mind wandering during studying

How do I stop my mind from wandering while studying?

student trying to concentrate

Your exam is coming up in a couple of days. However, for some reason you cannot concentrate.  Your mind keeps wandering off and you find yourself thinking about the most random things. As a student, I have also been struggling with this issue for quite some time. However, after more than 3 years of experimentation and research, I have developed a list of suggestions that might help you out. So how can you stop your mind from wandering while studying?

There are 8 actionable steps that you can take right now:

  • Reduce unnecessary distractions
  • Test yourself every 10 minutes
  • Motivate yourself and set clear incentives 
  • Study in chunks and take breaks
  • Use the distraction sheet technique
  • Label your thoughts
  • Give your mind a bit more to do
  • Take notes, make a mind map or doodle

Let’s review each of these steps more in-depth and see how they might help you reduce the clutter in your head.

1. Reduce unnecessary distractions

How can you be focused if you are constantly being interrupted by various distractions? One of the easiest ways of improving your concentration is to reduce the distractions around you. This involves several steps:

  • Firstly , a good study environment should be quiet – a library, a private room, a calm coffee shop, etc.
  • Secondly , if you can, make sure that the chair and the desk are comfortable, there is adequate lighting and the place is properly ventilated.
  • Thirdly , make sure that the study place is clean and organized.
  • Either turn off your smartphone, switch it to airplane mode or leave the smartphone in your backpack (or some other place where it would be difficult to reach it). If you are constantly receiving notifications, it will be very difficult to concentrate. Putting your smartphone away could help you reduce the temptation to check on these notifications. 
  • If you are using your laptop for studying, make it a rule not to use any social media, websites, and apps that are not directly related to your studies. If you commit to following this rule while studying, it will be easier to fight off the urge to check notifications. If the urge is still there, I found that one way to keep yourself from breaking the rule is to make a bet with a friend. In my case, I usually make a “no social media usage” bet during exam time with my best friend. Every time I break it, I had to pay 50 USD. Your ability to stay honest will of course be put to the test. However, I have found that putting yourself in a “lose-lose” scenario is a very good way to make sure I maintain disciplined.
  • If the area is noisy (or you prefer to study with music) you can listen to calm music and sounds (for that check out our study music playlist) or use noise-canceling headphones. However, listening to loud music or music with lyrics is highly discouraged since this could make it even harder to concentrate.  

By taking these steps, you will limit yourself to outside distractions and decrease the likelihood that your mind might wander off.

2. Test yourself every 10 minutes

A study has shown that students were able to remember more and concentrate better if they tested themselves on what they are studying every 10 minutes.

Furthermore, periodically quizzing yourself has been shown to be an effective technique for increasing retention (see the video below). So test yourself and watch the immediate results! (e.g. ever 10 minutes write down the 5 key things you have learned during those minutes of studying).

3. Motivate yourself and set clear incentives 

If you think that what you are studying is useless or unimportant, you will obviously find it more difficult to concentrate. So before studying ask yourself: why I am doing this? Is it to learn valuable skills? Is it to help someone or make the world a better place? Is it to make your parents proud?

blue corded headphones

If you dig deep enough you can definitely find a good reason. And if your why is strong enough you can concentrate better and achieve almost anything you put your mind to ( there is a good TED talk on the power of WHY by Simon Sinek).

But if you still find it difficult to come up with a good reason for concentrating on your studies, then I would propose to conduct a brutal thought experiment. Imagine that there is a psychopath holding a gun to your head (a guy like Tyler Durden from Fight Club) and if you do not sit down, concentrate and do a good job studying that psychopath is going to pull the trigger. I know that that sounds rather crazy, but I have to admit this has helped me several times to concentrate and reduce the clutter in my head when nothing else worked.

Additionally, you can watch some motivational speeches or read some inspiring quotes if you need to pump yourself up. I personally really love to watch good commencement speeches (e.g. the one by Steve Jobs or J.K. Rowling ). Of course, while these speeches inspire me, they may not necessarily inspire you – you need to find something that will work for you. 

Furthermore, motivation does not have to be intangible. A study has shown that if people were promised a large reward after a successful well-timed study session they were more alert and focused on the task. Thus, promise yourself a small reward such as eating a tasty cake or going to the cinema at the end of your study session. You deserve it!

4. Study in chunks and take breaks

Oftentimes, people find it difficult to concentrate because they do not have a clear study plan with specific goals and break periods. As such, you should have a clear study plan with study and break periods. Famous efficient learning experts such as Barbara Oakley have recommended using the Pomodoro technique – studying in 25 minute periods, with 5-minute breaks in between and one larger break of 15 minutes after three 25 minute periods.

shallow focus photography of white ceramic mug beside two baked cookies on brown wooden board

Furthermore, for each of the study sessions set a goal and write it down (e.g. to read 5 pages and to summarize key takeaways in 5 bullet points). At first, doing this might be a bit difficult, but from my own experience, I know that it really works and can help. In fact, I love studying in this way so much that I even built a custom timer exactly for this purpose (see www.kaizentimer.com ). Of course, there are other good apps out there such as www.tomatotimer.com .

Lastly, do not forget to take breaks . Breaks are important since they allow your mind to rest and, as a consequence, make you more productive and concentrated. Also, you should allow your mind to wander during the breaks since according to psychologist Paul Seli of Harvard University it will be easier to focus during your study sessions.

“If you say to yourself, now I’m going to think about something unrelated, maybe problem-solve something else that is on your mind, and then come back to your task. That can definitely be beneficial” – Paul Seli.

5. Use the distraction sheet technique 

Some thoughts just seem to be stuck in your head or maybe you are afraid of forgetting something and you just keep thinking about it over and over. For instance, sometimes I keep reminding myself that I need to do a certain chore like doing the laundry or writing some sort of email. A good method for getting rid of these thoughts is writing them down a sheet of paper . This is called the distraction sheet technique. It essentially allows you to offload all of the thoughts from your head onto a piece of paper and, as a consequence, to reduce the clutter in your mind.  

white printer paper

6. Label your thoughts

Labeling is a similar method to the distraction sheet technique, but rather than writing down your thoughts it involves labeling them. Every time you notice that your mind has wandered off, you label your emotion (e.g. you can say this is “planning” or this is “anxiety”) and once you label it you just go back to your studies.

Such a technique has been shown by studies to calm you down and make your thoughts more bearable. To better understand how labeling works you can read more about it here . From my own experience, this technique works better than the distraction sheet, but it takes a longer time to master it.

Also, you can combine labeling with the distraction sheet. Use a distraction sheet for thoughts that you do not want to forget and labeling for thoughts or feelings that are just interfering with your studies and can be forgotten.

7. Give a your mind a bit more to do

Research by Nilli Lavie and Sophie Foster has shown that creating deliberate distractions such as playing jazz music in the background can make you less distracted. According to Nilli, attention is a finite resource, so if you use up all of the attention slots in your mind, it is less likely that you will wander off. This is so because if your mind is fully occupied, you will be just physically incapable to pay attention to one more thing.

grayscale photo of men playing musical instruments

Thus, adding additional distractions such as listening to calm music without words could help you to concentrate. With that being said, it might take some time for you to find a balance between having too many and too little distractions.

8. Take notes, mindmap or doodle

Another good method for stopping your mind from wandering off is taking notes. Taking notes, which summarize what you study, will force you to pay more attention to what you are studying (since you cannot take proper notes if you do not pay attention).

Furthermore, make sure that you are not just blindly writing down what’s written in the study material. You can do that without thinking that much and as a result, your mind will have more opportunities to wander off. Instead, make sure to summarize the material in your own words . Doing that will force you to think more and, as a result, you will learn more actively and concentrate on the material more.

Moreover, doodling and mind mapping are other good ways that enable you to concentrate more. One study has shown that doodling about something that is related to what you are studying will allow you to concentrate better . Of course, if you concentrate on doodling too much this might not work and could even make you even more distracted – so be careful and see whether it works for you.

mind wandering during studying

I personally recommend to mind map instead of doodling. Mind mapping could be described as a hybrid of taking notes and doodling. It involves mapping out your ideas in branch-like structures and then adding colors and drawings next to those branches. To gain a better understanding of this technique sees the video below. This technique h as done wonders for many people and I use it all the time. So I recommend you try it out!

Final thoughts

Our mind and ability to concentrate are impacted by numerous things that we cannot control. With that being said, there are things that we can control, such as where and how we study.

While I have provided numerous actionable ideas on how to increase your ability to concentrate, you do not have to do them all at the same time. Start small – implement one suggestion at a time. Experiment – see what works and what does not – find what works the best for you!

Danielius Korsakas

Has a BSc in Economics and currently is pursuing a double master's degree in very fluffy but interesting subjects. Loves learning and building stuff.

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7 ways to tame your wandering mind and achieve better focus

By Caroline Williams

17 May 2017

A woman wearing glasses reading a book

“I never knew that helped concentration!”

Laura Kate Bradley/Getty

Mind wandering has long been thought of as the enemy of concentration, but that’s not always true – the right kind of daydreaming can actually help you focus (see “How to daydream your way to better learning and concentration”) . Read on to discover how to take control of your wandering mind, and other simple ways to stay sharp when deadlines are looming.

Modern toss work cartoon

How to win at work

Make your work work better for you – from dealing with pesky colleagues to taking the perfect break and doing less for more money, 1. give your mind more to do.

Give your mind more to do: Research by Nilli Lavie at University College London has found that adding deliberate distractions – a jazzy border on a page or a bit of background noise – actually reduces distractibility . Her “load theory” proposes this works because attention is a limited resource, so if you fill all the attentional “slots” in your mind, it leaves no room for other distractions.

2. Bribe yourself

The prospect of a treat can keep people focused , but only when it is well-timed, studies show. Offering people small rewards throughout a boring task didn’t stop them from losing focus, but the promise of a larger reward that they would receive at the end of the task kept them alert. This approach probably works best with an accomplice to keep you from caving early, says Michael Esterman , at the Boston Attention and Learning Laboratory, who did the research. “It’s hard to fool yourself.”

Read more: State of unrest – Can fidgeting really help you concentrate?

3. test yourself.

We’re currently finding that there’s more than one way your mind can wander, and that knowing how to navigate your daydreams could save you come exam time. One trick is to make sure your mind is wandering about the stuff you need to learn . To do that, test yourself often. People retained more of a boring lecture if they paused to test what they remembered every 5 minutes. Their minds still wandered, but wandered on topic, rather than anything but .

4. Daydream during breaks

Stopping every now and again to give your mind a chance to wander can invigorate focus, says psychologist Paul Seli of Harvard University. “If you say to yourself, now I’m going to think about something unrelated, maybe problem-solve something else that is on your mind, and then come back to your task. That can definitely be beneficial,” he says.

5. De-stress

You might think that an adrenaline boost would focus the mind, but stress actually stimulates the release of hormones, including noradrenaline, which bind to receptors in the cognitive control circuits. This in turn makes it harder for them to keep tabs on mind wandering.

6. Get some zeds

A lack of sleep hammers mental performance in general, and reduces our ability to resist both internal and external distractions. And there’s an added bonus – sleep is also important for memory consolidation. In fact, recent research suggests that if you have an hour spare before an exam, a nap could be a more effective use of your time than spending it revising.

In one study, people forced to listen to a boring voice recording were able to remember more afterwards if they were allowed to doodle. But content is important. Doodling about something related to what you are trying to remember is more likely to qualify as intentional mind wandering, which can help you focus on the task at hand. Don’t be too elaborate, however – if your doodles become too engaging, the whole thing might backfire.

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Nir Eyal

How to Tame Your Wandering Mind

Learn to take steps to deal with distraction..

Posted April 24, 2022 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

  • Understanding Attention
  • Find counselling to help with ADHD
  • We can tame our mind-wandering.
  • Three tips can help you use mind-wandering to your advantage.
  • These include making time to mind-wander and controlling your response to it.

Nir and Far

Researchers believe that when a task isn’t sufficiently rewarding, our brains search for something more interesting to think about.

You have a big deadline looming, and it’s time to hunker down. But every time you start working, you find that, for some reason, your mind drifts off before you can get any real work done. What gives? What is this cruel trick our brains play on us, and what do we do about it?

Thankfully, by understanding why our mind wanders and taking steps to deal with distraction, we can stay on track. But first, let’s understand the root of the problem.

Why do our minds wander?

Unintentional mind-wandering occurs when our thoughts are not tied to the task at hand. Researchers believe our minds wander when the thing we’re supposed to be doing is not sufficiently rewarding, so our brains look for something more interesting to think about.

We’ve all experienced it from time to time, but it’s important to note that some people struggle with chronic mind-wandering : Though studies estimate ADHD afflicts less than 3% of the global adult population, it can be a serious problem and may require medical intervention.

For the vast majority of people, mind-wandering is something we can tame on our own—that is, if we know what to do about it. In fact, according to Professor Ethan Kross, director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan and author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It , mind-wandering is perfectly normal.

“We spend between a third to a half of our waking hours not focused on the present,” he told me in an email. “Some neuroscience research refers to our tendency to mind-wander as our ‘default state.’”

So why do we do it?

“Mind-wandering serves several valuable functions. It helps us simulate and plan for the future and learn from our past, and it facilitates creative problem-solving,” Kross explained. “Mind-wandering often gets a bad rep, but it’s a psychological process that evolved to provide us with a competitive advantage. Imagine not being able to plan for the future or learn from your past mistakes.”

Is mind-wandering bad for you?

“Like any psychological tool, however, mind-wandering can be harmful if used in the wrong context (i.e., when you’re trying to focus on a task) or inappropriately (i.e., when you worry or ruminate too much),” according to Kross. In other words, mind-wandering is a problem when it becomes a distraction. A distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you planned to do.

If, for instance, you intended to work on a big project, such as writing a blog post or finishing a proposal, but instead find yourself doing something else, you’re distracted.

Nir And Far

The good news is that we can use mind-wandering to our advantage if we follow a few simple steps:

1. Make time to mind-wander

Mind-wandering isn’t always a distraction. If we plan for it, we can turn mind-wandering into traction. Unlike a distraction , which by definition is a bad thing, a diversion is simply a refocusing of attention and isn’t always harmful.

There’s nothing wrong with deciding to refocus your attention for a while. In fact, we often enjoy all kinds of diversions and pay for the privilege.

A movie or a good book, for instance, diverts our attention away from real life for a while so we can get into the story and escape reality for a bit.

Similarly, if you make time to allow your mind to drift and explore whatever it likes, that’s a healthy diversion, not a distraction.

The first step to mastering mind-wandering is to plan time for it. Use a schedule maker and block off time in your day to let your thoughts flow freely. You’ll likely find that a few minutes spent in contemplation can help you work through unresolved issues and lead to breakthroughs. Scheduling mind-wandering also lets you relax because you know you have time to think about whatever is on your mind instead of believing you need to act on every passing thought.

It’s helpful to know that time to think is on your calendar so you don’t have to interrupt your mind-wandering process or risk getting distracted later.

2. Catch the action

One of the difficulties surrounding mind-wandering is that by the time you notice you’re doing it, you’ve already done it. It’s an unconscious process so you can’t prevent it from happening.

mind wandering during studying

The good news is that while you can’t stop your mind from wandering, you can control what you do when it happens.

Many people never learn that they are not their thoughts. They believe the voice in their head is somehow a special part of them, like their soul speaking out their inner desires and true self. When random thoughts cross their mind, they think those thoughts must be speaking some important truth.

Not true. That voice in your head is not your soul talking, nor do you have to believe everything you think.

When we assign undue importance to the chatter in our heads, we risk listening to half-baked ideas, feeling shame for intrusive thoughts, or acting impulsively against our best interests.

A much healthier way to view mind-wandering is as brain static. Just as the random radio frequencies you tune through don’t reveal the inner desires of your car’s soul, the thoughts you have while mind-wandering don’t mean much—unless, that is, you act upon them.

Though it can throw us off track, mind-wandering generally only lasts a few seconds, maybe minutes. However, when we let mind-wandering turn into other distractions, such as social-media scrolling, television-channel surfing, or news-headline checking, that’s when we risk wasting hours rather than mere minutes.

If you do find yourself mentally drifting off in the middle of a task, the important thing is to not allow that to become an unintended action, and therefore a distraction.

An intrusive thought is not your fault. It can’t be controlled. What matters is how you respond to it—hence the word respon-sibility.

Do you let the thought go and stay on task? Or do you allow yourself to escape what you’re doing by letting it lead you toward an action you’ll later regret?

3. Note and refocus

Can we keep the helpful aspects of mind-wandering while doing away with the bad? For the most part, yes, we can.

According to Kross, “Mind-wandering can easily shift into dysfunctional worry and rumination. When that happens, the options are to refocus on the present or to implement tools that help people mind-wander more effectively.”

One of the best ways to harness the power of mind-wandering while doing an important task is to quickly note the thought you don’t want to lose on a piece of paper. It’s a simple tactic anyone can use but few bother to do. Note that I didn’t recommend an app or sending yourself an email. Tech tools are full of external triggers that can tempt us to just check “one quick thing,” and before we know it, we’re distracted.

Rather, a pen and Post-it note or a notepad are the ideal tools to get ideas out of your head without the temptations that may lead you away from what you planned to do.

Then, you can collect your thoughts and check back on them later during the time you’ve planned in your day to chew on your ideas. If you give your thoughts a little time, you’ll often find that those super important ideas aren’t so important after all.

If you had acted on them at the moment, they would have wasted your time. But by writing them down and revisiting them when you’ve planned to do so, they have time to marinate and may become less relevant.

However, once in a while, an idea you collected will turn out to be a gem. With the time you planned to chew on the thought, you may discover that mind-wandering spurred you to a great insight you can explore later.

By following the three steps above, you’ll be able to master mind-wandering rather than letting it become your master.

Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal, who has lectured at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, is the author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

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How mind-wandering may be good for you, new research suggests that mind-wandering can serve important functions for our performance and well-being..

When writing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wander, hoping the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was troubled by studies that found an association between mind-wandering and problems like unhappiness and depression —and even a shorter life expectancy . This research suggests that focusing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spacing out—which I personally love to do—is not.

Now, new studies are bringing nuance to this science. Whether or not mind-wandering is a negative depends on a lot of factors—like whether it’s purposeful or spontaneous, the content of your musings, and what kind of mood you are in. In some cases, a wandering mind can lead to creativity, better moods, greater productivity, and more concrete goals.

mind wandering during studying

Here is what some recent research says about the upsides of a meandering mind.

Mind-wandering can make you more creative

It’s probably not a big surprise that mind-wandering augments creativity—particularly “divergent thinking,” or being able to come up with novel ideas.

In one study , researchers gave participants a creativity test called the Unusual Uses Task that asks you to dream up novel uses for an everyday item, like a paperclip or a newspaper. Between the first and second stages, participants either engaged in an undemanding task to encourage mind-wandering or a demanding task that took all of their concentration; or they were given a resting period or no rest. Those participants who engaged in mind-wandering during the undemanding task improved their performance much more than any of the other groups. Taking their focus off of the task and mind-wandering, instead, were critical to success.


“The findings reported here provide arguably the most direct evidence to date that conditions that favor mind-wandering also enhance creativity,” write the authors. In fact, they add, mind-wandering may “serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.”

As a more recent study found, mind-wandering improved people’s creativity above and beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles.

Mind-wandering seems to involve the default network of the brain, which is known to be active when we are not engaged directly in tasks and is also related to creativity.

So perhaps I’m right to let my focus wander while writing: It helps my mind put together information in novel and potentially compelling ways without my realizing it. It’s no wonder that my best inspirations seem to come when I’m in the shower or hiking for miles on end.

Mind-wandering can make you happier…depending on the content

The relationship between mind-wandering and mood may be more complicated than we thought.

