5 Positive Effects of Daydreaming

When we daydream, our mind wanders to faraway places, putting us in a dream-like state even when fully awake. Research suggests that as much as 50% of our waking hours are spent daydreaming.This may leave you concerned that you are wasting time ornot as productive as you’d like.

Certainly, daydreaming isn’t always a good idea—such as when you’re driving or in another situation where attention is required. However, as long as it’s safe to do so, giving yourself permission to get lost in a daydream can provide several positive effects, such as these.

Daydreaming Reduces Stress and Anxiety

Daydreaming breaks are not just fun; they are necessary. Our brains cannot maintain focus and productivity nonstop. Good brain health requires regular periods of relaxation. When these periods involve letting our mind wander, it helps reduce our anxiety.

After a long day at work or a disagreement with a friend, let your mind float away to something completely unrelated and pleasurable. This can help youdistance yourself from worrisome circumstances.

Having a tool like daydreaming at our disposal is useful especially when we deal with perceived threats or overly busy environments. It’s another tool in your mental health toolkit to evade stress and anxiety.

If you feel yourselfgetting more and more anxious, take these steps to help you get into a more relaxed daydreaming state:

Mindful MomentNeed a breather? Take this free9-minute meditation for enjoying the little moments in your day—or choose from ourguided meditation libraryto find another one that will help you feel your best.

Mindful Moment

Need a breather? Take this free9-minute meditation for enjoying the little moments in your day—or choose from ourguided meditation libraryto find another one that will help you feel your best.

You might imagine yourself at your favorite spot where you like to hike in the woods. Or you might think about that new car you’d like to buy. What color would it be? What features would it have? Can you imagine yourself feeling great in the driver’s seat?

These 9 Breathing Exercises Can Help Relieve Anxiety

Daydreaming Helps Us Solve Problems

Daydreams aren’t merely mini-escapes. Allowing your thoughts to roam around revitalizes you. Most of us can benefit from approaching our problems with a fresh perspective. You’re able to return to them more refreshed.

Besides having a fresh perspective, daydreaming seems to work better than trying to force a solution. In a study that tracked different patterns of internal thought, researchers concluded that mind-wandering is important and good for us.It seems that thiscognitive processleads to new ideas.

By just hammering away at something steadfastly, you may be overlooking all sorts of information. But freely associating can enable your mind to flit from memories to something you read and then back to something you imagine.

While it might sound unusual, letting our thoughts drift can help us solve problems when focusing on them does not work.

Daydreaming Uses Diverse Parts of the Brain

If you’ve ever noticed, children’s minds wander constantly. It’s no secret that the young daydream a lot. Yet, having your “head in the clouds” as some people describe daydreaming, turns out to be more than a simple or diversionary pastime.

What’s happening in your brain while daydreaming is pretty sophisticated. As your mind wanders, you are using diverse aspects of your brain. Both the brain’s executive problem-solving network and creativity network are working simultaneously.

As we activate thesedifferent brain areas, we can access information that might have previously been out of reach or dormant. Therefore, boredom or idleness serves a great purpose. It inspires us to daydream, which forges important connections across our brains.

Daydreaming Helps Us Reach Goals

Athletes and performers sometimes use purposeful daydreaming to practice before a game or performance. This method pre-wires their brains for success. It’s like practicing mentally rather than physically for an outcome you desire. This kind of structured daydreaming or imagining is popular insports psychology.

While a fantasy-based daydream like morphing into a superhero might end up disappointing or frustrating you because it’s too far-fetched, a structured daydream is more realistic. It invites you to think through steps you’d take,ways to stay motivated, andhow to overcome obstacles.

Daydreaming Expands Our Creativity

Daydreaming is correlated with higher levels of creativity. This is due, at least in part, to both using similar cognitive processes and sharing common brain functions.

Daydreaming is especially helpful forboosting creativitywhen it is problem-oriented.That said, relentlessly drilling down on a complex problem doesn’t result in the discovery of new solutions. So, take a break. The mind will still incubate on the issue at hand.

Bianca L. Rodriguez, Ed.M, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist says, “That’s why most of us have aha moments while doing mundane things, like washing the dishes where we don’t have to focus too hard on the task at hand, which allows space in our psyche to receive and reveal new information.”

When your mind doesn’t have to ride on a narrow track, it reorganizes all the tidbits of information and forms new and unexpected connections. Being distracted and allowing your mind to wander is powerfully positive.

Rodriguez adds that daydreaming is “exercise for your mind.” She elaborated further, saying, “We are rarely taught to allow our minds to wander. It’s like only tending to one tree in a gigantic forest. Daydreaming allows your mind to zoom out and see the whole forest, which creates a different perspective and invites creativity.”

