RIGHT NOW. Is it? Were you working on a project and wandered over to LinkedIn? If so, you’re not alone.
If asked, people sat that their MINDS WANDER 10% of the time. HOWEVER, research has shown that, during the normal day, your mind wanders AS MUCH AS 30% of the time (and some say it can wander up to 70%).
When you’re mind wandering, you shift from one task to another. It’s DIFFERENT FROM daydreaming. I was just daydreaming about winning the Powerball lottery. Often, I daydream about being a great teacher at CMU and having my students love me! We all daydream about being the heroes of our own stories. It’s cool… when we’re not driving!
MIND WANDERING isn’t a bad thing, either. Researchers at the University of California in Santa Barbara say that people whose minds wander are CREATIVE and good problem solvers. These people work on tasks while their minds wander about trying to ESTABLISH CONNECTIONS that might help them complete their task.
If you’re trying to COMMUNICATE, keep in mind, MIND WANDERING! If you’re making a speech, provide content that will GRAB the attention of the audience, KEEP their attention by showing them how they can benefit from that information, get them INVOLVED, keep them a little OFF BALANCE, and break your material into CHUNKS. Their minds may still wander a little, but if they daydream it will be about the HERO you will make them.