In one study , researchers pinged participants on a regular basis to see what they were doing, whether or not their minds were wandering, and how they were feeling. As in an earlier experiment , people tended to be in a negative mood when they were mind-wandering. But when researchers examined the content of people’s thoughts during mind-wandering, they found an interesting caveat: If participants’ minds were engaged in interesting, off-task musings, their moods became more positive rather than more negative.

As the authors conclude, “Those of us who regularly find our minds in the clouds—musing about the topics that most engage us—can take solace in knowing that at least this form of mind-wandering is associated with elevated mood.”

It may be that mood affects mind-wandering more than the other way around . In a similar study , researchers concluded that feeling sad or being in a bad mood tended to lead to unhappy mind-wandering, but that mind-wandering itself didn’t lead to later bad moods. Earlier experiments may have conflated mind-wandering with rumination—an unhealthy preoccupation with past failures that is tied to depression.

“This study suggests that mind-wandering is not something that is inherently bad for our happiness,” write the authors. Instead, “Sadness is likely to lead the mind to wander and that mind-wandering is likely to be [emotionally] negative.”

A review of the research on mind-wandering came to a similar conclusion: Mind-wandering is distinct from rumination and therefore has a different relationship to mood.


Compassion Meditation

Compassion Meditation

Strengthen feelings of concern for the suffering of others

Can we actually direct our mind-wandering toward more positive thoughts and away from rumination? It turns out that we can! One study found that people who engaged in compassion-focused meditation practices had more positive mind-wandering. As an added bonus, people with more positive mind-wandering were also more caring toward themselves and others, which itself is tied to happiness.

Mind-wandering may improve job performance

Taking a break from work can be a good thing—perhaps because our minds are freer to wander.

Mind-wandering is particularly useful when work is mind-numbing. In one study , participants reported on their mind-wandering during a repetitive task. Participants who engaged in more mind-wandering performed better and faster, decreasing their response times significantly. The researchers speculated that mind-wandering allowed people to go off-task briefly, reset, and see data with fresh eyes—so that they didn’t miss sudden changes.

In another study , researchers aimed to figure out what parts of the brain were implicated in mind-wandering and discovered something unexpected. When their frontal lobes were stimulated with a small electrical current to boost mind-wandering, people’s performance on an attention task slightly improved.

Of course, not every job calls for mind-wandering. A surgeon or a driver should stay focused on the task at hand, since mind-wandering could be detrimental to both . On the other hand, even for them it might be rejuvenating to take a mind-wandering break after their workday is over, leading to more focused attention the next time around.

Mind-wandering may help us with goal-setting

It seems like mind-wandering would be detrimental when it comes to planning for the future. In fact, some research suggests mind-wandering can improve goal-setting.

In a recent neuroscience experiment , participants did an undemanding task and reported on the content of their thoughts as researchers scanned their brains with fMRI. Afterwards, they wrote for 15 minutes about personal goals or TV programs (the control group). Then, they repeated these two tasks—the undemanding one and writing about goals or TV.

More on Mind-Wandering

Explore whether mind wandering makes you unhappy or less caring .

Discover how to focus a wandering mind .

Read Rick Hanson’s seven tips for paying attention .

Read a skeptical scientist’s take on the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering .

Analyzers unaware of the study’s purpose were asked to assess the concreteness of participants’ goal-setting and TV program descriptions. The result? People with wandering minds—who probably started musing about what they really wanted in life after the first writing session—ultimately came up with more concrete and higher-quality goal descriptions in the second session. Over the course of the experiment, their brains also showed an increase in connectivity between the hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex—areas implicated in goal-setting.

Research has also found that, the more people engage in mind-wandering during a task, the more they are willing to wait for a reward afterwards. According to the researchers, this suggests that mind-wandering helps delay gratification and “engages processes associated with the successful management of long-term goals.”

On the other hand, some research suggests mind-wandering makes us less “gritty”—or less able to stay focused on our goals to completion—especially if it is spontaneous rather than deliberate. So, it may be important to consider where you are in the process of goal creation before deciding mind-wandering would be a good idea.

None of this suggests that mind-wandering is better for us than being focused. More likely, both aspects of cognition serve a purpose. Under the right circumstances, a wandering mind may actually benefit us and possibly those around us. The trick is to know when to set your mind free.

About the Author

Jill suttie.

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

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How to Let Your Mind Wander

Research suggests that people with freely moving thoughts are happier. Easy, repetitive activities like walking can help get you in the right mindset.

mind wandering during studying

By Malia Wollan

“Sometimes you just want to let your mind go free,” says Julia Kam, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the Internal Attention Lab at the University of Calgary. Kam became interested in her subject 15 years ago as an undergraduate struggling with her own distracted thoughts during lectures. “I came into the field wanting to find a cure,” she says. But the deeper she got into research, the more she came to appreciate the freedom of an unfocused mind. “When your thoughts are just jumping from one topic to the next without an overarching theme or goal, that can be very liberating,” she says.

Researchers have found that people spend up to 50 percent of their time mind-wandering. Some internal thinking can be detrimental, especially the churning, ruminative sort often associated with depression and anxiety. Try instead to cultivate what psychologists call freely moving thoughts. Such nimble thinking might start with a yearning to see your grandmother, then careen to that feeling you get when looking down at clouds from an airplane, and then suddenly you’re pondering how deep you’d have to bore into the earth below your feet before you hit magma. Research suggests that people who do more of that type of mind-wandering are happier.

Facilitate unconstrained thinking by engaging in an easy, repetitive activity like walking; avoid it during riskier undertakings like driving. You’ll find it harder to go free-ranging if you’re myopically worried about something in your personal life, like an illness or an argument with a spouse.

For a recent study, Kam hooked subjects up for an electroencephalogram and then had them do a mundane task on a keyboard while periodically asking them about their thoughts. She was able to see, for the first time, a distinct neural marker for freely moving thoughts, which caused an increase in alpha waves in the brain’s frontal cortex. This is the same region where scientists see alpha waves in people doing creative problem-solving. We live in a culture that values work and productivity over almost everything else, but remember, your mind is yours. Make space to think in idle ways unrelated to tasks. “It can replenish you,” Kam says.

REVIEW article

Mind wandering and education: from the classroom to online learning.

mind wandering during studying

  • 1 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
  • 2 Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

In recent years, cognitive and educational psychologists have become interested in applying principles of cognitive psychology to education. Here, we discuss the importance of understanding the nature and occurrence of mind wandering in the context of classroom and online lectures. In reviewing the relevant literature, we begin by considering early studies that provide important clues about student attentiveness via dependent measures such as physical markers of inattention, note taking, and retention. We then provide a broad overview of studies that have directly measured mind wandering in the classroom and online learning environments. Finally, we conclude by discussing interventions that might be effective at curbing the occurrence of mind wandering in educational settings, and consider various avenues of future research that we believe can shed light on this well-known but little studied phenomenon.

During the past decade, there has been impressive growth in research concerning the cognitive and neural bases of mind wandering, including a rapid expansion of experimental procedures that have rendered the phenomenon tractable for experimental studies, a growing body of reliable findings, and a number of theoretical proposals aimed to account for the phenomena of interest (for reviews, see Smallwood and Schooler, 2006 ; Smallwood, 2013 ). During the same time period, there has been a similarly impressive increase in the application of findings and ideas from cognitive psychology to understanding learning and retention in educational contexts (for recent reviews, see Roediger and Karpicke, 2006 ; Bjork et al., 2013 ; Dunlosky et al., 2013 ). It seems clear that these two domains of research should be highly relevant to one another, because mind wandering and related attention failures are widely recognized to be common in the traditional classroom setting (e.g., Johnstone and Percival, 1976 ; Bligh, 2000 ; Bunce et al., 2010 ) as well as in online education (e.g., Koller, 2011 ; Khan, 2012 ). Perhaps surprisingly, there has been relatively little research linking the two domains; indeed, only a few years ago, Smallwood et al. (2007) characterized mind wandering as an “underrecognized” influence in educational settings and provided a useful discussion of experimental results and conceptual/theoretical considerations relevant to linking the two domains.

In the past couple of years, systematic research has begun to emerge that focuses on the incidence and nature of mind wandering in both traditional classrooms as well as online learning environments. The primary purpose of the present article is to provide a focused review and discussion of recent research, as well as some lesser known older studies that examine the occurrence and consequences of mind wandering during both classroom and online lectures. In addition, we consider possible interventions for reducing the occurrence of mind wandering in educational settings and conclude by discussing potentially fruitful directions for future research.

Mind Wandering During Classroom Instruction

Within educational settings, the occurrence of mind wandering is perhaps most readily observable within the context of classroom instruction. Indeed, educators have long been concerned about the possible negative impact of mind wandering on student learning ( Brown, 1927 ; Lloyd, 1968 ). It is important to note, however, that few studies have directly measured mind wandering in the classroom. Instead, early research made use of measures such as physical markers of inattention, note taking, and retention. Data emerging from these early studies revealed important clues about the nature of student attentiveness over extended periods of study that have helped to guide more recent research on mind wandering in the classroom. In this section, we review and evaluate the basic findings emerging from these early studies, discuss the possible relation of these findings to mind wandering, and highlight direct attempts to measure mind wandering in the classroom. In addition, we assess the influence of possible interventions for reducing the occurrence of student mind wandering.

Observational Approaches

In what is often cited as a classic example of student attentiveness in the classroom, Johnstone and Percival (1976) asked observers to make note of physical signs of inattention, such as diversions in gaze, as students sat through chemistry lectures. The authors found that initial breaks in attention occurred after approximately 10–18 min of class time, and that the frequency of breaks in attention rose to a level of every 3–4 min toward the end of lectures. Indeed, the notion that student attentiveness decreases as a function of time spent in the classroom has strongly influenced research in this area. Nonetheless, it is important to note that physical markers of inattention should be interpreted cautiously ( Wilson and Korn, 2007 ). For instance, students who have momentarily directed their gaze away from the lecturer may still be listening to the lecturer, and not necessarily mind wandering; conversely, a focused gaze does not necessarily indicate a focused mind. Importantly, recent studies have drawn stronger links between physical markers of inattention and mind wandering. For example, Smilek et al. (2010) recently assessed the relation of blinking to mind wandering during a reading task. In that study, students were asked to indicate whether or not they were paying attention to the text in response to a series of auditory tones. The authors found that blinking was more likely to precede moments of inattention than attention, and suggested that blinking might facilitate the decoupling of attention from the immediate environment during instances of mind wandering. Moving forward, additional research is needed to demonstrate how physical markers of inattention relate to the occurrence of mind wandering in the classroom (for relevant discussion, see Bligh, 2000 ; Rosengrant et al., 2011 ).

Note Taking and Retention

Various attempts have been made to circumscribe the difficulties associated with inferring student attentiveness via direct observation. For instance, some researchers have focused on note taking. Although note-taking behavior does not necessarily correlate with comprehension (e.g., McClendon, 1958 ), reductions in note taking over time may indicate inattention on the part of students. Unfortunately, the conclusions that can be drawn on the basis of relevant data are equivocal. For instance, Maddox and Hoole (1975) and Scerbo et al. (1992) examined the percentage of ideal notes (notes deemed important by the experimenter) that students recorded during lectures (for further discussion on research approaches to note taking, see Aiken et al., 1975 ). Maddox and Hoole (1975) found no decline in note taking across five 10-min intervals of a geography lecture—44, 54, 50, 52, and 55% of ideal notes. Conversely, Scerbo et al. (1992) observed a steep decline in note taking across three 12-min intervals of a psychology lecture—97, 67, and 50% of ideal notes (see also Hartley and Cameron, 1967 ; Locke, 1977 ). One possibility for this discrepancy may be related to factors such as student interest. For instance, students in the geography class (51%) took significantly fewer notes across the entire lecture than students in the psychology class (71%), and high levels of initial note taking may be necessary to observe subsequent declines over time. Moreover, additional studies are needed to demonstrate the extent to which inattention and declines in note taking co-occur. Along these lines, Lindquist and McLean (2011) recently demonstrated that frequent bouts of mind wandering—as measured by direct probes of attention—were associated with lower subjective ratings of note taking. Whether this observation extends beyond subjective reports of note taking to actual note taking behavior remains to be tested.

Alternatively, various researchers have looked to measures of retention as proxies for student attentiveness in the classroom. Specifically, if students are less likely to pay attention to the latter portion of a lecture, then information presented toward the end of the lecture should not be retained as well as information presented in earlier portions of the lecture. Again, the evidence is somewhat mixed. While some studies have found reduced memory for information presented at the end of lectures ( Burns, 1985 ), others have not ( Thomas, 1972 ; Scerbo et al., 1992 for additional discussion, see McLeish, 1968 ). One possibility for this unreliable pattern of data is that the critical test is commonly presented immediately after the lecture. This design feature may allow students to rehearse information from the final portion of the lecture until the test is administered ( Glanzer and Kunitz, 1966 ). In order to more accurately assess what information students have integrated into their knowledge base, additional studies ensuring that students express their understanding of lecture content on the sole basis of long-term memory are needed. In addition to possible primacy and recency effects (e.g., Jersild, 1929 ; Ehrensberger, 1945 ), future studies might also consider the possible influence of other factors that might moderate attention over extended periods of time, such as the distinctiveness or relation of materials to one another across an entire lecture.

Although little is known about the relation of the occurrence of mind wandering and retention of lecture content, Lindquist and McLean (2011) showed that the frequency of mind wandering in response to direct probes of attention during one lecture was negatively correlated with retention of course material on an exam taken several weeks later. Moving forward, it will be important to more closely investigate the extent to which mind wandering accounts for both the immediate and long-term retention of specific materials from lectures.

Direct Probes of Attention and Mind Wandering

We now discuss in more detail studies that have used direct probes of student attention and mind wandering. These studies are important because they provide a more accurate depiction of the extent to which students are actually mind wandering in educational contexts. In one of the initial studies of this sort, Cameron and Giuntoli (1972) randomly interrupted college lectures with a bell and asked students various questions about the content of their conscious mind, including whether or not they were listening to the speaker, and, if so, whether their listening was “a superficial kind of listening accompanied by frequent distractions,” “a close following of the speaker's train of thought,” or a kind of listening in which they felt that they were “actively meeting the speaker's mind.” Depending on how one classifies students' responses, the results revealed that only between 40 and 46% of students were paying “good attention” to the lecturer or lecture content at any given moment. Using a similar method of consciousness sampling in undergraduate and graduate classrooms, Schoen (1970) estimated attention during lectures at only 67%, whereas attention during discussion was estimated at 75% (see also Geerligs, 1995 ) and attention during problem solving was at 83%.

Stuart and Rutherford (1978) asked medical students in twelve 50-min hematology lectures to indicate the extent to which they were paying attention using a 9-point scale (1 = not concentrating at all; 9 = maximum concentration). A buzzer that was audible to students sounded the attention probes at 5-min intervals. The authors found that students, on the whole, never indicated more than an “average level of concentration” throughout the lecture. Interestingly, the authors also found that student attention peaked around 10–15 min into the lecture, but that their attention waned considerably thereafter (see also, Johnstone and Percival, 1976 ; for possible alternative interpretations, see Wilson and Korn, 2007 ).

In a more recent study, Lindquist and McLean (2011) more directly assessed the occurrence of mind wandering during lectures. Specifically, the authors asked students in three 50-min psychology lectures to report on the occurrence of task unrelated thoughts in response to auditory attention probes that were sounded on five separate occasions—8, 15, 25, 34, and 40 min. Across the entire lecture, task unrelated thoughts were reported in response to ~33% of the attention probes. Moreover, the authors found that task unrelated thoughts were more likely to be reported at the end of the lecture (44%) than the beginning of the lecture (25%). As discussed earlier, Lindquist and McLean also demonstrated a negative impact of mind wandering on note taking and retention. We will revisit this important feature of the authors' data in the context of learning from online lectures, where researchers have greater control over study materials.

Other researchers have used experience sampling paradigms to estimate student attention in everyday life, and such results help contextualize the findings from classroom environments. Unsworth et al. (2012) asked students to record in a diary their attentional failures during everyday life, and found that the most frequent failures were distraction while studying and mind wandering in class; moreover, 76% of the reported lapses of attention—distraction, mind wandering, or absent-mindedness—occurred in classroom or study situations. Kane et al. (2007) asked undergraduates to report whether their minds were wandering at random times during the day. On the average, students' minds were wandering 30% of the time (see also, Hurlburt, 1979 ). Furthermore, mind wandering increased when students reported they were tired, stressed, and in boring or unpleasant activities. McVay et al. (2009) measured mind wandering in the everyday lives of college students, who similarly reported mind wandering on 30% of the samples. Here again, mind wandering was more frequent when students reported feeling tired or anxious, or when they rated the current activity as stressful or boring. Interestingly, mind wandering was also less frequent when participants reported being happy (see also, Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010 ), good at the current activity (see also Moneta and Csikszentmihalyi, 1996 ), liking the current activity, or rating it as important.

It is important to note that assessments of mind wandering in different contexts are complicated in several important ways. For instance, educational activities such as sitting through a lecture and studying for an exam typically require sustained attentional focus, whereas non-educational everyday activities such as eating breakfast or checking the mail do not necessarily require an individual's undivided attention. Moreover, the consequences of mind wandering also depend on context: The cost of attentional failures during the attention-demanding tasks of education are almost certainly greater than the cost of attentional failures during highly rehearsed, largely automatic tasks of everyday life. As a result, mental experiences such as thinking about a recent or upcoming personal experience may be classified as mind wandering in one context but not the other, and may impact performance in one context but not the other.

In sum, studies making use of direct measures of student attention in educational settings have demonstrated that students frequently report lapses of attention and mind wandering in the classroom, mind wandering appears to increase as a function of time spent in class, and mind wandering may be especially prevalent in educational, as compared to non-educational, settings. Taken together, studies of student mind wandering in the classroom highlight the need for evidence-based research that considers the manner in which classroom instruction is structured, and what interventions might be effective for holding student interest and attention.

Classroom Interventions

Educational guidelines commonly urge teachers to intersperse their lectures with tasks that can help to re-focus student attention (e.g., Myers and Jones, 1993 ; Middendorf and Kalish, 1996 ; see also, Olmsted, 1999 ). Unfortunately, only a few attempts have been made to test the effectiveness of such techniques, and the data are often difficult to interpret.

For instance, Burke and Ray (2008) tested the efficacy of four active learning interventions (student-generated questions, guided reciprocal peer questioning, truth statements, and think-pair-share) across four instructional theory lectures. Each lecture was devoted to testing one of the four interventions, with the intervention occurring halfway through lecture. During each lecture, students were asked to rate their concentration levels on five separate occasions using a 4-point rating scale (1 = not concentrating at all; 4 = fully concentrating), including once at the start of class and once after the intervention. Although the authors demonstrated enhanced levels of concentration following some interventions (student-generated questions) and not others (truth statements), there was no baseline condition against which these effects could be evaluated. Additionally, the order in which students encountered the interventions was not counterbalanced (see also, Young et al., 2009 ). As a result, it is difficult to know for certain how effective the various interventions were in focusing the attention of students.

More recently, Bunce et al. (2010) asked students in three 50-min chemistry lectures to use clicker technology to indicate whenever their attention to lecture content had been drawn away by various distractions (e.g., texting, completing homework from other courses). In addition, the authors noted various pedagogical techniques used by the instructors of these lectures (e.g., lecturing, quizzing, demonstrations). Although the implementation of the pedagogical techniques was not experimentally manipulated, the authors found that bouts of distraction during lectures were reduced following quizzes and demonstrations. It is also important to note that attentiveness to lecture content was measured via self-reports of distraction that are potentially limited because students are often unaware that they are mind wandering ( Smallwood and Schooler, 2006 ; but see recent neuroimaging data suggesting common neural correlates for subjective and objective reports of mind wandering; Smallwood et al., 2008 ). Nonetheless, the results of this study are informative, and additional studies that carefully manipulate that frequency and timing of active learning interventions in the classroom, and that assess distraction and mind wandering in a more direct or objective manner, will be of considerable importance.