Summary

When Daydreaming Turns Maladaptive

7 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Poerio GL, Totterdell P, Emerson LM, Miles E.Social daydreaming and adjustment: An experience-sampling study of socio-emotional adaptation during a life transition.Front Psychol. 2016;7:13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00013Pillay S.Brain science suggests “mind wandering” can help manage anxiety. Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School.Kam JWY, Irving ZC, Mills C, Patel S, Gopnik A, Knight RT.Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021;118(4):e2011796118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2011796118Poerio GL, Smallwood J.Daydreaming to navigate the social world: What we know, what we don’t know, and why it matters.Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2016;10(11):605-618. doi:10.1111/spc3.12288Ridderinkhof KR, Brass M.How kinesthetic motor imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise.J Physiol Paris. 2015;109(1-3):53-63. doi:10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.02.003Sun J, He L, Chen Q, Yang W, Wei D, Qiu J.The bright side and dark side of daydreaming predict creativity together through brain functional connectivity.Human Brain Map. 2021;43(3):902-914. doi:10.1002/hbm.25693Baer M, Dane E, Madrid HP.Zoning out or breaking through? Linking daydreaming to creativity in the workplace.Acad Manage J. 2021;64(5):1553-1577. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.1283

7 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Poerio GL, Totterdell P, Emerson LM, Miles E.Social daydreaming and adjustment: An experience-sampling study of socio-emotional adaptation during a life transition.Front Psychol. 2016;7:13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00013Pillay S.Brain science suggests “mind wandering” can help manage anxiety. Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School.Kam JWY, Irving ZC, Mills C, Patel S, Gopnik A, Knight RT.Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021;118(4):e2011796118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2011796118Poerio GL, Smallwood J.Daydreaming to navigate the social world: What we know, what we don’t know, and why it matters.Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2016;10(11):605-618. doi:10.1111/spc3.12288Ridderinkhof KR, Brass M.How kinesthetic motor imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise.J Physiol Paris. 2015;109(1-3):53-63. doi:10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.02.003Sun J, He L, Chen Q, Yang W, Wei D, Qiu J.The bright side and dark side of daydreaming predict creativity together through brain functional connectivity.Human Brain Map. 2021;43(3):902-914. doi:10.1002/hbm.25693Baer M, Dane E, Madrid HP.Zoning out or breaking through? Linking daydreaming to creativity in the workplace.Acad Manage J. 2021;64(5):1553-1577. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.1283

Poerio GL, Totterdell P, Emerson LM, Miles E.Social daydreaming and adjustment: An experience-sampling study of socio-emotional adaptation during a life transition.Front Psychol. 2016;7:13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00013Pillay S.Brain science suggests “mind wandering” can help manage anxiety. Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School.Kam JWY, Irving ZC, Mills C, Patel S, Gopnik A, Knight RT.Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021;118(4):e2011796118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2011796118Poerio GL, Smallwood J.Daydreaming to navigate the social world: What we know, what we don’t know, and why it matters.Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2016;10(11):605-618. doi:10.1111/spc3.12288Ridderinkhof KR, Brass M.How kinesthetic motor imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise.J Physiol Paris. 2015;109(1-3):53-63. doi:10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.02.003Sun J, He L, Chen Q, Yang W, Wei D, Qiu J.The bright side and dark side of daydreaming predict creativity together through brain functional connectivity.Human Brain Map. 2021;43(3):902-914. doi:10.1002/hbm.25693Baer M, Dane E, Madrid HP.Zoning out or breaking through? Linking daydreaming to creativity in the workplace.Acad Manage J. 2021;64(5):1553-1577. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.1283

Pillay S.Brain science suggests “mind wandering” can help manage anxiety. Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School.

Kam JWY, Irving ZC, Mills C, Patel S, Gopnik A, Knight RT.Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2021;118(4):e2011796118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2011796118

Poerio GL, Smallwood J.Daydreaming to navigate the social world: What we know, what we don’t know, and why it matters.Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2016;10(11):605-618. doi:10.1111/spc3.12288

Ridderinkhof KR, Brass M.How kinesthetic motor imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise.J Physiol Paris. 2015;109(1-3):53-63. doi:10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.02.003

Sun J, He L, Chen Q, Yang W, Wei D, Qiu J.The bright side and dark side of daydreaming predict creativity together through brain functional connectivity.Human Brain Map. 2021;43(3):902-914. doi:10.1002/hbm.25693

Baer M, Dane E, Madrid HP.Zoning out or breaking through? Linking daydreaming to creativity in the workplace.Acad Manage J. 2021;64(5):1553-1577. doi:10.5465/amj.2017.1283

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Daydreaming Reduces Stress and Anxiety#

Mindful Moment#

Daydreaming Helps Us Solve Problems#

Daydreaming Uses Diverse Parts of the Brain#

Daydreaming Helps Us Reach Goals#

Daydreaming Expands Our Creativity#

Summary#