Good news for wool gatherers

A wandering mind heads toward insight

WSJ article  reports on findings that suggest:

…our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we’ve actually lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study suggests. “Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically,” … “There really are different brain mechanisms involved.”

So my mind wandered to wool gathering – aka  daydreaming – an expression that has its origins in the days when children were sent out to gather scraps of wool that sheep left on hedgerow thorns and branches. This not so  intellectually demanding task allowed children’s minds to wander.

Ah! – the good old days when time on task was actually intellectually useful!

Meanwhile – I do recommend the article.