Next, we delve into the world of online education, and consider the limitations that mind wandering places on effective learning of lecture videos. As discussed below, the advent of online learning is of great interest in its own right in light of its recent prominence on the educational scene. Moreover, using online lectures as target materials has made it possible to study the occurrence of mind wandering during lectures, and explore possible interventions for reducing mind wandering, with tighter experimental control than is typically available in the classroom.

Mind Wandering During Online Lectures

The studies discussed in the preceding section indicate that mind wandering occurs frequently in the classroom and while studying. As noted earlier, in recent years there has been rapidly growing interest in online education. While online education has existed in some form for nearly as long as the Internet has been around, the emergence of such online platforms as Coursera and edX, which are composed of leading research universities, has led to a dramatic increase in the number of students participating in the entity known as a MOOC or massive open online course. The primary form of instruction in a MOOC is a videorecorded lecture delivered online. Given the frequent occurrence of mind wandering in the traditional classroom, an important question concerns whether mind wandering occurs to a similar, greater, or lesser extent in online settings. While there is very little systematic research on the topic, relevant data have been provided by two recent studies in which participants viewed videorecorded classroom lectures that to some degree resemble those used in online courses. Importantly, by mimicking the online experience in the laboratory, researchers have been able to bring the lecture learning experience, measures of the occurrence of mind wandering during lectures, and tests of possible interventions to ward off mind wandering during lectures under greater experimental control.

Risko et al. (2012) reported two experiments in which students watched videorecorded lectures—alone in Experiment 1, and with other students in a classroom setting in Experiment 2. Risko and colleagues showed participants one of three 1-h lectures on different topics (psychology, economics, or classics). In Experiment 1, 60 undergraduates watched the lectures and were probed at four different times into a lecture—5, 25, 40, and 55 min. During each probe, students were asked if they were mind wandering at that moment. Overall, participants indicated that they were wandering in response to 43% of the probes, with significantly more mind wandering observed in response to the two probes given during the second half of the lecture (52%) than to those given during the first half (35%). The increase in mind wandering across the lecture was associated with poorer performance on a test of lecture material given shortly after the lecture: students responded correctly to 57% of questions concerning the second half of the lecture, compared with 71% correct responses to questions concerning the first half of the lecture. Further, there was a significant negative correlation between test performance and mind wandering ( r = −0.32): individuals who performed more poorly on the test reported more mind wandering. Experiment 2 yielded a highly similar pattern of results: students reported mind wandering in response to 39% of probes, reports of mind wandering increased significantly from the first half of the lecture (30%) to the second (49%), and mind wandering during the second half of the lecture was associated with significantly poorer test performance compared with the first half of the lecture (for similar results, see Risko et al., 2013 ).

The incidence of mind wandering during videorecorded lectures was notably high—at least as high as the rate of mind wandering during classroom lectures reported by Lindquist and McLean (2011) . One possible contributing factor is the 1-h length of the videorecorded lectures used by Risko et al. (2012) . Some advocates of online education, such as Salman Khan, founder of the highly successful Khan Academy, and Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera at Stanford University, have argued that online lectures should be brief—as short as 10 min—in part because of concerns raised by earlier studies of classroom lectures, as discussed above, showing that individuals cannot sustain attention for longer periods of time ( Koller, 2011 ; Khan, 2012 ; for possible limitations associated with this view, see Wilson and Korn, 2007 ). Thus, it is possible that mind wandering would occur much less often during videorecorded lectures that are considerably shorter than the 1-h lectures used in the Risko et al. (2012) study.

Szpunar et al. (2013) addressed this issue in a study that used a 21-min videorecorded lecture. This study also examined the critical and as yet unaddressed question of whether it is possible to reduce mind wandering during an online lecture. Szpunar et al. (2013) addressed the question by interpolating brief tests within the lecture. Previous research using materials such as word lists, face-name pairs, and prose passages has shown that interpolating brief tests at regular intervals between lists of stimuli can help to improve retention of materials from the end of extended study sequences (see Szpunar et al., 2008 ; Weinstein et al., 2011 ; Wissman et al., 2011 ).

Szpunar et al. (2013) reported two experiments in which participants watched a 21-min videorecorded statistics lecture (results of the two experiments were very similar; here we focus on Experiment 2). The lecture was divided into four segments of equal length. Prior to the lecture, all participants were instructed that they might or might not be tested after each segment, and that they would also receive a final test at the conclusion of the lecture. Participants were encouraged to take notes during the lecture. After each lecture segment, all participants completed arithmetic problems unrelated to the lecture for about a minute. However, there were three different groups, which were defined by what the participants did next: the tested group received brief tests on each segment that took about 2 min each; the non-tested group did not receive a test until after the final segment, and continued to work on arithmetic problems for an additional 2 min for each of the segments preceding the final segment; and the re-study group did not receive a test until after the final segment, and was shown, but not tested on, the same material as the tested group for 2 min for each of the segments preceding the final segment. At random times during the lectures, participants in all groups were probed about whether they were paying attention to the lecture or mind wandering off to other topics.

Participants in the non-tested and re-study groups indicated that they were mind wandering in response to about 40% of the probes, but the incidence of mind wandering was cut in to half, to about 20%, in the tested group. Moreover, participants in the tested group took significantly more notes during the lectures (three times as many), and retained significantly more information from the final segment of the lecture, than did than participants in the other two groups, who performed similarly. Participants in the tested group were also less anxious about a final test that followed the lecture and performed significantly better on that final test than those in the other groups. These results indicate that part of the value of testing comes from encouraging people to sustain attention to a lecture in a way that discourages task-irrelevant activities such as mind wandering and encourages task-relevant activities such as note taking.

Taken together, the results of the studies by Risko et al. (2012 , 2013) and Szpunar et al. (2013) suggest that mind wandering occurs frequently during the viewing of online lectures regardless of lecture length: both studies found evidence of mind wandering in response to about 40% of probes in non-tested conditions, even though the lectures used by Risko et al. were three times as long as those used by Szpunar et al. We think that these estimates of mind wandering are probably conservative when one considers the conditions that characterize online learning in everyday life: many students may view online lectures under conditions conducive to mind wandering and distraction, such as at home or in dorm rooms that are full of potentially attention-diverting material such as friends, television, Facebook, e-mail, and the like (for further discussion, see Risko et al., 2013 ).

It is encouraging that interpolated testing can dramatically reduce the incidence of mind wandering, and increase the incidence of task-relevant activities such as note taking. Such findings provide some confirmation for those practitioners of online learning who are already incorporating interpolated testing into their online lectures. Nonetheless, the results reported by Szpunar et al. (2013) must be treated with some caution, both because they were obtained only with a single lecture on a single topic (i.e., statistics), hence raising the question of whether the beneficial effects of testing can be observed across lectures on a variety of topics, and also because it is unclear whether the benefits of testing will persist across multiple lectures. For example, it is possible that students become less responsive to interpolated testing as an online course goes on ( Dyson, 2008 ). Given the paucity of data available concerning processes and variables that affect learning from online lectures, these and related questions will be important to address in future studies.

Concluding Comments

In sum, early research using proxies of student attention such as physical manifestations of inattentiveness, note taking, and retention, along with more recent studies that more directly probe for instances of mind wandering, highlight the prevalence of attentional lapses and mind wandering in the classroom and during online learning. To some extent, student mind wandering reflects a larger reality of human mental life: just as our minds wander frequently in everyday life, they also wander frequently in educational settings. But mind wandering is particularly relevant to education for two reasons. First, on theoretical and empirical grounds, there is good reason to think that mind wandering is particularly prevalent in educational settings. Online or in the classroom, instruction and studying demand unusually sustained periods of student attention in the presence of unusually salient distractors. In everyday life, one is not typically expected to listen attentively to an hour-long presentation twice a day in a large room full of one's peers, or read large amounts of challenging literature on one's own time instead of socializing or browsing the internet. The attentional demands of lecturing or studying differ from the attentional demands of commuting, cooking, or conversing with colleagues. And as the studies we have summarized (e.g., Unsworth et al., 2012 ) suggest, mind wandering does seem to occur more frequently during instruction and studying than other activities.

Secondly, mind wandering is particularly relevant to education because learning depends critically on attention in ways that other activities do not. Indeed, engaging student attention is often considered an essential feature of education. In a recent survey of nearly 200 Harvard faculty (Advancing the science, 2013), they were asked to complete the following sentence: “For me, an essential of good learning or teaching is _________.” By far, the most common response was “engagement,” and we suspect students, teachers, and educators of all stripes would agree about the central importance of student engagement. Learning experiences—whether they occur in the classroom, library, dining hall, or online—are intended to engage student attention. And for good reason: If a student does not attend consciously to instruction due to an episode of mind wandering, then that student's learning is surely diminished, both for the content not initially encoded and any subsequent content that depends on this initial learning. Thus, because learning is the goal of instruction and studying—and because learning depends on attention—mind wandering presents a particular challenge to education.

What can students or instructors do to reduce unwanted mind wandering during instruction? As we outlined above, there is some preliminary evidence that interspersing periods of instruction with low-stakes quizzing can promote student attention. We also noted earlier that instructors are commonly encouraged to mix up the content of their lectures ( Middendorf and Kalish, 1996 ). In fact, cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that interleaving the presentation of various interrelated topics as opposed to dealing with each one in turn can help students to avoid confusing related concepts (e.g., Rohrer, 2012 ). Whether these approaches are effective because frequent changes of topic or brief exposures to any single topic—as compared to prolonged exposure to a single topic—help to sustain students' attention remains an open question for future research. Indeed, education researchers and psychologists have not satisfactorily explored how pedagogy affects mind wandering. To give another example, a considerable amount of research has demonstrated that spacing study over multiple learning sessions as opposed to massing (or cramming) study into a single learning session is a more effective means of ensuring long-term retention of classroom materials ( Cepeda et al., 2006 ; Pashler et al., 2007 ; Dunlosky et al., 2013 ) One interesting question for future research may be to examine the extent to which spaced, as compared to massed, study sessions are resistant to bouts of mind wandering and inattention. Given the relative ease of thought sampling methodology and relative importance of student attentiveness, we encourage researchers to expand the empirical literature.

To better understand the causes of and countermeasures against student mind wandering, it is perhaps worthwhile to consider contrasting scenarios. First, how does the experience of attending a lecture differ from the experience of attending other events as an audience member? Indeed, students face attentional requirements during instruction very similar to those of other audiences who passively watch extended presentations. In attending a lecture instead of a movie screening, musical performance, or theatrical performance, however, many of the situational interventions designed to avoid distraction are absent: smartphones and laptop use is allowed (or even encouraged) not banned, lighting is flat instead of focused, the audience whispers, enters, or exits with relative freedom, the stage is bare instead of carefully designed, the presented visuals are often textual, static, or basic instead of graphic, dynamic, and complex, and the audio narration is more likely to be monotonous than lively. For these reasons and others, the conscious experience of watching a 2-h movie is likely very different from that of attending a 2-h lecture.

Other experiments, imagined or real, might be equally revealing. For example, why does the conscious experience of a lecturer differ so greatly from those of the lectured? While students listening to a lecturer wander in their thoughts about a third of the time, the lecturer is typically able to maintain her attention during the same time period and in the same physical space. Why does this simple shift of perspective make such a difference? Might it be the distinction between activity and passivity (e.g., active engagement via intermittent quizzing seems to help), or the asymmetry of the social dynamics between student and instructor? Indeed, recent studies of online learning suggest that asking students to take the perspective of the instructor and teach concepts to virtual students helps to improve retention of course content ( Chase et al., 2009 ). Furthermore, perhaps the dramatically different perspective between the lecturer and the lectured furthers the problem of student mind wandering: If the lecture is extremely engaging for the lecturer but less so for students, then this difference of perspective might discourage lecturers from better designing instruction to engage student attention.

Finally, although we have focused considerable attention on the possible pitfalls of mind wandering during classroom and online learning, there also exists the possibility that mind wandering may in some instances benefit the learner. For instance, Baird et al. (2012) recently demonstrated that the occurrence of mind wandering during a period of incubation was positively correlated with the ability of students to generate solutions to problems designed to test creativity. Under what circumstances might mind wandering benefit classroom or online learning? Do individual differences in the characteristics of mind wandering episodes or propensity to engage in mind wandering predict whether mind wandering might help or hinder learning? Studies designed to answer these and similar questions might not only result in concrete recommendations to students and instruction, but might also uncover new insights into mind wandering, attention, and psychology.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: mind wandering, attention, educational psychology, learning, teaching, online learning

Citation: Szpunar KK, Moulton ST and Schacter DL (2013) Mind wandering and education: from the classroom to online learning. Front. Psychol . 4 :495. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00495

Received: 04 June 2013; Paper pending published: 22 June 2013; Accepted: 15 July 2013; Published online: 01 August 2013.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2013 Szpunar, Moulton and Schacter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Karl K. Szpunar, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Mind Wandering: How to keep your mind focused

Written by Kerstin Lakits, Jun 23, 2022

You’re sitting at your desk writing your paper or studying for the upcoming exam and suddenly you’re contemplating the purpose of your life and what you will have for dinner today. Does that sound familiar? Distracting thoughts , also called mind wandering, are an everyday phenomenon that haunts students. You’ll discover why our mind wanders and what you can do against it in this article.

What is mind wandering?

Mind wandering is nothing bad per se. If our minds never left the known realm and started wandering around, then our lives would be boring, monotonous and not very creative.

Mind wandering describes thoughts that are not related to your present exercise. Neurologists define them as thoughts that are not tied to the immediate environment .

Example: Mind wandering is suddenly thinking about the birthday party of your friend while you’re working on your seminar paper. Your thoughts are not related to your task, they wandered elsewhere.

Typical forms of mind wandering include ruminating , daydreaming and worrying . Everybody knows this: You’re studying with concentration for the upcoming exam and suddenly thoughts such as „What if…” come up. Your concentration is gone and your brain is following this new train of thoughts.

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Root of the problem

The default setting of our brain is scattering , not concentrating. Generally our thoughts are random, incoherent and quick. We can consciously influence them to some extent; however, we can’t manage them all of the time. This feature is a result of our evolutionary history:

  • When we were constantly confronted with deadly dangers such as wild animals, our brains had to be on the lookout for new dangers.
  • Therefore, our brain checks new stimuli and information for potential dangers.
  • This search feature has kept us alive, but is distracting when we have tasks that require our full attention.

Our brain is prone to jumping to new thoughts if the information is new and interesting . That’s why daydreaming is so seductive. These thoughts are much more interesting than our study material. Furthermore, mind wandering happens so quickly and automatically that we only notice it when we’re already in the depths of it.

Negative consequences

Mind wandering has a bad influence on tasks that require a lot of concentration and attention. While it’s only “annoying“, when you’re studying, it can have dire consequences in different situations (e.g. driving your car).

  • Concentration : Mind wandering destroys our concentration and demands a lot of energy and effort to get it back.
  • Motivation : If we are interrupted all of the time and have the feeling that we don’t get anything done, then we lose motivation quickly. This is annoying and can, in the worst case, lead to procrastination . Check out our general tips for motivation for students to avoid that.
  • Productivity : Our productivity also suffers from mind wandering because we need more time for our tasks, work less efficiently and end up with worse results.
  • Losing time : We lose a lot of time to mind wandering because we interrupt our work process repeatedly and therefore have to get back to it again.
  • Worse performance : In the end, mind wandering leads to worse results in your work: Your seminar paper has weak passages, you don’t know the study material 100% and there are mistakes in your homework.
  • Mental capacities : Our brain has to invest tons of energy to interrupt your wandering mind and get back to the task at hand. Over time, this is exhausting and tiring.

Tips for mind wandering: How to stay focused

Fortunately, there are some tips and tricks to control your hyperactive brain.

1. Acceptance

These distracting thought processes are a natural feature that has served us and secured our survival. Therefore, you can’t simply turn off a habit that has helped you for thousands of years. Moreover, every single human suffers from this. So, don’t beat yourself up and get angry at your brain cells.

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2. Clear goals

If you can convince your brain that your present task is incredibly important (for your survival) and interesting , then this activity has a higher priority . The more important your task is, the more likely your brain will stick with it. Therefore, set clear , motivating and positive goals . That works best with the SMART method !

3. Meditation

Research has shown that people who meditate a lot can control their thoughts and especially their wandering mind better. They know where their focus is and can keep it where they want it. Similar to mindfulness training, meditating helps you to practice calming down, focusing on one thing (usually your breath) and viewing everything from a spectator’s perspective . If you want more information on this topic, check out our blog “ Tips for meditation ”!

4. Mindfulness training

Since mind wandering is a subconscious and automatic behaviour, we often don’t even notice it, but you can change that. During mindfulness training you practice to focus on the present moment . This is a helpful skill, especially in our multitasking oriented and digital society. There are tons of inspiration and information online about mindfulness training.

The easiest exercise that you can do anywhere is consciously shifting your focus onto your breath . Pay attention to your inhalations and exhalations and see how they affect your body. As soon as you notice that your mind has wandered, bring your attention back to your breath. Soon you’ll realise that the interruptions are fewer.

5. Mental coping mechanisms

Distracting thoughts pop up suddenly and immediately pull you away from your task. Therefore, you need a quick and powerful defence. Create your own mental coping mechanisms. Look for a motivating and positive affirmation that you can use against mind wandering. This affirmation will bring you back to your task.

If your brain is tired and exhausted, it’s harder to focus on your task. Therefore, study breaks are extremely important to allow your brain a moment of rest, so that it can continue to work with focus.

7. Reduce distractions

Even without distractions your mind can start wandering around. However, every distraction increases the likelihood that your brain finds more interesting and new information. Therefore, you should get rid of potential distractions (e.g. smartphone, toys…) and turn off disruptive features (e.g. push notifications).

What is a mind wandering meditation?

A mind wandering meditation has a special focus on mindfulness and mind wandering. On the one hand, you develop the skill to notice distracted thoughts and to bring your focus back. On the other hand, you get the opportunity to consciously let your mind wander during the meditation.

How can I study with concentration and avoid mind wandering?

Get rid of distractions in your study environment, set motivating goals and train your brain with mindfulness training and meditation.

Why does my mind wander all of the time?

It’s completely normal that your brain is constantly on the lookout for new information. This used to protect us from predators and other dangers. Today we find this feature annoying when we’re trying to study and work. However, it also makes our lives interesting, exciting, creative and innovative.

Mind wandering is sometimes annoying, but completely normal. These tips will surely help you to avoid distracting thoughts while studying and working with concentration. Here are more tips for effective studying ! This prepares you well for your next exam!

We are happy to help!

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Mind wandering and stress: When you don’t like the present moment

Alexandra d. crosswell.

1 Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco

Michael Coccia

Elissa epel, associated data.

Buddhist philosophy and existing empirical evidence suggest that being engaged in – and accepting – the present moment is associated with greater well-being. However, engaging with the present moment experience and ignoring unwanted thoughts is difficult given the nature of our minds and the competing demands for our attention. This may be especially true when experiencing stress, during which acceptance may be particularly difficult. This study examines inter- and intra-individual variability in how psychological stress influences daily mind states, and how mind states are related to affect. For 21 days, women (n=183; half chronically stressed, half low-stress controls) reported levels of mind wandering, engagement with and rejection of their current moment experience, positive and negative affect, and quality of connection to their spouse. Women under chronic stress reported more evening mind wandering, less engagement, and more rejection of the moment, compared to low stress controls. These mind states were in turn associated with worse evening mood. Daily contextual factors, specifically, objectively coded daily stress exposure and quality of connection with spouse (a known stress buffer), influenced evening mind states. Results provide evidence that psychological stress interferes with daily attention while positive social connection enhances attentional quality.

