For our entire lives, we have been taught that mind-wandering is wrong, regularly being told by authority figures that it is an unproductive waste of time. Recently, I have realized that this constant reminder of how “bad” mind-wandering can be truly shaped how I perceive it today. Every idle moment I have, I try to fill with something, just something so that it isn’t nothing.

Most of the time, I rely on social media. I trick myself into thinking that embarking on a mindless scroll is better than letting my thoughts roam free, detached from any structure of focus. This is a deception I am slowly unlearning. Social media consumption is a fractured system, and scrolling for the sake of scrolling is no better than what we have been told the nothingness of mind-wandering consists of.

However, the reality is quite the opposite. Mind-wandering is one of the most productive practices we can take part in. Dr. Nathan Spreng, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University, and Dr. Jonathan Smallwood, psychology professor at Queen’s University, have determined three significant processes that take place during mind-wandering (as discussed in Stolen Focus by Johann Hari):

1. The capacity to make sense of the world.

Whether we are reading a book or simply listening to a friend tell us about their day, we gain a better sense of the bigger picture when we allow ourselves to simultaneous mind-wander throughout these occurrences. We are not being bad readers or bad friends by letting our minds slip a little, we are allowing our minds to paint pictures, construct lasting memories, and relate these experiences to our own lives.

2. The ability to draw new connections.

When our minds wander, it creates associations that were not previously accessible in times of spotlight focus or fractured thinking. We are giving ourselves the space to journey beyond, to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable, and imagine things that no one has ever imagined before.

3. The power to engage in “mental time travel.”

Given the freedom, our minds will explore areas of the past to help us predict and prepare for the future rather than remaining confined by the immediate present.

We do ourselves a disservice when we choose the mindless scroll. We are forfeiting the endless discoveries that mind-wandering could bring us. Frantic digital interruptions are suppressing our train of thought.

So, here is what I am currently doing to help myself reclaim my right to mind-wander, and I am taking this advice from BJ Fogg’s revolutionary Tiny Habits method:

To stop the social media scrolling, I am decreasing my ability to do this habit. I am removing the prompt, my phone, and placing it in another room, separate from the area where I need to be the most focused. I am not relying on sheer willpower to ignore the prompt, as willpower is finite and can be easily drained. Now, it takes more time and energy to check my phone, thus making this habit an inconvenience to me both physically and mentally. It also makes me feel more guilty to give in to the prompt, knowing that it would take considerable effort to refocus and restore my routine.

With this phase of the Tiny Habits method in place, I can use the time I would have spent scrolling in a state of mind-wandering. I do not need to feel guilty about it, as I have purposefully given myself the freedom to do so. Hopefully this journey will lead to me to a creative strategy where one day we can implement a productively beneficial use of the social media scroll. I will keep you updated on that, but for now, I am going to enjoy more time on my subconscious mental adventure.

Works Cited

Fogg, BJ. “Reverse Your Bad Habits with Just a Handful of Tiny Changes.” Popular Science, Dec. 2019, http://www.popsci.com/story/science/tiny-habits-change/. Accessed 7 Sept. 2023.

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2022.