subject: Why You Should Care About Daydreaming [print this page] Inquiring Minds Want to Know About DayDreaming
In elementary school Mrs. Crawford yelled at me, "HB stop daydreaming
and pay attention to your test questions." She woke me up.
In college Dr. Abbot screamed out, "Mr. Wechsler stop mind-wandering, and join
the economics class."
Later in Law School Professor Reich hollered out, "Herr Wechsler, arouse yourself from the Twilight-Zone or leave my torts class."
It took decades for science to prove that we do our most original (creative) thinking
during business hours when we have zoned-out and are daydreaming.
Science
Fact: Homo sapiens spend up to 66% of their waking hours in Beta consciousness,
awake and active with our brain ripping at 13-40 cycles per second. Beta produces an internal sense of alertness, and receives input from all five gross senses, long-term and working memory, uses logic, linear and organized thinking.
It's our conscious ego at work, with a little help from its friend nonconsciousness.
Fact: humans spend up to 33% of their waking hours DayDreaming in the Twilight zone. Important: our brain cycles between 8-12 cycles per second in Alpha and 4-8 cps in Theta. Wait. Alpha and Theta are good at inspiration, visualization, and intuition.
They shut out Beta consciousness to receive nonverbal information from
our right nonconscious hemisphere.
Theta
These Theta brainwaves control our deep inward thoughts (metaphors and complex ideas). What else? Our ability for high mental concentration, visualizations and intuition is Theta based. It's where we get our creativity and imagination.
Who says? Professor K. Christoff, University of British Columbia
What's the difference between Mind-Wandering, Daydreaming, Hypnagogia and
the Twilight-Zone? Answer: nothing, they are the same. They are part of the human
condition and its standard mental processes.
Professor Kalina Christoff stands for Mind-Wandering, with or without conscious
awareness. Her original research was the first on spontaneous thought processes. She used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery) to reveal the default network and executive brain system causing mind-wandering. So what?
It is published by the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (5.13.2009) to show that one-third of our waking hours we are zoned-out in Alpha or Theta.
We are not paying attention, but our Nonconsciousness (right-hemisphere of the brain) is making new connections with creativity and imagination with stuff we learned during Beta alertness. It's not sleeping, just integrating and synchronizing
new ideas to solve old challenges. Well, maybe a snooze or two in between.
Edison used his nonconsciousness (daydreaming/mind-wandering) to invent the
electric light, movies and the phonograph. He took a 20-minute daily snooze
specifically to daydream for inventions.
So What
You can intentionally daydream solutions to your toughest challenges. Allocate 20-minutes without interruption.
1. Sit with your eyes closed.
2. Place your outstretched fingers of both hands parallel to your bellybutton (both sides of your navel).
3. Take 5 deep, slow diaphragmatic breaths to oxygenate your brain.
4. Repeat aloud (whisper) the problem you wish to solve.
5. Picture mentally your optimal outcome. Examples: giving a great presentation, interviewing well, or testing in the top ten-percentile.
6. To go deeply, mumble the words to Bingo! "There was a farmer
who own a dog and Bingo was his name."
(Bingo! distracts your left-conscious brain and permits your right-
nonconscious brain to signal nonverbally with original insights.)
Set an alarm clock for 20-minutes to end the daydream. Immediately write
or type whatever you just visualized no matter how trivial appearing. What you
visualized after analysis is 90% relevant to solving your problems.
Endwords
Professor Christoff discovered a second neural network was mentally triggered
to discover answers to complex problems. It is part of our Executive brain function
and unites left and right brains. It uses Semantic memory (knowledge) and nonconscious (intuition) memory to solve your problems.
This National Academy of Sciences article has been cited frequently.
Meaning
Our brain retains information by recalling its meaning - not its sound or visualization. When we learn a new skill (called a procedural memory), it is different than learning new information (called Semantic Memory).
Skills like typing or surfing the Internet are right-brain functions. They are non-verbal and nonconscious. When you learned to type and became excellent at it, you recall finger positions by triggered both Pattern Recognition and Spatial learning.
To learn new skills rapidly, do not seek meaning, (why it works) that is second stage
thinking. People who fail to learn procedural skills like typing, driving or riding a
bike are perfectionists and left-brain dominant.
Failure is caused by a conflict between left and right brain functions. Simultaneously learning to perfect the skill and understanding why it works causes cognitive dissonance known as brain-stress.
First learn to do it, later research the science of learning about your specific strategy schemas. Combining the two causes slow learning.
Speed Reading
Students are concerned with understanding how they can read three-times faster without loss of comprehension and use their left conscious brain to intrude on
mastering the skill itself. The skill is a right-brain nonconscious product.
The secret is letting go of analysis. In fact the reason they fail is called Analysis-Paralysis. In typing or speed reading, expertise requires practice and experience,
not intellectualizing. Consider golf, tennis or pitching or kicking a ball.
Do not over-think the skill, just seek your Pattern Recognition. Micromanaging causes choking, tension and stress.
Q. Would you have a valuable competitive advantage by reading and remembering
three (3) books, articles and reports in the time your peers can hardly finish one?
Contact us for a free, no-strings-attached speed reading report. They are just 50 copies printed so move to capture one now.