1. Introduction

The importance of the quality of daily consciousness for psychological well-being is a foundational component of many contemplative traditions and practices. One such quality that has received increased attention in academic research has been mindfulness. Mindfulness is commonly defined as the state of being acutely attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the current moment, and experiencing clarity and vividness in that moment ( Brown & Ryan, 2003 ). Dispositional mindfulness is thought to vary between people, and also within people at the daily level ( Brown & Ryan, 2003 ).

Empirical research supports an association between higher self-reported dispositional mindfulness and many facets of well-being. Greater dispositional mindfulness is associated with lower rates of many major psychological disorders ( Keng, Smoski, & Robins, 2011 ), higher levels of subjective well-being (i.e. higher positive affect and satisfaction with life; Brown & Ryan, 2003 ; Mrazek, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2012 ), and better physical health (e.g. Loucks et al., 2015 , 2016 ). A stress-buffering hypothesis may explain some of the benefits of trait mindfulness, such that being more mindful mitigates stress appraisals, reduces stress-reactivity, and speeds recovery from stress arousal ( Creswell & Lindsay, 2014 ; Crosswell et al., 2017 ). Benefits of mindfulness may also operate by improving social relationships. For example, higher levels of dispositional mindfulness, as well as participating in mindfulness-based trainings, is beneficial for romantic relationship functioning ( Barnes, Brown, Krusemark, Campbell, & Rogge, 2007 ).

Beyond the influence of trait level mindfulness, being in a mindful state more frequently in daily life is assumed to be associated with greater subjective well-being. However, this assumption has infrequently been tested, likely because it requires intensive daily level data collection. Variation in daily mind states – states such as mindfulness, focused attention, and an opposing construct, mind wandering can be captured through daily diary or ecological momentary assessment to examine how such states influence well-being. As an example of this methodology, when workers were paged multiple times throughout a working day and asked where their attention was, reporting active engagement in the present moment was associated with feeling more creative, free, active, alert and satisfied. This was even true if their current task was something they would not do if they had a choice ( Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 p. 10). Felsman et al. (2017) also demonstrated the association between present moment engagement and increased daily well-being. In a study of undergraduates who reported on their mind states five times a day, being in a better mood at one assessment predicted more present focused attention at the next assessment. There have only been a handful of studies linking daily engagement in the moment and daily well-being indices, though a larger body of literature has examined the role of mind wandering on daily affect.

In a now classic study of daily mind wandering and mood, Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010) found that when participants were asked at random times throughout the day what they were thinking about in that moment, participants reported mind wandering nearly 50 percent of the time. When they were mind wandering, they reported greater negative affect, and lagged analyses showed that mind wandering prospectively predicted negative mood, while negative mood did not predict mind wandering. A series of studies have followed from this initial finding to explore the nuanced relationship between mind states and mood. One key finding from these additional studies is that the impact of mind wandering on mood depends on the content of the thoughts. For example, a 7-day daily diary study in a healthy community sample found that mind wandering predicted negative mood only when the content of the mind wandering was reported as ‘sad’ or ‘anxious’ mind wandering, but not for ‘happy’ or ‘calm’ mind wandering ( Poerio, Totterdell, & Miles, 2013 ). Similarly, Ruby et al. (2013) found that mind wandering about past and other-oriented thoughts was associated with negative mood while mind wandering about future and self-oriented thoughts was associated with positive mood. This parralels a large body of acute stress research which demonstrates that ruminating about past experiences prolongs stress-related affective and physiological activation ( Brosschot, Gerin, & Thayer, 2006 ), while thinking about the future may speed recovery from acute stress ( Engert, Smallwood, & Singer, 2014 ). Further, future thinking may help facilitate the development of concrete personal goals ( Medea et al., 2018 ). These results suggest that influence of specific mind states are more complex than a simple dichotomy between being actively engaged in the moment and having thoughts unrelated to the current moment experience (mind wandering). Examining how daily mind states influences psychological well-being requires more nuanced measurement of these mind states, as we seek to do in the current study.

One understudied daily mind state we explore in the current study is rejecting the present moment . Within Buddhist philosophy, being dissatisfied with what is, in other words, wanting things to be other than the way they are, is the source of suffering in life ( Ekman, Davidson, Ricard, & Alan Wallace, 2005 ). This mind state of rejecting the moment is similar to the clinical construct of experiential avoidance ( Hayes, Wilson, & Gifford, 1996 ). Experiential avoidance is the tendency to withdraw from uncomfortable inner experiences (e.g. thoughts, memories, bodily sensations) and takes steps to alter those experiences, regardless of whether those steps lead to better or worse outcomes. Experiential avoidance is associated with a wide range of clinical problems and lower quality of life ( Hayes et al., 2004 ). Rejecting the present moment is the opposite of accepting and engaging with the present moment non-judgmentally (mindful state), and has yet to be explored empirically. In the current study we explore how rejecting the present may be associated with an unpleasant mood or other daily well-being indices.

What mind states are experienced and at what frequency in daily life is likely dependent on the context of one’s life, though studies of mind wandering have tended to ignore how individual-level contextual factors influence daily mind states. One important contextual factor influencing daily mind sates may be perception of daily demands. At the trait level, high subjective perceived stress (when environmental demands outweigh one’s resources to cope adequately; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984 ) is associated with lower trait mindfulness ( Bränström, Duncan, & Moskowitz, 2011 ) and higher trait mind-wandering ( Mrazek, Phillips, Franklin, Broadway, & Schooler, 2013 ). Furthermore, decades of research from lab-based studies suggest that inducing states of acute stress immediately alters thoughts and emotions. For example, before an acute stress task (e.g. giving an impromptu speech), cognitions change to anticipatory thoughts (worries about the upcoming task), and after the task, they switch to ruminations about performance. Smallwood et al. (2009) has also shown that inducing negative mood states increases mind wandering. Despite evidence from observational and lab studies linking acute stress and alterations in thought patterns, it is unknown how being under chronic stress, or experiencing a daily stressor, alters daily mind states.

Because of the limited research examining the daily-level cognitive consequences of naturalistic stress states, the goal of the current study is to examine how chronic stress, daily stressors, and daily connection to one’s partner (a stress buffer) influence daily mind states. The mind states we focus on are engagement in and rejection of the present moment, as well as experiences of mind wandering about neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant topics. We examine mind states in the context of the chronic stress of caregiving as a way to deconstruct how long term states of distress alter consciousness at the daily level. Examination of daily level data enables us to examine how fluctuations in day-to-day experiences within individuals (i.e. person-level daily fluctuation in level of stress and social connection) influence mind states that evening, independent of trait-level effects (i.e. controlling for the person’s average across all days). Thus, we are more accurately able to capture the lived experienced of the interplay between the social world and our mind states.

This study examines the daily life of 183 mid-life women who were recruited as either high or low in chronic stress. Chronically stressed women were mothers of a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and who reported above average levels of perceived psychological stress at the baseline assessment; low stress women were mothers of neurotypical children and who reported below average levels of perceived stress. Participants completed 21 days of daily reports (completed once a day, in the evening) on mind states, mood, stressful events, and connection with their spouse. Using this methodology, we are able to test (1) the between-person impact of chronic stress on evening mind states, (2) the within-person fluctuation of evening mind states on evening mood controlling for the person’s average mind state, and (3) the within-person fluctuation of daily stress exposure and daily social connection on that evening’s mind states.

We had three hypotheses. First, we expected that women under chronic stress (caregivers) would report lower levels of engagement in the moment, greater rejection of the moment, more mind wandering, as well as a greater number of high stressor days than women in the control group. Second, hypothesized that daily fluctuation in mind states from one’s typical or average mind state would be associated with changes in that evening’s mood, such that an increase in engagement, and decrease in rejection and mind wandering would be associated with more positive and less negative evening mood. Third, we tested whether the context of the day predicted mind states that night. We hypothesized that daily stressors and quality of daily connection with their partner would influence mind states that evening. Specifically, on days when participants reported experiencing an objectively coded stressful event (“stress days”), we expected participants to report less engagement, more rejection, and more mind wandering that evening; and, on days when participants reported more positive social connection with their partner, we expected participants to report greater engagement, less rejection, and less mind wandering.

2.1. Participants

Participants were 183 mothers from a prospective study that examined the impact of chronic caregiving stress on cellular aging. Ninety-two participants were mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder and 91 were age-matched low stress mothers of neurotypical children. These two groups were recruited to maximize differences in chronic stress. Eligibility included: a) age 20 to 50 years, b) at least one child between the ages of 2 and 16 years old, c) no current psychiatric conditions (including depression for the mothers of neurotypical children), and d) nonsmoker. For chronically stressed mothers, additional inclusion criteria were: caring for a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and Perceived Stress Scale ( Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983 ) score ≥ 13. For control participants, additional inclusion criteria were: caring for a neurologically typical child, and Perceived Stress Scale score ≤ 19. Recruitment took place in the San Francisco Bay Area, through mass mailings and advertisements in schools, local parenting publications, and direct recruitment in the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Autism Clinic.

2.2. Procedures

Participants came in to the research lab for a baseline assessment during which they completed demographic and psychosocial questionnaires, computer-based cognitive tasks, and blood draws. In addition, participants completed online daily reports in the morning and evening for 7 days. Evening reports included whether there was a stressful event that day, self-reported quality of their interactions with their partner, and mood and mind states within the last 30 minutes. This protocol was repeated 9, 18, and 24 months later. Because there was an intervention between the 18 and 24 month time point, analyses presented here do not include 24 month assessment data. For the daily level analyses, participants have up to 21 days of data (7 days of reporting over 3 data collection bursts). The UCSF institutional review board approved this research. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

2.3. Measures

2.3.1. mind states., engagement in and rejection of the moment..

Engagement in the moment was captured with the item: “How often in the in the last 30 minutes have you felt totally focused and engaged in doing what you were doing at the moment?” Rejection of the moment was captured with the item: “How often in the last 30 minutes have you felt you didn’t want to be where you were or doing what you were doing at the moment?” The scale was a slider scale including anchors of not at all, somewhat, and a lot with scores ranging from 0 – 100. This variable was rescaled 0 – 5 to match the response scale of the mood outcome measure more closely.

Mind wandering.

Frequency and emotional valence of wandering thoughts were captured in the evening with three items that asked about thoughts and attention within the last 30 minutes. Items were: “How often in the last 30 minutes, instead of thinking about what you were doing at that moment were you thinking about something else that was: a) pleasant, b) unpleasant, and c) neutral?” These items were adapted from a previous study on mind wandering ( Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010 ). The scale was a slider scale including anchors of not at all, somewhat, and a lot with scores ranging from 0 – 100, and was also rescaled 0–5.

2.3.2. Evening mood.

In the evening log, participants were asked to rate how much they felt a range of emotions that evening on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely; Fredrickson, Tugade, & Waugh, 2003 ). Twelve positive items (e.g. “I felt awe, wonder, amazement”) and twelve negative items (e.g. “I felt angry, irritated, frustrated”) were averaged in to positive and negative affect subscales. Alphas for these subscales were .87 for negative mood and .94 for positive mood.

2.3.3. Psychological stress.

Daily stress..

In each evening log, participants wrote in detail about the event that caused them the most stress that day. Objective coders then reviewed the written text and assigned a severity score based on standard scoring ( Almeida, Wethington, & Kessler, 2002 ). Rating categories were: 0 (no stressor occurred), 1 (low severity event), 2 (medium severity event), 3 (high severity event), and 4 (extreme severity event). Across the 21 days of data collection, participants reported experiencing low severity events just over half of the days (55% of the time) and medium severity events on one-third of the days (34% of the time). Days with no stress and severe stress were rare (2.5% and .8% respectively). A dichotomous variable was created by categorizing codes 0 and 1 as ‘no stress’ days, and codes 2, 3, and 4 as ‘stress days.’

Perceived stress.

General perceptions of stress were assessed with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale ( Cohen et al., 1983 ) completed at baseline, 9, and 18 months. Participants used a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (almost all the time) to rate items such as “How often have you felt unable to control the important things in your life?” “How often have you felt nervous or stressed?” and “How often have you felt confident about your ability to handle personal problems?” (reverse coded).

2.3.4. Daily quality of social connection with marital partner.

In the evening log, participants reported on their sense of closeness with their marital partner that day. Three items captured positive aspects of interactions with the partner that day: “To what extend did you feel respected by your partner today?” “To what extent were you satisfied with your partner today?” “To what extent did you talk to your partner to get comfort, emotional support, or help with something that upset you?” The scale was a slider scale including anchors of not at all, somewhat, and a lot with scores ranging from 0 – 100, and was also rescaled 0 – 5. The three items were averaged within each day to create a daily ‘social connection’ score. The alpha for this scale was .65.

2.4. Analytic Method

Twenty-one days of daily diary data were captured in three 7-day increments during the baseline, 9 month, and 18 month study assessment points. The average number of days of diary reports completed was 18 (SD=5, range 1–21), meaning that the analysis dataset consisted of 183 (subjects) × 18 (days) = 3,294 evening reports.

We analyzed our data using a multilevel model that specified a within-subject process of daily variation in mood, mind states, and partner social connection following Bolger & Laurenceau (2013) . Our predictor variables (i.e. engagement, rejection, daily stress, and daily positive partner connection) were decomposed into their within-subject state and between-subject trait components. Within-subject state variables were computed by subtracting each participant’s individual 21 day average from each of their daily scores. Between-subject trait variables were computed by subtracting the overall sample average from each participant’s individual 21 day average. Both the within-subject state and between-subject trait variables were included in the models, with the within-subject variables at Level 1 and the between-subject trait variables at Level 2. In this way we are able to test how daily fluctuation in our predictors, in relation to the person’s general level of that predictor (as captured with weekly average), are associated with our outcomes. The model equation is provided in the Online Supplemental Material .

To confirm there was enough within-subject daily variation in each variable to run these models, we ran empty models for each outcome and found that the estimates of the intercept was substantially larger that its standard error, indicating that there appears to be significant variation in the daily level outcomes. Approximately 43–51% of the variance in all our predictor and outcome variables was within-subject, indicating that while there was (as expected), between-subject variation in amount of daily mind wandering, social connection, and mood, much of the daily variation took place within individuals. Our analyses primarily focused on understanding these intra-individual daily variations in order to test our hypotheses about the relationship daily mind states and daily well-being indices.

We chose to use 21 days of data when the data was collected in three distinct collection bursts (at baseline, 9 months, and 18 months) for several reasons. Twenty-one days of data captures a more reliable average of the person’s normal functioning than one week of data, and provides enough opportunity for variation in our variables of interest (e.g. stress day) in order to test our hypotheses. To account for the fact that the data was collected at different time points, we included a time point indicator to control for assessment week in our models. We are also modeling the time-dependence (adjacent observations are more similar than distant ones) via autocorrelations of our residuals.

2.5. Hypothesis Testing

To describe our sample and test our first hypothesis, we compared mothers under chronic stress to low stress mothers on average psychosocial characteristics, including weekly averages of our daily level predictors and outcomes, using t -tests. Pearson correlations were used to examine associations between weekly average mind states, mind wandering, and global perceived stress across the sample as a whole. To test our second hypothesis, we examined how daily fluctuation in mind states influenced evening positive and negative mood using multilevel models as described above. To test our third hypothesis, we examined how fluctuation in daily stress and daily social connection influenced daily mind states using multilevel models.

3.1. Participant Characteristics

Participants (n=183) were on average 44 years old, Caucasian (77.5%), married (86%), and had a household income above $100,000 (76.4%) 1 . By design, mothers of a child with an autism spectrum disorder reported significantly higher levels of global perceived stress at baseline (mean=21.9, SD=4.7) than low stress mothers (mean=15.7, SD=4.4), p <.001.

3.2. Chronic Stress and Daily Life

Chronic stress was associated with differences in daily mind states and mind wandering. As presented in Table 1 , across the 21 days of daily data, chronically stressed mothers reported lower levels of engagement, greater rejection, and more unpleasant and neutral mind wandering. The two groups did not differ significantly in the amount of pleasant mind wandering or in daily social connection with partner. The mothers under chronic stress also reported a greater proportion of stress days compared to no-stress days.

Daily averages of key variables across 21-days of data by chronic stress group

Greater global perceived stress averaged across all assessment time points was negatively correlated with engagement in the present moment ( r =−.45), and positively correlated with rejection of the present moment ( r= .48), unpleasant mind wandering ( r= .23), and neutral mind wandering ( r= .57). Perceived stress was not associated with pleasant mind wandering ( r =.01). Figure 1 demonstrates the robust association between global perceived stress and neutral mind wandering.

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Correlation between neutral mind wandering and perceived stress, by chronic stress group.

3.3. Mind States and Mood

When examining frequency of evening mind wandering and mind states across the sample as a whole averaged across the 21 days of data collection, participants reported being present and engaged in the moment more often than (mean = 3.2, SD=.7) they reported rejecting the moment (mean=1.4, SD=.8) or mind wandering (pleasant mean=1.8, SD=.8; unpleasant mean=2.0, SD=.9; neutral mean=1.5, SD=.8).

On evenings when engagement in the present moment was higher than the person’s average daily engagement score, they reported greater positive mood (B=.158, SE=.01, p <.001) and lower negative mood (B=−.086, SE=.01, p <.001). Conversely, on evenings when participants’ reported rejecting the moment more than their own daily average, they also reported lower positive mood (B=−.149, SE=.01, p <.001) and greater negative mood (B=.091, SE=.01, p <.001).

For mind wandering, an increase in pleasant mind wandering was associated with higher positive mood (B=.099, SE=.01, p <.001) and lower negative mood (B=−.042, SE=.01, p <.001). An increase in neutral mind wandering was associated with lower positive mood (B=−.17, SE=.01, p <.001) and higher negative mood (B=.142, SE=.01, p <.001). An increases in unpleasant mind wandering was marginally associated with lower evening positive mood, p =.057, and not associated with evening negative mood, p= .451. However, as expected, greater levels of trait (21 day average) unpleasant mind wandering was associated with lower positive ( p =.028) and greater negative mood each evening ( p =.009). This means that the inter-individual variability in unpleasant mind wandering was related to evening mood, but intra-individual changes were not.

3.4. Daily Stress Exposure and Mind States

Across the 21 days of data collection, participants reported an average of 10 days during which a moderate stressor happened (‘stress days’; SD=5, range=0–21; 48% of days). Chronically stressed mothers reported a greater proportion of stress days vs non-stress days compared to the low stress mothers (proportion for chronic stress group=.51, SD=.23 versus the low stress group=.42, SD=.19; t (181)=2.74, p< .007; which equates to 11 stress days out of 21 total days in the chronically stressed group and 9 stress days in the low stress group).

There was a main effect (across the sample as a whole) of daily stress on engagement and rejection of the moment. On stress days, participants reported being less engaged in the moment (B=−.192, SE=.04, p <.001), rejecting the moment more (B=.23, SE=.05, p <.001), and doing less pleasant mind wandering (B=−.129, SE=.04, p =.003) and more neutral mind wandering (B=.33, SE=.04, p <.001) than they did on non-stress days. Stress day did not impact amount of unpleasant mind wandering ( p =.196). These results are illustrated in Figure 2 .

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Average mind state scores across the sample on no stress day vs. stress day.

3.5. Daily Connection with Partner and Mind States

The intra-individual variability in daily connection with marital partner was also associated with mind states. Specifically, on days when a participant felt more connected to their partner than their daily average, participants also reported greater engagement in the moment (B=.155, SE=.03, p< .001), lower rejection of the moment (B=−.137, SE=.03, p <.001), more pleasant mind wandering (B=.12, SE=.03, p< .001), and less neutral mind wandering (B=−.087, SE=.03, p= 003). Daily fluctuations in partner social connection was not associated with amount of unpleasant mind wandering ( p =.388).

