Dear Science,
So I’m sitting in a meeting, and my mind is wandering off to a
conversation I had yesterday. I’m obsessively repeating the
conversation in my head, detail by detail. It seems more real than the
conference room I’m sitting in. I do this all the time, like when I’m
trying to fall asleep. When I’m walking around, my mind is always
wandering somewhere else. I know this is going to get me killed some
day, after I step in front of a bus or something. Why, Science, why
would my brain do this to me?
Distracted, Possibly to Death
You must not think of the human brain as a machine full of excess
power and capacity. It’s a cobbled-together mess, struggling to
accomplish tasks with whatever resources can be mustered. This is
why almost all of us are right- or left-handed (rather than
ambidextrous), and it’s also why our minds wander and we
daydream.
It takes a significant amount of brainpower to process and
comprehend the world around us. (In fact, it is still an impossible
task for even the most powerful computers to comprehend a simple
conversation or how to navigate a parking lot as well as the average
16-year-old.) When the external world is dull (and in all three of
your circumstances—a meeting at work, lying quietly in bed,
walking down a path you walk down every day—nothing interesting
is going on), the brain really wants to put all that idle processing
capacity to good use. Enter spontaneous thought
processes—science’s fancy word for daydreaming or
mind-wandering.
The brain’s default network is made up of the parts that
light up when we’re doing nothing. When we’re in a boring
environment, it takes hold of things and connects the
world-processing parts of the brain to our memory centers, our
action-planning centers, and our imaginative centers of the brain. We
can pick apart memorable conversations we’ve had in the recent past,
imagining them from multiple perspectives; plot future plans in the
safety of our minds; or consider the consequences of changing the
current reality of our environment—all with what would’ve been
wasted time for the processing centers of our brain.
Science also has those 3:00-a.m. moments, when he is trying to sleep
but his brain is instead replaying con-versations from earlier in the
day. It is often an exhilarating experience—a bit like being in
the bullet-time of the Matrix movies—and a way for those of us
less socially apt to get some time to catch up and understand
why everyone is always fed up with our uncouth ways.
So embrace your wandering mind. Just watch out for those buses!
Ramblingly yours,
Science
Science question? Send it to
dearscience@thestranger.com.
On the other hand, it should be noted that – for some of us – “obsessively repeating the conversation in my head, detail by detail” is why we’re in therapy. My therapist might tell you that it smacks of social anxiety and that you have a streak of perfectionism to get under control. You said it yourself: obsessive.
Or it could be ADHD too, trouble keeping the mind where it’s supposed to be is one problem. Plus, it can travel with OCD too, so you could have a twofer!