Imagine your child brings home a report card highlighting how they allow their mind to wander. Would you see that as a compliment, or cause for concern?

Clearly, mind-wandering a demerit in settings that prize focus and controlled attention. A setting like the typical classroom. Or like the typical corporation. The truth is, mind wandering is no more welcome in corporate hallways than the school house.

And that’s a shame, because mind wandering essential to creativity.

“Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries — the "non-linear" ones — are highly likely to require wandering.”
—Jeff Bezos

Many of our most productively creative thoughts take place when our minds are allowed to wander. There’s a reason for the old adage that “the history of innovation is the bed, the bus, and the bathtub.” Undirected mind wandering is a valuable means by which the brain explores connections between information and experiences. A University of California Santa Barbara study of physicists and writers found that “one fifth of their most significant ideas of the day were formed during spontaneous task-independent mind wandering.”

And connections are the very basis of idea generation.

It’s one thing to deliberately seek out unexpected inputs — we call this “the inspiration discipline,” and regularly encourage folks to be input-obsessed — but a new connection does not necessarily follow every new input. Innovators need to be equally rigorous about carving out time to disconnect and allow their minds to wander in order to realize the new connections the inputs they’ve collected represent.

To connect, you’ve got to collect and reflect.

So when you’re auditing your calendar, take a critical look at how you spend your free time. Are you filling it with mindless consumption, or are you carving out space to let your mind wander?

Related: Make Connections
Related: Seek Random Inputs
Related: The Inspiration Discipline
Related: Encouraging Disconnection
Related: Perform An Innovation Audit
Related: Leverage Spare Time

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