We also tested whether these effects was moderated by chronic stress status and found a marginally significant (B=.12, SE=.06, p =.061) interaction of caregiver group and daily partner social connection for pleasant mind wandering, such that for caregivers, there was a stronger association between daily social connection and pleasant mind wandering. Caregiver group did not moderate the effect of daily social connection on other mind states.

4. Discussion

Mind wandering vs. engagement in the moment are frequent states of mind that may offer important clues or even serve as determinants of one’s daily mental health and happiness. The findings presented here provide the first empirical evidence that experiencing psychological stress shapes these mind states at the daily level. We found that being under chronic stress was associated with more daily mind wandering and importantly, less engagement in – and more rejection of – the present moment. Greater evening mind wandering and less presence in turn, was associated with lower positive and higher negative evening mood. Furthermore, the context of the day influenced one’s mind states; experiencing a moderately stressful event earlier in the day made it less likely for someone to feel engaged in their present experience that evening. Conversely, an increase in perceived partner social connection during the day (an increase from one’s average sense of social connection) made it more likely that the person would report being present that evening. While being under chronic stress is associated with more daily stressful events, and lower social connection on average, the daily changes in these factors predict changes in mind states for our whole sample, regardless of chronic stress status (whether they are a caregiver or not).

Our results support our first hypothesis; women under chronic stress reported lower average levels of engagement and higher levels of rejecting the moment in comparison to an age-matched control group over a 21 day period of evening reporting. These results add to our group’s previous finding that trait-level reports of engagement and rejection were associated with depressive symptoms, perceived stress, rumination, life satisfaction, and the stress-related biomarker of aging, telomere length ( Epel et al., 2013 ). The current study looked at these constructs in a more granular way by asking participants to report on their mind states in the past 30 minutes, compared to the previous study in which participants reported at a single time point. Further, we demonstrated that these mind states differ by chronic stress status. Taken with our previous results, this work suggests that mind states offer a window in to the inner workings of those under chronic stress.

We also found that women under chronic stress experience more evening neutral and unpleasant mind wandering compare to age-matched controls. This is in line with evidence from Jha et al. (2015) demonstrating that a time-limited chronic stressor (8 weeks pre-deployment for military personnel) was associated with a deterioration in attention and increases in mind wandering measured by a laboratory cognitive task. Our study adds to this research by comparing daily mind wandering reports in a sample specifically recruited because of their levels of perceived stress in addition to objective stressor exposure. Being under chronic stress may lead to increases in mind wandering because the demands of the chronic stressor depletes psychological and physiological resources that are needed to regulate attention.

The increase in neutral mind wandering for those under chronic stress is interesting since it is unclear why it is more frequent, and what those mind wandering thoughts are about. It could indicate that those under chronic stress use mind wandering as a tool to take them out of the present moment, to ‘zone out’ and not engage with a difficult reality or emotion in the moment. Indeed, across the sample as a whole, neutral mind wandering was strongly correlated with global subjective stress (assessed with the PSS, r= .57). Neutral mind wandering may also be indicative of more time spent future planning, as many self-generated thoughts during mind wandering are future oriented ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ), and mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder may need to do more planning to coordinate caregiving activities compared to control mothers. Interestingly, neutral mind wandering did not appear benign, as it was associated with higher evening negative mood, as described next.

A more nuanced examination of the content of mind wandering thoughts in chronically stressed samples would shed further light onto this initial finding. In addition to valence and time-orientation (future versus past) of mind wandering thoughts, other aspects of mind wandering that may be important to capture include the cognitive orientation (i.e. self-related or goal-directed; Baird, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2011 ) and intentionality of the thought ( Seli, Risko, Smilek, & Schacter, 2016 ). The consequences of mind wandering likely depend on these aspects of the self-generated thoughts since the differences in cognitive architecture create differences in experience they create ( Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013 ; Wang et al., 2018 ). Future research should continue to explore these various aspects of mind states in chronically stressed samples (and on high stress days) to continue to understand the daily cognitive consequences of stress states, including whether there are types of mind states that support resilience to stress states.

The second aim of the study was to examine whether daily fluctuations in mind states are associated with fluctuations in mood on the same evening, controlling for the individual’s average level of that mind state. We found that on evenings when women reported being more engaged in the moment (an increase from their daily average), or doing more pleasant mind wandering, they also reported being in a better mood. Conversely, on evenings when women reported rejecting the moment more and doing more neutral mind wandering, they also reported being in a worse mood. This aligns with previous work by Killingsworth & Gilbert (2010) in a community sample showing that mind wandering episodes prospectively predicted worse mood, using multiple reports over the course of a single day. Participants in their study completed an average of 8 in-the-moment-reports of mood and/or mind wandering across several days of data collection. Our study does not allow for temporal inferences because participants only completed the assessments once a day, but our participants provided nearly twice as many samples over a greater period of their life—three data collection bursts of seven days over 18 months, leading to an average of 18 evening reports per person. A greater number of days of data for each participant enhances the statistical power to detect an effect. However, our study does not allow for temporal inferences since the predictors and outcomes we focused on were captured at the same time, eliminating the ability to test causality. Our study is also limited in that participants only reported on their mind states in the evenings, and thus our results are constrained to inferences about relationships between evening mind states and mood.

Our study also extends previous work by examining how daily fluctuations in the affective valence of the mind wandering – whether it was pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral to the participant – are related to daily social and emotional states. Previous research has demonstrated that whether mind wandering is harmful or helpful for well-being likely depends on the content of thoughts during the mind wandering episode (e.g. Franklin et al., 2013 ; Poerio et al., 2013 ; Ruby et al., 2013 ; Wang et al., 2018 ). This idea helps clarify the seemingly contradictory literature which shows that mind wandering episodes are associated with negative cognitive outcomes such as cognitive tasks performance deficits, and also positive cognitive outcomes such as creative problem solving and future planning ( Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013 ). It may be that pleasant wandering thoughts are associated with positive well-being outcomes while unpleasant wandering thoughts are associated with worse well-being. Indeed, our analyses of daily-level mind wandering valence data show that mind wandering labeled by the participant as pleasant was associated with greater positive mood that same evening, whereas neutral mind wandering was associated with lower levels of positive mood that evening. This suggests that mind wandering about something pleasant (or that gives one a pleasant feeling) may be beneficial for that evening’s mood. Future studies should capture more information about the mind wandering thoughts in order to fully explore when mind wandering leads to increases in subjective well-being, versus decreases.

The third aim was to contribute to our understanding of the environmental conditions that influence evening mind states by testing the influence of two daily contextual factors: moderate stress exposure and perceived quality of connection with partner. As hypothesized, we found that on days when a moderate stressor occurred, participants were less present that evening. On ‘stress days’ participants reported less engagement and more rejection of the moment, and less pleasant and more neutral mind wandering. Surprisingly, participants did not report more unpleasant mind wandering on stress days. Daily fluctuation in unpleasant mind wandering may be influenced by daily contextual factors not examined here such as physiological states of sleep deprivation or hunger, or personality traits such as neuroticism. Since we know from previous research that the majority of wandering thoughts are focused on the past or future, these unpleasant thoughts might not be resulting from that day’s events but rather the common perseverative cognition characterized by rumination over past events and worry about events that have not happened. It is also possible that positive and neutral mind wandering are more influenced by the current day’s events.

We also found that naturally occurring daily fluctuations in connection with partner influenced evening mind states. On evenings that participants reported feeling positively connected to their partner (controlling for average level of partner connection), participants also reported greater engagement in the moment and less mind wandering. This is the first study to our knowledge to look at how daily changes in quality of partner connection influences engagement with the present moment. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive association between stable indices of partner connection such as relationship satisfaction and dispositional mindfulness ( Barnes et al., 2007 ). Our results suggest that small daily changes in relationship quality are associated with a present oriented focus that evening. This is an important finding as positive interactions and connection with marital partner is something that can be prioritized and fostered each day. Interestingly, a study by Poerio et al. (2016) suggests that social connectedness can be fostered through social daydreaming exercises, and that this exercise may be beneficial when experiencing distressing feelings like loneliness.

The tendency to mind wander and to experience different states of consciousness exists both as a trait tendency, and as a myriad of fluctuations in a person’s day that is influenced by contextual factors. We know little about the factors that predict greater mind wandering in naturalistic settings. We do know from both daily diary and experimental studies that negative moods lead to greater mind wandering ( Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010 ; Smallwood, Fitzgerald, Miles, & Phillips, 2009 ), that older adults tend to report less mind wandering than do younger adults ( Jackson & Balota, 2012 ), and people tend to mind wander more during an easy than a difficult task ( Forster & Lavie, 2009 ). Our results identify new contextual factors, namely chronic stress, exposure to daily stressful events, and daily quality of partner connection, that also influence one’s ability to engage with the present moment, and frequency of mind wandering.

There are several strengths and limitations of this study. Using nightly reports on consecutive days, and stretching these sampling periods out into three intervals over one and a half years, offers a more stable way to assess intra-individual differences in daily experience, regardless of the changes in life circumstances that occur over time. However, because mind state data was only collected in the evenings, and both mood and unwanted thoughts are influenced by time of day ( May & Hasher, 1998 ; Stone, Smyth, Pickering, & Schwartz, 1996 ), the inferences made about mind state findings are constrained to evenings only. Sampling at multiple unpredictable times throughout the day would improve the ability to examine temporal sequence. Each evening, participants reported earlier daytime stressful experiences and their perceived partner connection across that entire day. These reports are likely influenced by their current mood, and the relationships between them are bi-directional (e.g. Poerio et al., 2013 ). Further, the measures of mind states, while they preceded the measures of nightly mood, were taken during the same reporting session. Therefore, they are correlational and it is difficult to infer if mind states more influenced mood or whether mood was influencing mind states. Indeed, lab-based mood induction studies have demonstrated that inducing an unpleasant mood can lead to mind wandering about past events ( Smallwood & O’Connor, 2011 ). Future studies will need to sample mood and mind states more frequently during the day to examine temporal effects. There are many remaining questions about psychological stress and mind states for future studies to examine. For example, it is unknown whether chronic and/or acute stress interferes with one’s ability to notice mind wandering episodes (meta-awareness), how the contents of the self-generated thoughts during mind wandering differs under states of stress, and whether mind wandering is used as a regulatory tool to decrease stress-related emotional or physiologic arousal.

Among the limitations is that the chronic stress group all had children with autism, leaving open the possibility of genetic differences between the mothers. While some of the genetics in autism are due to de novo mutations, not passed on by the parents ( Sanders et al., 2012 ), and there is a large heterogeneity among the condition, there is also evidence of heritability found in both population-based and twin studies ( Colvert et al., 2015 ; Sandin et al., 2014 ). Studies examining autism-related symptoms in parents are mixed, with some studies finding statistically worse functioning on social communication in parents ( Bishop et al., 2004 ; Bora, Aydın, Saraç, Kadak, & Köse, 2017 ), which may or may not be due to genetic risk. In the current study, it is possible but unlikely that the stress related differences in caregiver mind states are due to small differences in social communication skills. It will be important to replicate these findings in other chronically stressed groups like parental caregivers of other conditions that are not neurodevelopmental or psychiatric.

Our results replicate previous evidence linking daily mind wandering about neutral topics and worse mood, and extend this work to include other states of consciousness, and by demonstrating that chronic stress and daily contextual factors (stress exposure and partner connection) influence mind states. We did not replicate previous findings (e.g. Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010 ) that link both pleasant and unpleasant mind wandering to worse mood. In fact, our results demonstrated that pleasant mind wandering was associated with better mood, as was engagement in the present moment. Further, our results provide evidence that the relationship between mind states and mood shift within people based on their daily experiences. The specific mind states studied here – and rejection of the moment in particular, which is understudied – may serve as targets for well-being interventions, especially in high stress groups. These targets may be particularly affected by psychological and/or contemplative interventions such as ones that incorporate acceptance-based strategies of accepting one’s current psychological experiences, including unwanted or negative emotions.

5. Conclusion

A fundamental Buddhist principle is that acceptance of the current moment experience without rejecting the reality of the situation is essential to happiness and to avoiding suffering. Rejecting the present moment may be at the core of what is experienced by those under chronic, ongoing stress. And, regardless of experiencing chronic stress, exposure to daily stressors leads us to mind states associated with decreases in well-being. Using contemplative traditions to inform research about how different types of life challenges, chronic and acute, influence well-being can help us understand what is toxic about stress, and may provide specific psychological constructs to target with intervention. Furthermore, contemplative practices may be used to inform the refinement of existing psychological interventions to target these specific mechanisms. The integration of wisdom traditions with contemporary psychology, and the utilization of newer data collection and statistical techniques, provides an opportunity for a deeper understanding of a well-lived life, at the daily level.

Supplementary Material

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health; K01AG057859; R01AG030424, R24AG048024). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

1 This is not a particularly high household income for San Francisco, where the 2016 median household income was $84,160.

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Why Do Our Minds Wander?

A scientist says mind-wandering or daydreaming help prepare us for the future

Tim Vernimmen, Knowable Magazine

A Man At Work With a Wandering Mind

When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unpredictable thoughts that crop up when people stop paying attention to their surroundings and the task at hand? Thoughts that couldn’t be linked to any measurable outward behavior?

But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, forged ahead. He used as his tool a downright tedious computer task that was intended to reproduce the kinds of lapses of attention that cause us to pour milk into someone’s cup when they asked for black coffee. And he started out by asking study participants a few basic questions to gain insight into when and why minds tend to wander, and what subjects they tend to wander toward. After a while, he began to scan participants’ brains as well, to catch a glimpse of what was going on in there during mind-wandering.

Smallwood learned that unhappy minds tend to wander in the past, while happy minds often ponder the future . He also became convinced that wandering among our memories is crucial to help prepare us for what is yet to come. Though some kinds of mind-wandering — such as dwelling on problems that can’t be fixed — may be associated with depression , Smallwood now believes mind-wandering is rarely a waste of time. It is merely our brain trying to get a bit of work done when it is under the impression that there isn’t much else going on.

Smallwood, who coauthored an influential 2015 overview of mind-wandering research in the Annual Review of Psychology, is the first to admit that many questions remain to be answered.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Is mind-wandering the same thing as daydreaming, or would you say those are different?

I think it’s a similar process used in a different context. When you’re on holiday, and you’ve got lots of free time, you might say you’re daydreaming about what you’d like to do next. But when you’re under pressure to perform, you’d experience the same thoughts as mind-wandering.

I think it is more helpful to talk about the underlying processes: spontaneous thought, or the decoupling of attention from perception, which is what happens when our thoughts separate from our perception of the environment. Both these processes take place during mind-wandering and daydreaming.

It often takes us a while to catch ourselves mind-wandering. How can you catch it to study it in other people?

In the beginning, we gave people experimental tasks that were really boring, so that mind-wandering would happen a lot. We would just ask from time to time, “Are you mind-wandering?” while recording the brain’s activity in an fMRI scanner.

But what I’ve realized, after doing studies like that for a long time, is that if we want to know how thinking works in the real world, where people are doing things like watching TV or going for a run, most of the data we have are never going to tell us very much.

So we are now trying to study these situations . And instead of doing experiments where we just ask, “Are you mind-wandering?” we are now asking people a lot of different questions, like: “Are your thoughts detailed? Are they positive? Are they distracting you?”

How and why did you decide to study mind-wandering?

I started studying mind-wandering at the start of my career, when I was young and naive.

I didn’t really understand at the time why nobody was studying it. Psychology was focused on measurable, outward behavior then. I thought to myself: That’s not what I want to understand about my thoughts. What I want to know is: Why do they come, where do they come from, and why do they persist even if they interfere with attention to the here and now?

Around the same time, brain imaging techniques were developing, and they were telling neuroscientists that something happens in the brain even when it isn’t occupied with a behavioral task. Large regions of the brain, now called the default mode network , did the opposite: If you gave people a task, the activity in these areas went down.

When scientists made this link between brain activity and mind-wandering, it became fashionable. I’ve been very lucky, because I hadn’t anticipated any of that when I started my PhD, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. But I’ve seen it all pan out.

Default Mode Network Graphic

Would you say, then, that mind-wandering is the default mode for our brains?

It turns out to be more complicated than that. Initially, researchers were very sure that the default mode network rarely increased its activity during tasks. But these tasks were all externally focused — they involved doing something in the outside world. When researchers later asked people to do a task that doesn’t require them to interact with their environment — like think about the future — that activated the default mode network as well.

More recently, we have identified much simpler tasks that also activate the default mode network. If you let people watch a series of shapes like triangles or squares on a screen, and every so often you surprise them and ask something — like, “In the last trial, which side was the triangle on?”— regions within the default mode network increase activity when they’re making that decision . That’s a challenging observation if you think the default mode network is just a mind-wandering system.

But what both situations have in common is the person is using information from memory. I now think the default mode network is necessary for any thinking based on information from memory — and that includes mind-wandering.

Would it be possible to demonstrate that this is indeed the case?

In a recent study, instead of asking people whether they were paying attention, we went one step further . People were in a scanner reading short factual sentences on a screen. Occasionally, we’d show them a prompt that said, “Remember,” followed by an item from a list of things from their past that they’d provided earlier. So then, instead of reading, they’d remember the thing we showed them. We could cause them to remember.

What we find is that the brain scans in this experiment look remarkably similar to mind-wandering. That is important: It gives us more control over the pattern of thinking than when it occurs spontaneously, like in naturally occurring mind-wandering. Of course, that is a weakness as well, because it’s not spontaneous. But we’ve already done lots of spontaneous studies.

When we make people remember things from the list, we recapitulate quite a lot of what we saw in spontaneous mind-wandering. This suggests that at least some of the activity we see when minds wander is indeed associated with the retrieval of memories. We now think the decoupling between attention and perception happens because people are remembering.

Brain Regions of Mind Wandering Graphic

Have you asked people what their minds are wandering toward?

The past and future seem to really dominate people’s thinking . I think things like mind-wandering are attempts by the brain to make sense of what has happened, so that we can behave better in the future. I think this type of thinking is a really ingrained part of how our species has conquered the world. Almost nothing we’re doing at any moment in time can be pinpointed as only mattering then.

That’s a defining difference. By that, I don’t mean that other animals can’t imagine the future, but that our world is built upon our ability to do so, and to learn from the past to build a better future. I think animals that focused only on the present were outcompeted by others that remembered things from the past and could focus on future goals, for millions of years — until you got humans, a species that’s obsessed with taking things that happened and using them to gain added value for future behavior.

People are also, very often, mind-wandering about social situations . This makes sense, because we have to work with other people to achieve almost all of our goals, and other people are much more unpredictable than the Sun rising in the morning.

Though it is clearly useful, isn’t it also very depressing to keep returning to issues from the past?

It certainly can be. We have found that mind-wandering about the past tends to be associated with negative mood.

Let me give you an example of what I think may be happening. For a scientist like me, coming up with creative solutions to scientific problems through mind-wandering is very rewarding. But you can imagine that if my situation changes and I end up with a set of problems I can’t fix, the habit of going over the past may become difficult to break. My brain will keep activating the problem-solving system, even if it can’t do anything to fix the problem, because now my problems are things like getting divorced and my partner doesn’t want any more to do with me. If such a thing happens and all I’ve got is an imaginative problem-solving system, it’s not going to help me, it’s just going to be upsetting. I just have to let it go.

That’s where I think mindfulness could be useful, because the idea of mindfulness is to bring your attention to the moment. So if I’d be more mindful, I’d be going into problem-solving mode less often.

If you spend long enough practicing being in the moment, maybe that becomes a habit. It’s about being able to control your mind-wandering. Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, which aims to help people change how they think and behave, is another way to reduce harmful mind-wandering.

Nowadays, it seems that many of the idle moments in which our minds would previously have wandered are now spent scrolling our phones. How do you think that might change how our brain functions?

