In Defense of Daydreaming
By Victoria Fortune
I’m a daydreamer. Always have been. Maybe it’s just my nature, or maybe it came from growing up in the middle of nowhere, thirty minutes from the closest town, with only three television stations that came in clearly when it wasn’t raining. Summers were long and slow, with plenty of boredom—endless hours with nothing to do but stare off at the horizon, dreaming up stories, carrying on imaginary conversations in my head. It was entirely different from the boredom my children complain of, which seems to be born of excess stimulation rather than lack of it.
In my accomplished family, “daydreamer” had connotations of laziness and empty-headedness. Daydreamers were unrealistic and undisciplined. It felt like a character flaw, which I worked hard to correct, training myself to focus, use time wisely, and be productive.
Now, as a writer and mother of three, I’m always multi-tasking: I catch up on the news while exercising; help with homework while cooking dinner; fold laundry, sort mail, and answer emails while “relaxing” with my family in the evenings. When I do allow myself the guilty pleasure of diving into my thoughts and swimming around awhile, I worry afterward about wasted time. Time that could’ve been spent writing or getting things done.
But an article by Derek Beres on bigthink.com casts daydreaming in a new light. “Engaging creatively,” he writes, “requires hitting the reset button, which means carving space in your day for lying around, meditating, or staring off into nothing.” Of course, staring off into nothing has to be balanced with focused work, or it leads to nothing. Beres cites Stanford researcher Emma Seppälä in his article, who points out that “the optimal way to do good, inventive work” is to switch back and forth between “linear thinking—which requires intense focus—“ and “creative thinking, which is borne out of idleness.”
This means the hours I spend fishing with my husband, taking my dog for long walks, sitting on the chairlift between runs—moments when my mind can wander freely—aren’t lost time. This is when I work through plot issues, flesh out character backstories, think through underlying themes. As long as I sit down at the keyboard afterward and focus on putting it all on the page, it is productive as well as restorative time. And notably, it is time when I am not plugged in.
Seppälä points out that “many of the world’s greatest minds made important discoveries while not doing much at all.” These days, however, idle moments are often spent on mindless distractions—playing games on our smartphones or browsing social media—rather than on quiet contemplation. Such activities keep the mind superficially engaged but don’t allow for deep thinking. And there’s real danger in constant, mindless busyness. As Cal Newport says in his book Deep Work, “Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.”
Some of Beres’ suggestions for harnessing creativity, aside from getting off social media and putting down the smartphone, are making time for fun and games and building a long walk into your day. Maybe that’s why so many good writers I know are dog owners. It’s vindicating to think that, rather than being a flaw or deficiency, my tendency to daydream is as asset as a writer. So forgive me if I don’t respond to your post on Facebook or seem preoccupied when I pass you while out walking my dog—I’m most likely hard at work daydreaming.
