why daydreaming can be good for you

Daydreaming sometimes gets a bad rap, but experts say letting your mind wander might actually help your brain fire on all cylinders.

Got your head in the clouds? Find yourself dreaming up future plans in the shower or solving problems while waiting at the traffic lights?

Then your brain might well be thanking you for letting your mind wander, experts say.  

“Daydreaming has gotten a bad reputation because there’s this conception – and it’s inaccurate – that when you’re daydreaming, you’re being lazy or your mind is being idle,” cognitive neuropsychologist Professor Muireann Irish says.

Studies in which healthy participants were asked to lie in an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner and let their minds drift, have shown otherwise.

“In fact, when people are daydreaming, their brain is highly, highly active,” Prof Irish, of the University of Sydney, says.

What is daydreaming?

According to Prof Irish, there’s much debate on what constitutes daydreaming.

As humans, we spend a lot of our time engaged in spontaneous cognition – thoughts that bubble up to the surface that we probably haven’t given a lot of attention to, she explains.

“And a lot of these instances are what we colloquially call ‘daydreaming’,” Prof Irish says.

Of course, daydreaming can be quite deliberate, too.

“If you’re in a boring lecture or a meeting, that’s when you might actively decide, ‘right, I’m switching off from my external environment.’

“Then you can take yourself off on a different train of thought,” Prof Irish explains.

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What happens when we daydream?

Neuroscientist Professor Nao Tsuchiya says studies have shown that daydreaming can lead to a momentary or “local” sleep in part of the brain, even if we’re wide awake.

“It may be the case that this part of the brain becomes refreshed or replenished in terms of energy,” Prof Tsuchiya, of Monash University, says.

For example, if someone has played the piano intensely, the local part of the brain involved in that activity may need rest or sleep afterwards to recover.

Potential benefits of daydreaming

Prof Tsuchiya says daydreaming can help us by shutting out external input, which may make it easier to consolidate, or facilitate the planning parts of the brain.

Daydreaming may also improve our sense of self, and give us the time and space to have creative breakthroughs, according to Prof Irish.

She adds it also helps us with a sense of social connection when our thoughts turn to understanding what others may be thinking or feeling.

“You can rationalise through daydreaming why a colleague might have been upset, and work through problems that way, and regulate your emotions by thinking more deeply about these kinds of things,” Prof Irish says.

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Daydreaming happens more often than you might think

According to Prof Tsuchiya, daydreaming is a relatively difficult phenomenon to research.

However, he points to one large-scale study where participants noted their feelings and thoughts when prompted during random points of the day.

“It turned out roughly 50 per cent were thinking about something they were not supposed to be doing,” Prof Tsuchiya says.

And that’s a lot of daydreaming, which he notes is more likely to occur when people are facing a task that’s either too difficult or too easy.

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Why you should let your mind wander

There’s a time and a place for everything, Prof Irish says, so you probably should avoid daydreaming if you’re in an important meeting, or trying to learn something new.

However, she adds, it pays to remember the benefits of letting our minds wander, like we did when we were children.

“I think as adults, it’s something that we actually get trained out of doing, and that’s probably an unfortunate thing,” Prof Irish says.

Written by Larissa Ham.