The interesting thing about social media and mind-wandering, I think, is that they may have similar motivations. Mind-wandering is very social. In our studies , we’re locking people in small booths and making them do these tasks and they keep coming out and saying, “I’m thinking about my friends.” That’s telling us that keeping up with others is very important to people.

Social groups are so important to us as a species that we spend most of our time trying to anticipate what others are going to do, and I think social media is filling part of the gap that mind-wandering is trying to fill. It’s like mainlining social information: You can try to imagine what your friend is doing, or you can just find out online. Though, of course, there is an important difference: When you’re mind-wandering, you’re ordering your own thoughts. Scrolling social media is more passive.

Could there be a way for us to suppress mind-wandering in situations where it might be dangerous?

Mind-wandering can be a benefit and a curse, but I wouldn’t be confident that we know yet when it would be a good idea to stop it. In our studies at the moment, we are trying to map how people think across a range of different types of tasks. We hope this approach will help us identify when mind-wandering is likely to be useful or not — and when we should try to control it and when we shouldn’t.

For example, in our studies, people who are more intelligent don’t mind wander so often when the task is hard but can do it more when tasks are easy . It is possible that they are using the idle time when the external world is not demanding their attention to think about other important matters. This highlights the uncertainty about whether mind wandering is always a bad thing, because this sort of result implies it is likely to be useful under some circumstances.

This map — of how people think in different situations — has become very important in our research. This is the work I’m going to focus on now, probably for the rest of my career.

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New science: why our brains spend 50% of the time mind-wandering.

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Is letting our minds wander good for us or not? New research uses EEG to trace brain wave patterns ... [+] when our minds wander.

When the Pixies released their hit song “Where Is My Mind” in 1988, they could hardly have known what a hot research topic the wandering mind would become. Nor could they have imagined how controversial mind-wandering could be.

Cognitive scientists are currently in a debate about whether mind-wandering is good for us or not. Until recently, the evidence has suggested that mind-wandering is actually bad for us and makes us unhappy. Yet mind-wandering is such a natural part of how our brains work, that our thoughts wander about half of the time. It defies logic to think that our brains would actually be spending that much energy on something bad for us.

Now new research led by UC Berkeley has found a way to actually track our thoughts and see whether they are focused or wandering. Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that mind-wandering is an important cognitive process. In other words, it is good for us and can lead us to new ideas or innovations.

The debate about mind-wandering.

On the depressing side of the debate, Matt Killingsworth’s Track Your Happiness project concluded that mind-wandering makes us unhappy. His data showed that our minds wander 47% of the time, but that they almost always wander to negative thoughts and gets stuck in rumination. For example, his data showed that commuters are actually happier if they concentrate on being stuck in traffic than if they let their minds wander.

This surprised creatives and innovators who use mind-wandering to solve difficult problems or generate new ideas. Could there be more to the story? Zachary Irving thinks so, and he argues that mind-wandering works differently than we think. An assistant professor at University of Virginia, Irving is a philosopher of cognitive science. He proposes that mind-wandering should be understood as ‘unguided attention.’

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In one of his papers , Irving explains the difference between guided attention, unguided attention and rumination. “Roughly speaking,” he writes, “someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus.”

In contrast, when our thoughts wander they meander from one topic to another, so they are unguided. Mind-wandering may appear to be purposeless, but our thoughts have a surprising way of wandering to our goals. Irving calls this the “Puzzle of the Purposeful Wanderer.” He writes, “My solution to the puzzle is this: mind-wandering is purposeless in one way—it is unguided—but purposeful in another—it is frequently caused, and thus motivated, by our goals.”

Irving believes this is quite different from rumination, during which we are obsessively focused on our distress. He suggests that rumination is not mind-wandering at all, but a type of guided attention because the mind resists being distracted from it.

Tracking brain waves when the mind wanders.

Irving is part of the team of researchers at UC Berkeley who just developed a way to track when the mind is wandering. This is the first time researchers have been able to distinguish the signature brain wave patterns for different types of thought.

First, the team taught 39 adults about four different types of thinking: task-related, freely moving, deliberately constrained and automatically constrained. Then they gave tedious tasks to perform and measured their brain activity with an EEG. During an EEG or electroencephalogram, people wear electrodes on their head and the machine records their brain waves.

When participants’ finished their boring tasks, they rated their thoughts on a scale of 1-7, reporting whether their thoughts were about the task, freely moving, deliberately constrained or automatically constrained. The researcher then matched the responses with the brain activity recordings.

When our minds are wandering, alpha waves are strong in the frontal lobes.

Its’ easy to understand constrained thinking: that’s thinking that stays focused on something. But what are freely moving thoughts like? Lead study author Julia Kam, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, gave an example in a press release . It might go like this: “if a student, instead of studying for an upcoming exam, found herself thinking about whether she had received a good grade on an assignment, then realized she had not yet prepared dinner, and then wondered if she should exercise more, and ended up reminiscing about her last vacation.”

The EEG allowed the researchers to tell whether participants’ minds were focused or wandering. When people were paying attention to their tasks, they had P3 type brain waves in their parietal lobes (on the sides of the brain). When they were not only paying attention but deliberately constraining their thoughts, people had P3 waves in their frontal lobes (the area at the front of the brain which is known for executive function).

Meanwhile, when thoughts started wandering participants had strong alpha waves in the frontal lobes. The study authors were specific about this: to them mind-wandering meant task-unrelated, freely moving, and unconstrained thoughts. And that’s interesting, because alpha waves are slow brain waves that run at about 8-12 Hz and show up in the early part of sleep. Alpha waves are associated with being relaxed. So when the mind wanders the frontal lobes, which are responsible for focus and planning, go into a relaxed state.

Mind-wandering is important.

The study authors were excited. "For the first time, we have neurophysiological evidence that distinguishes different patterns of internal thought, allowing us to understand the varieties of thought central to human cognition," said study senior author Robert Knight, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience in the press release.

But the findings are particularly exciting for those who daydreamed their way through school. "Babies and young children's minds seem to wander constantly, and so we wondered what functions that might serve," said Alison Gopnik, a UC Berkeley developmental psychologist and philosophy scholar who is also a co-author of the study, in the press release. "Our paper suggests mind-wandering is as much a positive feature of cognition as a quirk and explains something we all experience."

If mind-wandering is a positive feature of cognition, what is it doing for us? Well for one thing, the alpha waves that show up when our minds are wandering mean we are relaxing. And our brains cannot maintain focus and productivity without regular periods of relaxation. But there is another thing mind-wandering does for us. It may seem counterintuitive, but letting our thoughts drift can actually help us solve problems when focusing on them does not work.

"If you focus all the time on your goals, you can miss important information. And so, having a free-association thought process that randomly generates memories and imaginative experiences can lead you to new ideas and insights," said Irving.

So the next time you want to solve a problem or create something new, you might want to crank up the alpha waves and let your mind go.

Alison Escalante

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How to Stop Your Mind from Wandering

Last Updated: August 6, 2021 References

This article was co-authored by Ni-Cheng Liang, MD . Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang is a board certified Pulmonologist and the Director of Pulmonary Integrative Medicine at Coastal Pulmonary Associates affiliated with the Scripps Health Network in San Diego, California. She also serves as a Voluntary Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine while volunteering for the UCSD Medical Student-Run Free Clinic for uninsured patients. With over 15 years of experience, Dr. Liang specializes in pulmonary and respiratory medical concerns, mindfulness teaching, physician wellness, and integrative medicine. Dr. Liang received her Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Liang was voted as a San Diego Top Doctor in 2017 and 2019. She was also awarded the 2019 American Lung Association San Diego Lung Health Provider of the Year. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 27,769 times.

It’s normal for the human mind to wander. There are so many different things filling your mind and pulling your thoughts in different directions. This isn’t always a bad thing, either. If you’re a creative person, a wandering mind can spark a new creative project. However, wandering thoughts can also prevent you from getting things done, keep you up at night, or hurt your mental health if you spend your whole day thinking anxious thoughts. Luckily, with some practice and the right techniques, you can learn to focus your mind on the present and control your thoughts to keep them from racing all over the place when you don’t want them to!

Doing Exercises and Activities

Step 1 Slow down your breathing to occupy your mind.

  • You can also look up different breathing exercises , such as yogic breathing or deep throat breathing, and try those out to find something that works for you.

Step 2 Do a physical activity to focus on something else.

  • For example, if you work in an office and you get 15 minute breaks, you could go outside and go for a 10 minute walk around the block to clear your head.
  • If you work from home, you could take a 15-30 minute break and clean and organize your home office space. A clean workspace can also help you focus!

Step 3 Take 10-15 minutes to do nothing and focus on being in the present.

  • Try combining this period of doing nothing with slow breathing or another type of breathing exercise. This can help keep your mind from wandering for these 10-15 minutes and calm your thoughts down.
  • For example, if you work at home and find that you can’t concentrate, take a break and go sit on your balcony or lay down on your bed, away from your laptop and work things. Do nothing for at least 10 minutes and see how it affects your racing thoughts.

Tip : Stay off your phone and other electronics during this time. If you spend the time on social media, for example, you're not giving your mind a rest. Truly try to do nothing at all other than just sit or lay there.

Step 4 Say a mantra to get other thoughts out of your mind.

  • For example, if you’re feeling stressed, you could use a simple phrase like “everything is OK” or “life is beautiful.”
  • Single word mantras you can try include “strong,” “calm,” and “finish.” These could work well if you’re trying to power through something like a run or a chore without getting distracted.

Step 5 Try meditating to...

  • You can search online for meditation techniques or download something like a mindfulness app to help you if you’re totally new to meditating. Meditation takes practice, but stick with it and you might find that you really benefit from it!
  • The classic mantra for focusing on meditation is just “om.” You could try repeating this out loud or in your head while you meditate.

Controlling Anxious Thoughts

Step 1 Write down all your concerns to get them out of your head.

  • This can also help you organize your anxious thoughts, so you can address their causes later on.
  • For example, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you can’t stop thinking about everything you have to do tomorrow, try writing down a to-do list to get the thoughts out of your head and help you get to sleep.

Step 2 Think about positive alternative scenarios to stop worrying.

  • For example, if you are worried about turning a project in to your boss, think about ways it could help your career if your boss really loves your work.
  • Say you’re studying for a test in a topic that you find difficult and you keep thinking about what will happen if you fail the test, so it’s hard to focus on studying. Instead, try thinking about how great you can do on the test and how it will boost your grade if you study hard.

Step 3 Work on any tasks that are hanging over your head.

  • For example, you might be avoiding putting a big report together at work because it’s slow and tedious, but you find your mind wandering to this task that’s hanging over you. Set aside time in each day to work on the report, so you make progress instead of just dreading it.

Step 4 Talk to someone to get your anxious thoughts out of your head.

  • For example, if you can’t seem to focus on anything because all you’re thinking about is your ongoing divorce, maybe seeing a therapist to talk about it would help you control those thoughts.
  • If your mind is wandering because you’re frustrated about something at work, maybe getting a coffee with a coworker you trust and talking to them about whatever the issue is will help calm your mind.

Tip : If you think you might have clinical-level anxiety, it’s always best to talk to a professional about it. They can provide you with a professional treatment to help you get it under control.

Step 5 Try to accept the things that you cannot change.

  • For instance, say you’re having trouble focusing on being present with your family over a long weekend because you’re worried about something at work. Try to accept that in this particular moment you can’t do anything about your work tasks and focus on enjoying the family time.

Step 6 Pay attention to the root causes of anxious thoughts and address them.

  • For example, if your mind is continuously thinking about what it would be like to work in a different job, it might be time to consider a career change and start looking for another position.
  • If you keep thinking about a conflict with a colleague you’re having at work, it might help calm your thoughts to sit down with them and talk about it.

Focusing on Tasks

Step 1 Do 1 task at a time to concentrate on just that 1 thing.

  • Any activities you do throughout your day can be considered tasks. For instance, when you’re eating your lunch, try to focus just on your lunch. Don’t try to multitask and work or study while you eat.
  • If you’re talking to someone, try to focus 100% on the conversation and not let yourself get distracted by noises or other people around you. After the conversation is over, move on to your next task.
  • If you need to put together a presentation for a work meeting, focus on getting the presentation totally done before you move onto another task like checking your email or looking at data.

Tip : Training your brain to focus on 1 thing is just like training your body. It can be hard at first, but with practice you can learn to control your mind and focus it on the task at hand.

Step 2 Practice avoiding momentary distractions to build concentration.

  • For example, if you work in an office with a bunch of other people around, it can be tempting to look around the room to find the culprit any time someone coughs or sneezes. Don’t let yourself do this!
  • If you have to sit next to a window and there is something going on outside that distracts you, such as a building under construction, practice not looking out the window every time a crane moves.
  • You can also try removing distractions in settings like classrooms and offices by closing drapes or blinds to block your view or putting in headphones to block out noise.

Step 3 Designate a specific time to worry, think, or plan.

  • For example, you could give yourself a free thinking period from 5:30-6:00 every day. During this time, don’t try to work, study, or get any other tasks done. For these 30 minutes, let yourself think about any worries you have or do any planning you need to do.
  • Say you keep thinking about an upcoming vacation and all the things you still need to do to get ready. Instead of letting your mind wander to it all day, designate a time block during which you can do things like making a packing list or researching sites you want to visit, then refocus on your other tasks.

Expert Q&A

Ni-Cheng Liang, MD

  • Mini-interactions with nature can help you feel more calm and focus on the present. For example, if you go for a walk to try and calm your thoughts, try walking barefoot across some grass or touching some trees and leaves in a park. [19] X Research source Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
  • Everyone has days during which their mind wanders more than normal and it feels impossible to get things done. It’s OK to take a day off work and stay home to help relieve stress, calm your mind, and stay healthy mentally. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 2

mind wandering during studying

  • Persistent anxious thoughts can be a sign of a bigger mental disorder. If you can’t get your anxiety under control on your own, see a licensed therapist who can help you develop a treatment plan. [20] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1

You Might Also Like

Control Your Mind

  • ↑ Ni-Cheng Liang, MD. Board Certified Pulmonologist. Expert Interview. 18 June 2021.
  • ↑ https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/mindful_breathing
  • ↑ https://rachelfintzy.com/20-tips-to-stop-your-mind-from-wandering-and-overthinking/
  • ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-s-mental-health-matters/201604/5-ways-stop-your-racing-thoughts
  • ↑ https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_focus_a_wandering_mind
  • ↑ https://www.fastcompany.com/90300162/ask-yourself-these-four-questions-when-your-mind-starts-to-wander
  • ↑ https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/anxiety-and-panic-attacks/self-care/
  • ↑ https://adaa.org/tips
  • ↑ https://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/concentration-mind-power/how-to-keep-your-mind-from-wandering/
  • ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-work/200910/easily-distracted
  • ↑ https://www.k-state.edu/counseling/topics/career/concentr.html
  • ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/11/08/7-ways-to-pull-your-wandering-mind-back-into-the-present-moment/#785965da3314

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Ni-Cheng Liang, MD

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How speechwriters delve into a president’s mind: Lots of listening, studying and becoming a mirror

FILE - President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. It’s an annual process that former presidential speechwriters say take months. Speechwriters have the uneviable task of taking dozens of ideas and stitching into a cohesive narrative of a president’s vision for the year. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

FILE - President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. It’s an annual process that former presidential speechwriters say take months. Speechwriters have the uneviable task of taking dozens of ideas and stitching into a cohesive narrative of a president’s vision for the year. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

in Washington, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Speechwriting, in one sense, is essentially being someone else’s mirror.

“You can try to find the right words,” said Dan Cluchey, a former speechwriter for President Joe Biden . “But ultimately, your job is to ensure that when the speech is done, that it has a reflection of the speaker.”

That concept is infinitely magnified in the role of the presidential speechwriter. Over the course of U.S. history, those aides have absorbed the personalities, the quirks, the speech cadences of the most powerful leader on the globe, capturing his thoughts for all manner of public remarks, from the mundane to the historic and most consequential.

There are few times in a presidency that the art — and the rigorous, often painful process — of speechwriting is more on display than during a State of the Union , when the vast array of a president’s policy aspirations and political messages come together in one, hour-plus carefully choreographed address at the Capitol. Biden will deliver the annual address on Thursday .

It’s a process that former White House speechwriters say take months, with untold lobbying and input from various federal agencies and others outside the president’s inner circle who are all working to ensure their favored proposals merit a mention. Speechwriters have the unenviable task of taking dozens of ideas and stitching them into a cohesive narrative of a president’s vision for the year.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden speak at a campaign event in Philadelphia, Friday, March 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

It’s less elegant prose, more laundry list of policy ideas.

Amid all those formalities and constraints of a State of the Union address, there is also how a president executes the speech.

Biden’s biggest political liability remains his age (81) and voters’ questions about whether he is still up to the job (his doctor this past week declared him fit to serve ). His every word is watched by Republican operatives eager to capture any misspeak to plant doubt about Biden’s fitness among the public.

“This year, of course, is an election year. It also comes as there’s much more chatter about his age,” said Michael Waldman, who served as a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. “People are really going to be scrutinizing him for how he delivers the speech, as much as what he says.”

Biden will remain at Camp David through Tuesday and is expected to spend much of that time preparing for the State of the Union. Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff, accompanied Biden to the presidential retreat outside Washington on Friday evening.

The White House has said lowering costs, shoring up democracy and protecting women’s reproductive care will be among the topics that Biden will address on Thursday night.

Biden likely won’t top the list of the most talented presidential orators. He has thrived the most during small chance encounters with Americans, where interactions can be more off the cuff and intimate.

The plain-spoken Biden is known to hate Washington jargon and the alphabet soup of government acronyms, and he has challenged aides, when writing his remarks, to cut through the clutter and to get to the point with speed. Cluchey, who worked for Biden from 2018 to 2022, said the president was very engaged in the speech drafting process, all the way down to individual lines and words.

Biden can also come across as stiff at times when standing and reading from a teleprompter, but immediately loosens up and appears more comfortable when he switches to a hand-held microphone mid-remark. Biden has also learned to navigate a childhood stutter that he says helped him develop empathy for others facing similar challenges.

To become engrossed in another person’s voice, past presidential speechwriters list things that are critical. One is just doing a lot of listening to the principal, to get a sense of his rhythms and how he uses language.

Lots of direct conversation with the president is key, to try and get inside the commander in chief’s thinking and how that leader frames arguments and make their case.

“This is not an act of impression, where you’re simply just trying to get the accent down,” said Jeff Shesol, another former Clinton speechwriter. “What you really are learning to do and need to learn to do -– this is true of speechwriters in any role, but particularly for a president –- is to understand not just how he sounds, but how he thinks.”

Shesol added: “You’re absorbing not just the rhythms and cadences of speech, but you’re absorbing a worldview.”

Then there is always the matter of the speech-giver going rogue.

Biden is often candid, and White House aides are sometimes left to clean up and clarify what he said in unvarnished moments. But other times when he deviates from the script, it ends up being an improvement on what his aides had scripted.

Take last year’s State of the Union . Biden had launched into an attack prepared in advance against some Republicans who were insisting on requiring renewal votes on popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which would effectively threaten their fate every five years.

That prompted heckling from Republicans and shouts of “Liar!” from the audience.

Biden immediately pivoted, egging on the Republicans to contact his office for a copy of the proposal and joking that he was enjoying their “conversion.”

“Folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the — off the books now, right? They’re not to be touched?” Biden continued. The crowd of lawmakers applauded. “All right. All right. We got unanimity!”

Speechwriters do try and prepare for such moments, particularly if a president is known to speak extemporaneously.

Shesol recalled that Clinton’s speechwriters would draft remarks that were relatively spare, to account for him veering off on his own. The writers would write a clear structure into the speech that would allow Clinton to easily return to his prepared remarks once his riff was over.

“Clinton used to liken it to playing a jazz solo and then he’s going back to the score,” Waldman added.

Cluchey, when asked for his reaction when his former boss would go off-script, described it as a “ballet with several movements of, you know, panic, to ‘Wait a minute, this is actually very good,’ and then ‘Oh man, he really nailed it.’”

Biden is “at his best when he’s most authentically, most loosely, just speaking the plain truth,” Cluchey said. “The speechwriting process even at its best has strictures around it.”

SEUNG MIN KIM

illustration

Biden's State of the Union address, annotated and fact-checked

By Zachary B. Wolf and Sean O’Key, CNN

Published March 8, 2024

It may have been President Joe Biden’s final State of the Union address. Or possibly the last of his first term. As Biden and former President Donald Trump prepare for a 2024 general election rematch, a vigorous Biden went off script at times, directly addressing Republicans and making the case that his administration has improved the country and people’s lives.

Here’s what he said and key ad-libs, along with context and fact checks from CNN’s fact check team.

Good evening.

Mr. Speaker. Madam Vice President. Members of Congress. My Fellow Americans.

In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.

He said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union."

Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe.

President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment.

Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.

Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech closed with a vision of spreading American democracy to the world. That’s a very Biden sentiment .

Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation.

Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.

And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.

It’s notable that Biden was essentially comparing the threat against democracy today, both here and abroad, to the threat posed by Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1941.

Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.

What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.

Biden’s challenge in this election is to make Americans believe his quest to save democracy is an urgent matter. The rise of Trump from the political desert suggests many Americans are tiring of the message.

Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond.

If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not.

But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking. They are not asking for American soldiers.

In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way.

This was an important pledge for Americans to hear. French President Emmanuel Macron recently suggested European troops could be called to Ukraine .

But now assistance for Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world.

The Senate passed a bill to give Ukraine an additional $60 billion in US aid, but Speaker Mike Johnson, who sat over Biden’s left shoulder during the speech, has not schedule d a vote in the House .

It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Now, my predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, “Do whatever the hell you want."

Reagan’s words were an important moment in US history. Watch it here. Trump, he who shall not be named in this speech, said recently that he told a European leader that Russia should be able to “ do whatever the hell they want ” to European countries that don’t spend enough on defense.

A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader.

It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.

This “bowing down” line has become a staple of Biden’s speeches.

America is a founding member of NATO the military alliance of democratic nations created after World War II to prevent war and keep the peace.

Today, we’ve made NATO stronger than ever.

We welcomed Finland to the Alliance last year, and just this morning, Sweden officially joined NATO, and their Prime Minister is here tonight.

Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever known.

Sweden was able to join NATO after Turkey and Hungary dropped objections. Coincidentally, Trump is set to meet with Hungary’s Putin-friendly prime minister, Viktor Orban, at Mar-a-Lago on Friday.

I say this to Congress: we must stand up to Putin. Send me the Bipartisan National Security Bill.

History is watching.

If the United States walks away now, it will put Ukraine at risk.

Europe at risk. The free world at risk, emboldening others who wish to do us harm.

My message to President Putin is simple.

We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.

History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January 6th.

This was an important turn, from standing up to Putin to the threat of insurrectionists at home. Trump’s affinity for Putin is no secret. Trump argues he would be able to contain Putin better than Biden.

Insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy.

Many of you were here on that darkest of days.

We all saw with our own eyes these insurrectionists were not patriots.

They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power and to overturn the will of the people.

Everyone saw it, but many Republican lawmakers now downplay the threat posed by the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Johnson was among the lawmakers who objected to the counting of electoral votes in key states Biden won in 2020.

January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War.

But they failed. America stood strong and democracy prevailed.

But we must be honest the threat remains and democracy must be defended.

My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th.

I will not do that.

A lot of Americans might want to move on from 2020, but Biden will try to remind them at every turn. He’ll get help from Trump, who is also still very focused on 2020. Trump has fashioned his campaign as a weapon of “retribution.”

This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies.

And here’s the simplest truth. You can’t love your country only when you win.

As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy!

Remember your oath of office to defend against all threats foreign and domestic.

Respect free and fair elections! Restore trust in our institutions! And make clear –political violence has absolutely no place in America!

Biden frequently uses this line about having to love your country when you lose too. The erosion of faith in US institutions is a troubling development reflected in multiple polls .

And history is watching another assault on freedom.

Joining us tonight is Latorya Beasley, a social worker from Birmingham, Alabama . 14 months ago tonight, she and her husband welcomed a baby girl thanks to the miracle of IVF.

She scheduled treatments to have a second child, but t he Alabama Supreme Court shut down IVF treatments across the state , unleashed by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

She was told her dream would have to wait.

Here’s a list of all of the people who sat with first lady Jill Biden.

Notably, some Alabama clinics have resumed treatment under a bipartisan law hastily passed in that state. But Democrats will continue to make this argument about abortion restrictions being an assault on freedom.

What her family has gone through should never have happened. And unless Congress acts, it could happen again.

So tonight, let’s stand up for families like hers!

To my friends across the aisle, don’t keep families waiting any longer. Guarantee the right to IVF nationwide!

This will be an interesting request to monitor, since it could theoretically gain bipartisan support.

Like most Americans, I believe Roe v. Wade got it right. And I thank Vice President Harris for being an incredible leader, defending reproductive freedom and so much more.

But my predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

He’s the reason it was overturned. In fact, he brags about it.

Look at the chaos that has resulted.

Most Americans support abortion rights in some form, but the parties are hopelessly split. It will help Trump with his base to brag about overturning Roe v. Wade. It will help Biden with his base to blame Trump.

Joining us tonight is Kate Cox, a wife and mother from Dallas.

When she became pregnant again, the fetus had a fatal condition.

Her doctors told Kate that her own life and her ability to have children in the future were at risk if she didn’t act.

Because Texas law banned abortion, Kate and her husband had to leave the state to get the care she needed.

What her family has gone through should never have happened as well. But it is happening to so many others.

CNN’s Betsy Klein notes that Biden leaned on the personal stories of two of the guests in the first lady’s box: Latorya Beasley, an Alabama mother who had to pause in vitro fertilization treatment, and Kate Cox , the Texas mother of two who had to leave her state for access to a lifesaving abortion. And he pointed to a patchwork of abortion rights laws around the country.

But Republicans would have as much trouble passing a nationwide abortion ban as Democrats would have passing a bill to codify Roe v. Wade.

There are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors, and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need.

Many of you in this Chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.

My God, what freedoms will you take away next?

In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court majority wrote, “Women are not without – electoral or political power.”

No kidding.

Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America.

They found out though when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again, in 2024.

Democratic candidates will do everything they can to raise the abortion rights issue during the general election. Even voters in red states have chosen to support abortion rights when given the chance. There could be abortion-related ballot questions in key states, including Florida .

If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose , I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again!

This math doesn’t work. Passing legislation to protect abortion rights nationwide and restore Roe would surely require 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats currently have 51 seats, and there are few opportunities for pickups in 2024. Two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, publicly support a national abortion rights law. That’s not nearly enough.

America cannot go back. I am here tonight to show the way forward. Because I know how far we’ve come.

Four years ago next week, before I came to office, our country was hit by the worst pandemic and the worst economic crisis in a century.

Remember the fear. Record job losses. Remember the spike in crime. And the murder rate.

A raging virus that would take more than 1 million American lives and leave millions of loved ones behind.

Biden’s figure needs context. Many lives were lost to Covid-19 during the Trump administration, but the US didn’t reach its millionth death until May 2022 when Biden was in office.

A mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness.

A president, my predecessor, who failed the most basic duty. Any President owes the American people the duty to care.

That is unforgivable.

I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history .

It is sometimes hard to remember that the Covid-19 pandemic started during the Trump administration and dominated the start of the Biden administration.

And we have. It doesn’t make the news but in thousands of cities and towns the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.

So let’s tell that story here and now.

America’s comeback is building a future of American possibilities, building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up , not the top down, investing in all of America, in all Americans to make sure everyone has a fair shot and we leave no one behind!

Republicans frequently try to label Biden as a socialist for spending taxpayer money. But Democrats and Biden argue the public has an interest in trying to make sure opportunities are accessible to everyone.

The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer.

Turning setback into comeback.

That's America!

I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!

15 million new jobs in just three years - that's a record!

Biden’s claim is correct: the US economy added about 14.8 million jobs between Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021, and January 2024, more jobs than were added in any previous four-year presidential term. However, it’s important to note that Biden took office in an unusual pandemic context that makes meaningful comparison to other periods very difficult.

Unemployment at 50-year lows.

This needs context. The unemployment rate did hit a five-decade low during two months of early 2023 , 3.4%, and it has since remained close to that level — but the latest available unemployment rate, 3.7% for January, is higher than the rate was during nine months under President Donald Trump in 2019 and pre-pandemic 2020. (The rate then skyrocketed on account of the pandemic, and it was 6.4% the month Biden took office in January 2021.)

A record 16 million Americans are starting small businesses and each one is an act of hope.

With historic job growth and small business growth for Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans.

800,000 new manufacturing jobs in America and counting.

Biden’s figure is correct. The US economy added 791,000 manufacturing jobs from Biden’s first full month in office, February 2021, through January 2024, the last month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data is available — though it’s worth noting that the growth largely occurred in 2021 and 2022 (with 746,000 manufacturing jobs added starting in February 2021) before a relatively flat 2023.

More people have health insurance today than ever before.

The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years.

Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down!

Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% – the lowest in the world!

Convincing Americans that their economy is good and improving may be Biden’s most important task in his reelection campaign. Because despite all of that data he rattled off, people are having trouble making ends meet. He’ll have more work to do to convince them .

And trending lower.

And now instead of importing foreign products and exporting American jobs, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs – right here in America where they belong!

And the American people are beginning to feel it.

Consumer studies show consumer confidence is soaring.

Buy American has been the law of the land since the 1930s.

Past administrations including my predecessor failed to Buy American.

Not any more.

On my watch, federal projects like helping to build American roads bridges and highways will be made with American products built by American workers creating good-paying American jobs!

Thanks to my Chips and Science Act the United States is investing more in research and development than ever before.

Biden did oversee the passage of multiple, bipartisan bills to improve the country. The bipartisan infrastructure law is meant to improve things across the country. Propping up a semiconductor chip industry is also meant to make the US more independent from China.

During the pandemic a shortage of semiconductor chips drove up prices for everything from cell phones to automobiles.

Well instead of having to import semiconductor chips, which America invented I might add, private companies are now investing billions of dollars to build new chip factories here in America!

Creating tens of thousands of jobs many of them paying over $100,000 a year and don’t require a college degree.

In fact my policies have attracted $650 Billion of private sector investments in clean energy and advanced manufacturing creating tens of thousands of jobs here in America!

Thanks to our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 46,000 new projects have been announced across your communities – modernizing our roads and bridges, ports and airports, and public transit systems.

A futuristic airport terminal, a fish passage and ski town bus lanes: Here are some of the projects being built through the infrastructure law.

Removing poisonous lead pipes so every child can drink clean water without risk of getting brain damage.

Providing affordable high speed internet for every American no matter where you live.

Urban, suburban, and rural communities — in red states and blue.

Record investments in tribal communities.

Because of my investments, family farms are better be able to stay in the family and children and grandchildren won’t have to leave home to make a living.

It’s transformative.

A great comeback story is Belvidere, Illinois. Home to an auto plant for nearly 60 years.

Before I came to office the plant was on its way to shutting down.

Thousands of workers feared for their livelihoods. Hope was fading.

Then I was elected to office and we raised Belvidere repeatedly with the auto company knowing unions make all the difference.

The UAW worked like hell to keep the plant open and get those jobs back. And together, we succeeded!

Instead of an auto factory shutting down an auto factory is re-opening and a new state-of-the art battery factory is being built to power those cars.

Instead of a town being left behind it’s a community moving forward again!

Because instead of watching auto jobs of the future go overseas 4,000 union workers with higher wages will be building that future, in Belvidere, here in America!

Here tonight is UAW President, Shawn Fain, a great friend, and a great labor leader.

And Dawn Simms, a third generation UAW worker in Belvidere.

Shawn, I was proud to be the first President in American history to walk a picket line.

Biden attended a U nited A uto W orkers rally in Belvidere with UAW President Shawn Fain last year. He also became the first president to join a picket line when he stood with workers in Michigan.

And today Dawn has a job in her hometown providing stability for her family and pride and dignity.

Showing once again, Wall Street didn’t build this country!

The middle class built this country! And unions built the middle class!

Both Biden and Trump will try to argue they are looking out for the middle class. The turn of White voters without college degrees away from Democrats and toward Republicans has been a major shift in politics that drove the rise of Trump.

When Americans get knocked down, we get back up!

We keep going!

That’s America! That’s you, the American people!

It’s because of you America is coming back!

It’s because of you, our future is brighter!

Never has a State of the Union transcript included so many exclamations. Biden presented as a vigorous and energized leader here, far from the doddering old man he has been portrayed as by Republicans.

And it’s because of you that tonight we can proudly say the State of our Union is strong and getting stronger!

Tonight I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together.

A future where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and biggest corporations no longer get all the breaks.

I grew up in a home where not a lot trickled down on my Dad’s kitchen table.

That’s why I’m determined to turn things around so the middle class does well the poor have a way up and the wealthy still does well.

After earlier praising Reagan’s foreign policy, here Biden trashed the guiding principle of Reagan’s economic policy (and Republicans who have worked tirelessly to cut taxes for a generation).

We all do well.

And there’s more to do to make sure you’re feeling the benefits of all we’re doing.

Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere else.

It’s wrong and I’m ending it.

With a law I proposed and signed and not one Republican voted for we finally beat Big Pharma!

This is the Inflation Reduction Act , a post-Covid-19 recovery plan that Democrats loaded up with other policy priorities and were able to pass without Republican votes by bending budget rules.

Democrats had been trying for years to pass a law that would allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices . This is a first step.

Instead of paying $400 a month for insulin seniors with diabetes only have to pay $35 a month!

And now I want to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it!

For years people have talked about it but I finally got it done and gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs just like the VA does for our veterans.

That’s not just saving seniors money.

It’s saving taxpayers money cutting the federal deficit by $160 billion because Medicare will no longer have to pay exorbitant prices to Big Pharma.

It’s true that two of the main drug price provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats pushed through Congress in 2022, are expected to reduce the deficit by $160 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In total, the law’s drug measures are expected to reduce the deficit by $237 billion, though delaying the implementation of a Trump administration drug rebate rule accounts for the difference.

This year Medicare is negotiating lower prices for some of the costliest drugs on the market that treat everything from heart disease to arthritis.

Now it’s time to go further and give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for 500 drugs over the next decade.

That will not only save lives it will save taxpayers another $200 Billion!

Starting next year that same law caps total prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare at $2,000 a year even for expensive cancer drugs that can cost $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 a year.

Now I want to cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for everyone!

Another major contrast between Trump and Biden. Trump still wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act . Biden seemed to be veering toward “Medicare for All” here.

Folks Obamacare, known as the Affordable Care Act is still a very big deal.

Over one hundred million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

But my predecessor and many in this chamber want to take that protection away by repealing the Affordable Care Act I won’t let that happen!

We stopped you 50 times before and we will stop you again!

In fact I am protecting it and expanding it.

I enacted tax credits that save $800 per person per year reducing health care premiums for millions of working families.

Those tax credits expire next year.

I want to make those savings permanent!

Women are more than half of our population but research on women’s health has always been underfunded.

That’s why we’re launching the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, led by Jill who is doing an incredible job as First Lady.

Creating a commission or new office is a classic State of the Union maneuver. That this speech focused on women’s health is not surprising since Democrats are so focused on the issue.

Pass my plan for $12 Billion to transform women’s health research and benefit millions of lives across America!

I know the cost of housing is so important to you .

If inflation keeps coming down mortgage rates will come down as well.

But I’m not waiting.

I want to provide an annual tax credit that will give Americans $400 a month for the next two years as mortgage rates come down to put toward their mortgage when they buy a first home or trade up for a little more space.

My Administration is also eliminating title insurance fees for federally backed mortgages.

When you refinance your home this can save you $1,000 or more.

These are all very specific ideas to put people at ease about the cost of buying and renting, major issues that are affecting how people view the economy . But Biden can’t accomplish all of this. He will need Congress to enact tax credits. He will need inflation to continue to come down to bring down mortgage rates .

For millions of renters, we’re cracking down on big landlords who break antitrust laws by price-fixing and driving up rents.

I’ve cut red tape so more builders can get federal financing, which is already helping build a record 1.7 million housing units nationwide.

Now pass my plan to build and renovate 2 million affordable homes and bring those rents down!

To remain the strongest economy in the world we need the best education system in the world.

I want to give every child a good start by providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds.

He’s actually wanted to enact universal pre-K for some time. But Democrats could not come up with the votes to include that program in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Studies show that children who go to pre-school are nearly 50% more likely to finish high school and go on to earn a 2- or 4-year degree no matter their background.

I want to expand high-quality tutoring and summer learning time and see to it that every child learns to read by third grade.

I’m also connecting businesses and high schools so students get hands-on experience and a path to a good-paying job whether or not they go to college.

And I want to make college more affordable.

Let’s continue increasing Pell Grants for working- and middle-class families and increase our record investments in HBCUs and Hispanic and Minority-serving Institutions

I fixed student loan programs to reduce the burden of student debt for nearly 4 Million Americans including nurses firefighters and others in public service like Keenan Jones a public-school educator in Minnesota who’s here with us tonight.

Biden has done quite a bit to forgive federal student loan debt, canceling about $138 billion so far. Here’s a good visualization of that . But his most expansive plan, which he hoped to do through executive action and would have canceled up to $20,000 for borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year, was rejected by the Supreme Court.

He’s educated hundreds of students so they can go to college now he can help his own daughter pay for college.

Such relief is good for the economy because folks are now able to buy a home start a business even start a family.

While we’re at it I want to give public school teachers a raise!

Now let me speak to a question of fundamental fairness for all Americans.

I’ve been delivering real results in a fiscally responsible way.

I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over one trillion dollars.

Biden’s claim leaves out such critical context that it is misleading. While the annual federal budget deficit was more than $1 trillion lower in the 2023 fiscal year than it was in both the 2020 fiscal year (under President Donald Trump) and the 2021 fiscal year (partially under Trump and partially under Biden), analysts have repeatedly noted that Biden’s own actions, including laws he has signed and executive orders he has issued, have had the overall effect of worsening annual deficits, not reducing them. As in past remarks , Biden didn’t explain that the primary reason the deficit fell by a record amount during his tenure was that it had skyrocketed to a record high at the end of Trump’s term because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected when that spending expired as planned.

I signed a bipartisan budget deal that will cut another trillion dollars over the next decade.

And now it’s my goal to cut the federal deficit $3 trillion more by making big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their fair share.

Look, I’m a capitalist.

If you want to make a million bucks – great!

Just pay your fair share in taxes.

A fair tax code is how we invest in the things –

that make a country great, health care, education, defense, and more.

But here’s the deal.

The last administration enacted a $2 Trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the very wealthy and the biggest corporations and exploded the federal deficit.

They added more to the national debt than in any presidential term in American history.

Biden’s numbers are correct; the national debt rose from about $19.9 trillion to about $27.8 trillion during Trump’s tenure, an increase of about 39% and more than in any other four-year presidential term, in part because of Trump’s major tax cuts. But it is an oversimplification to blame presidents alone for debt incurred during their tenures. Some of the Trump-era increase in the debt was due to the trillions of dollars in emergency Covid-19 pandemic relief spending that passed with bipartisan support and because of spending required by safety-net programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, that were created by previous presidents.

For folks at home does anybody really think the tax code is fair?

Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2 trillion in tax breaks?

I sure don’t. I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make it fair!

Under my plan nobody earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes.

Nobody. Not one penny.

In fact the Child Tax Credit I passed during the pandemic cut taxes for millions of working families and cut child poverty in HALF.

Restore the Child Tax Credit because no child should go hungry in this country!

The way to make the tax code fair is to make big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their share.

In 2020 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 billion in profits and paid zero in federal income taxes.

Not any more!

Thanks to the law I wrote and signed big companies now have to pay a minimum of 15%.

Biden’s “not anymore” claim is false, an exaggeration. While his 15% corporate minimum tax will reduce the number of big companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, it’s not true that “not anymore” will any big company — such as the ones on the list of 55 companies Biden mentioned — ever do so. That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

But that’s still less than working people pay in federal taxes.

It’s time to raise the corporate minimum tax to at least 21% so every big corporation finally begins to pay their fair share.

I also want to end the tax breaks for Big Pharma, Big Oil, private jets, and massive executive pay!

End it now!

There are 1,000 billionaires in America.

You know what the average federal tax rate for these billionaires is? 8.2 percent!

That’s far less than the vast majority of Americans pay.

No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, a nurse!

That’s why I’ve proposed a minimum tax of 25% for billionaires. Just 25%.

That would raise $500 Billion over the next 10 years.

Imagine what that could do for America. Imagine a future with affordable child care so millions of families can get the care they need and still go to work and help grow the economy.

Imagine a future with paid leave because no one should have to choose between working and taking care of yourself or a sick family member.

Imagine a future with home care and elder care so seniors and people living with disabilities can stay in their homes and family caregivers get paid what they deserve!

Tonight, let’s all agree once again to stand up for seniors!

Many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security on the chopping block.

If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age I will stop them!

Working people who built this country pay more into Social Security than millionaires and billionaires do. It’s not fair.

We have two ways to go on Social Security.

Republicans will cut Social Security and give more tax cuts to the wealthy.

Biden went off script here, engaging in a back-and-forth with Republicans on the House floor. Republicans jeered when he said they would cut Social Security . Many in their party say they will do no such thing.

“That’s the proposal — oh no? You guys don’t want another $2 trillion tax cut?” Biden said. “I kind of thought that’s what your plan was. Well, that's good to hear.”

I will protect and strengthen Social Security and make the wealthy pay their fair share!

Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits charging you more and more for less and less.

That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging or deceptive pricing from food to health care to housing.

In fact, snack companies think you won’t notice when they charge you just as much for the same size bag but with fewer chips in it.

Pass Senator Bob Casey’s bill to put a stop to shrinkflation !

While a lot of people seem to blame Biden for inflation and cite government spending, he’d like to blame corporations.

CNN’s Bryan Mena notes while there is evidence that companies have reduced the size of their products, according to Labor Department data, the reason is usually to cut costs during times of high inflation and is a widespread practice. Companies do this because consumers are more sensitive to price changes than the size of a product becoming smaller, according to research. “Shrinkflation” due to corporate greed is a hasty generalization.

I’m also getting rid of junk fees those hidden fees added at the end of your bills without your knowledge. My administration just announced we’re cutting credit card late fees from $32 to just $8.

The banks and credit card companies don’t like it.

I’m saving American families $20 billion a year with all of the junk fees I’m eliminating .

And I’m not stopping there.

If this sounded familiar, that’s because he talked about junk fees at last year’s State of the Union .

My Administration has proposed rules to make cable, travel, utilities and online ticket sellers tell you the total price upfront so there are no surprises.

It matters.

This was his chance to say the words “ Taylor Swift .” Fail.

And so does this.

In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators.

The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country .

He went off script again here. CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez notes that Biden baited Republicans with praise for the bipartisan Senate border bill .

“Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said it was a good bill. I’ll be darned. That’s amazing,” Biden said, as some Republicans grumbled in the crowd.

Republican Sen. James Lankford, a key negotiator on the bipartisan border deal who faced pushback from members of his own party, stared ahead, appearing to nod as Biden ticked through elements of the bill -- including how it would shore up federal resources and include an emergency authority that would allow him to shut down the border if certain triggers are met.

That bipartisan deal would hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers.

100 more immigration judges to help tackle a backload of 2 million cases.

4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in 6 months instead of 6 years.

100 more high-tech drug detection machines to significantly increase the ability to screen and stop vehicles from smuggling fentanyl into America.

This bill would save lives and bring order to the border.

It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.

The Border Patrol Union endorsed the bill.

The Chamber of Commerce endorsed the bill.

I believe that given the opportunity a majority of the House and Senate would endorse it as well.

But unfortunately, politics have derailed it so far.

I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill . He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.

It’s not about him or me.

Biden was interrupted here by GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who shouted at him about Laken Riley , the Georgia nursing student killed, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant. It’s an incident that has driven claims that migrants are criminals.

Biden picked up a pin that read “Say Her Name Laken Riley” and directly addressed the parents of Laken Riley, who had been invited to the speech by a congressman.

“Lincoln (sic) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That's right. But how many of the thousands of people being killed by illegals - to her parents, I say my heart goes out to you. Having lost children myself, I understand.”

It is interesting that Biden also referred to the undocumented migrant who is suspected in Riley’s killing with the derogatory term “illegal.” Read more.

It’d be a winner for America!

My Republican friends you owe it to the American people to get this bill done.

We need to act.

And if my predecessor is watching instead of playing politics and pressuring members of Congress to block this bill, join me in telling Congress to pass it!

We can do it together. But here’s what I will not do.

I will not demonize immigrants saying they “poison the blood of our country” as he said in his own words.

I will not separate families.

I will not ban people from America because of their faith.

Trump’s rhetoric on immigration has gotten increasingly heated. He frequently refers to people crossing the border as “murderers,” for instance. The “poisoning the blood” line Trump uses is similar to a passage in Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf.”

Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more.

Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans.

We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new.

Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth.

Some came freely.

Some chained by force.

Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland.

Some to flee persecution.

Some to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America.

That’s America, where we all come from somewhere, but we are all Americans.

We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.

Send me the border bill now!

Biden both eloquently talked about how the US is a nation of immigrants and also called on Congress to give him the power to close the border. His shift on the issue has been remarkable.

A transformational moment in our history happened 59 years ago today in Selma, Alabama.

Hundreds of foot soldiers for justice marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a Grand Dragon of the KKK, to claim their fundamental right to vote.

They were beaten bloodied and left for dead.

Our late friend and former colleague John Lewis was at the march.

We miss him.

Joining us tonight are other marchers who were there including Betty May Fikes, known as the "Voice of Selma”.

A daughter of gospel singers and preachers, she sang songs of prayer and protest on that Bloody Sunday,

to help shake the nation’s conscience. Five months later, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.

But 59 years later, there are forces taking us back in time.

Voter suppression. Election subversion. Unlimited dark money. Extreme gerrymandering.

John Lewis was a great friend to many of us here. But if you truly want to honor him and all the heroes who marched with him, then it’s time for more than just talk.

Pass and send me the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act!

If Democrats could not pass a new national voting standard when they controlled the House during Biden’s first two years in office, they will not be able to do it now, while Republicans control the chamber.

And stop denying another core value of America our diversity across American life.

Banning books.

It’s wrong!

Instead of erasing history, let’s make history!

I want to protect other fundamental rights!

Pass the Equality Act, and my message to transgender Americans: I have your back!

Pass the PRO Act for workers rights! And raise the federal minimum wage because every worker has the right to earn a decent living!

We are also making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it.

I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.

I am cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030.

The climate crisis may be an existential problem for humanity, but it did not rate mention in the first half of this State of the Union address. That said, Biden, with help from the Inflation Reduction Act, has done more than previous presidents to address the issue. But n ot enough to satisfy activists . Trump, meanwhile, likes to poke fun at climate efforts.

Creating tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs, like the IBEW workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.

Conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.

Taking historic action on environmental justice for fence-line communities smothered by the legacy of pollution.

And patterned after the Peace Corps and Ameri Corps, I’ve launched a Climate Corps to put 20,000 young people to work at the forefront of our clean energy future.

I’ll triple that number this decade.

All Americans deserve the freedom to be safe, and America is safer today than when I took office.

The year before I took office, murders went up 30% nationwide the biggest increase in history.

That was then.

Now, through my American Rescue Plan, which every Republican voted against, I’ve made the largest investment in public safety ever.

Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.

This is true, at least based on preliminary 2023 data that should be treated with caution. The preliminary 2023 data published by the FBI, running through the third quarter of the year, showed that violent crime was down 8.2% compared to the same period in 2022 — a decline that would be “historically large” for a year, crime data expert Jeff Asher wrote in a December article. The data generally confirms Biden’s description of violent crime falling across the nation, though some communities have seen increases. Asher wrote: “The quarterly data shows violent crime down in big cities, small cities, suburban counties, and rural counties, pretty much across the board.”

But we have more to do.

Help cities and towns invest in more community police officers, more mental health workers, and more community violence intervention.

Give communities the tools to crack down on gun crime, retail crime, and carjacking.

Keep building public trust, as I’ve been doing by taking executive action on police reform, and calling for it to be the law of the land, directing my Cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana, and expunging thousands of convictions for mere possession , because no one should be jailed for using or possessing marijuana!

Biden’s mass clemency for federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, announced before the m idterm elections in 2022 , was seen as a first step to national decriminalization.

To take on crimes of domestic violence, I am ramping up federal enforcement of the Violence Against Women Act, that I proudly wrote, so we can finally end the scourge of violence against women in America!

And there’s another kind of violence I want to stop.

With us tonight is Jasmine, whose 9-year-old sister Jackie was murdered with 21 classmates and teachers at her elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Soon after it happened, Jill and I went to Uvalde and spent hours with the families.

We heard their message, and so should everyone in this chamber do something.

I did do something by establishing the first-ever Office of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House that Vice President Harris is leading.

Meanwhile, my predecessor told the NRA he’s proud he did nothing on guns when he was President.

After another school shooting in Iowa he said we should just “get over it.”

I say we must stop it.

I’m proud we beat the NRA when I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years!

Now we must beat the NRA again!

I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines!

Pass universal background checks!

Again, none of this will happen without a major change in Congress.

None of this violates the Second Amendment or vilifies responsible gun owners.

As we manage challenges at home, we’re also managing crises abroad including in the Middle East.

I know the last five months have been gut-wrenching for so many people, for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and so many here in America.

This crisis began on October 7th with a massacre by the terrorist group Hamas.

1,200 innocent people women and girls men and boys slaughtered, many enduring sexual violence.

The deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

250 hostages taken.

Here in the chamber tonight are American families whose loved ones are still being held by Hamas.

I pledge to all the families that we will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.

We will also work around the clock to bring home Evan and Paul, Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.

Israel has a right to go after Hamas.

This is an incredibly important issue for Biden. Nothing else splits Democrats at the moment like Israel. Biden is a self-proclaimed Zionist. While he has increasingly called out the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s not nearly enough to satisfy the large portion of Democrats who are motivated by the plight of Palestinians who are stuck and starving in Gaza .

Hamas could end this conflict today by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.

Israel has an added burden because Hamas hides and operates among the civilian population. But Israel also has a fundamental responsibility to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.

This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Most of whom are not Hamas.

Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children.

Girls and boys also orphaned.

Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displaced.

Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin.

Families without food, water, medicine.

It’s heartbreaking.

We’ve been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks.

It is notable that while Biden said the US is working for an immediate ceasefire, he did not say permanent. Israel wants the ability to revisit any ceasefire after six weeks.

Biden’s optimism for a ceasefire seems to have cooled. He had previously predicted there would be a ceasefire by this past Monday. In the meantime, the world was horrified by the killing of more than 100 Palestinians trying to get food from an Israeli aid truck.

As Biden spoke, House Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib — the sole Palestinian American member of Congress — held a sign reading “Ceasefire Now.”

It would get the hostages home, ease the intolerable humanitarian crisis, and build toward something more enduring.

The United States has been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.

No U.S. boots will be on the ground.

This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.

This pier sounds like an incredible engineering feat. It’s not clear how soon it can be achieved. Also, this was the second time in the speech where Biden pledged that US troops will not get involved in an international conflict.

But Israel must also do its part.

Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the cross fire.

To the leadership of Israel I say this.

Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.

Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.

As we look to the future, the only real solution is a two-state solution.

I say this as a lifelong supporter of Israel and the only American president to visit Israel in wartime.

This is a public warning to Israel and an insistence that Israel must allow a Palestinian state. But it is not particularly stern considering the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died .

There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and democracy.

There is no other path that guarantees Palestinians can live with peace and dignity.

There is no other path that guarantees peace between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.

Creating stability in the Middle East also means containing the threat posed by Iran.

That’s why I built a coalition of more than a dozen countries to defend international shipping and freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

I’ve ordered strikes to degrade Houthi capabilities and defend U.S. Forces in the region.

As Commander in Chief, I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and military personnel.

The strikes have not so far had a deterrent effect.

For years, all I’ve heard from my Republican friends and so many others is China’s on the rise and America is falling behind.

They’ve got it backward.

America is rising.

We have the best economy in the world.

Since I’ve come to office, our GDP is up.

He is welcome to say this. Most Americans do not currently seem to believe it.

And our trade deficit with China is down to the lowest point in over a decade.

We’re standing up against China’s unfair economic practices.

And standing up for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

I’ve revitalized our partnerships and alliances in the Pacific.

I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China’s weapons.

Frankly for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my predecessor to do that.

We want competition with China, but not conflict.

And we’re in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st Century against China or anyone else for that matter.

Here at home I’ve signed over 400 bipartisan bills.

But there’s more to do to pass my Unity Agenda.

Strengthen penalties on fentanyl trafficking.

Pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect our children online.

CNN's Brian Fung notes that this call for a bill to regulate social media platforms is the third time in as many years that Biden has criticized the social media industry in his State of the Union speech.

Notably, however, Biden’s call specifically highlighted legislation to protect children’s privacy — not any of the myriad bills circulating that would impose targeted restrictions on social media companies .

The House could vote soon on a separate bill meant to pressure TikTok’s China-linked parent company to spin off the app used by 170 million Americans.

Harness the promise of A.I. and protect us from its peril.

Ban A.I. voice impersonation and more!

Fung also notes that Biden knows personally about this. A fake robocall campaign cloned his voice and targeted thousands of New Hampshire primary voters in what authorities have described as an AI-enabled election meddling attempt.

But US lawmakers have struggled to advance any meaningful AI legislation in the roughly one year since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a rare and personal effort to put AI at the top of the congressional agenda.

Even as disinformation experts warn of AI’s threats to elections and public discourse, few expect Congress to pass legislation reining in the AI industry during a divisive election year.

And keep our one truly sacred obligation, to train and equip those we send into harm’s way and care for them and their families when they come home, and when they don’t.

That’s why I signed the PACT Act, one of the most significant laws ever, helping millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins and who now are battling more than 100 cancers.

Many of them didn’t come home.

We owe them and their families.

And we owe it to ourselves to keep supporting our new health research agency called ARPA-H and remind us that we can do big things like end cancer as we know it!

Let me close with this.

I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while.

And when you get to my age certain things become clearer than ever before.

I know the American story.

Again and again I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation.

Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.

My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy.

A future based on the core values that have defined America.

Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality.

To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.

Now some other people my age see a different story.

An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution.

That’s not me.

Biden put forward an energetic persona in this speech. And he pointed out that Trump is his age. Actually, Trump is four years younger.

The name “Trump” did not appear in the speech. But he was clearly top of mind. Trump has promised to be his supporters’ “retribution” and still does not admit to losing the 2020 election. Biden’s burden will be to convince voters who are wavering that trying to upend democracy should disqualify Trump.

I was born amid World War II when America stood for freedom in the world.

I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont, Delaware among working people who built this country.

I watched in horror as two of my heroes, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated and their legacies inspired me to pursue a career in service.

A public defender, county councilman, elected United States Senator at 29, then Vice President, to our first Black President, now President, with our first woman Vice President.

In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old.

Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures.

Our North Star.

The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.

And I won’t walk away from it now.

My fellow Americans the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are it’s how old our ideas are?

Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas.

But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.

To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be.

Tonight you’ve heard mine.

I see a future where we defend democracy not diminish it.

I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect other freedoms not take them away.

I see a future where the middle class finally has a fair shot and the wealthy finally have to pay their fair share in taxes.

I see a future where we save the planet from the climate crisis and our country from gun violence.

Above all, I see a future for all Americans!

I see a country for all Americans!

And I will always be a president for all Americans!

Because I believe in America!

I believe in you the American people.

You’re the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about our future!

The speech ended with many more exclamations and a vigorous Biden pumping people up.

So let’s build that future together!

Let’s remember who we are!

We are the United States of America.

There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!

May God bless you all.

May God protect our troops.

IMAGES

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COMMENTS

  1. How to Focus a Wandering Mind

    The study, published in the journal NeuroImage, found that, indeed, during periods of mind-wandering, regions of the brain's default mode network were activated. Then when participants became aware of this mind-wandering, brain regions related to the detection of salient or relevant events came online. After that, areas of the executive brain ...

  2. How do I stop my mind from wandering while studying?

    8. Take notes, mindmap or doodle. Another good method for stopping your mind from wandering off is taking notes. Taking notes, which summarize what you study, will force you to pay more attention to what you are studying (since you cannot take proper notes if you do not pay attention).

  3. 7 ways to tame your wandering mind and achieve better focus

    De-stress. You might think that an adrenaline boost would focus the mind, but stress actually stimulates the release of hormones, including noradrenaline, which bind to receptors in the cognitive ...

  4. Life Skills Link to Mind Wandering Among University Students: An

    The occurrence of mind wandering (MW) leads to lower performance on memory tasks related to lecture contents in educational settings, which has been recognized as problematic. To date, several dispositional factors have been reported as being associated with MW. This study investigated whether another psychological component—life skills—is ...

  5. How to tame a wandering mind: 12 ways to refocus your mind

    Physical activity, like a short walk or shaking out your arms and legs in between meetings, can interrupt the cycle of mind wandering and re-energize your focus. 💙 If the mind is wandering, try bringing it back to the present moment through movement. Check out Mindful Movement with Mel Mah. 7. Use grounding exercises.

  6. How to Tame Your Wandering Mind

    Find counselling to help with ADHD. The first step to mastering mind-wandering is to plan time for it. Use a schedule maker and block off time in your day to let your thoughts flow freely. You ...

  7. Let It Go: The Benefits of Mind Wandering

    This led to more unique ideas about how to use the objects. It is incredibly important that we be able to focus and ignore distracting thoughts when we need to. However, this research highlights the importance of being able to unfocus, to let our mind wander, when we need to as well. To let go of some of the tight control we strive to have over ...

  8. The science of a wandering mind

    The science of a wandering mind. More than just a distraction, mind-wandering (and its cousin, daydreaming) may help us prepare for the future. When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and ...

  9. How Mind-Wandering May Be Good For You

    In fact, they add, mind-wandering may "serve as a foundation for creative inspiration.". As a more recent study found, mind-wandering improved people's creativity above and beyond the positive effects of their reading ability or fluid intelligence, the general ability to solve problems or puzzles. Mind-wandering seems to involve the ...

  10. Frontiers

    There is broad agreement among researchers to view mind wandering as an obstacle to learning because it draws attention away from learning tasks. Accordingly, empirical findings revealed negative correlations between the frequency of mind wandering during learning and various kinds of learning outcomes (e.g., text retention). However, a few studies have indicated positive effects of mind ...

  11. How to Let Your Mind Wander

    Research suggests that people who do more of that type of mind-wandering are happier. Facilitate unconstrained thinking by engaging in an easy, repetitive activity like walking; avoid it during ...

  12. Brain science suggests "mind wandering" can help manage anxiety

    The wandering mind can get stuck on negative thoughts and start to "react" to a perceived threat that feels very real-and makes you feel anxious. ... a recent study pointed out that there is an entirely different way of thinking about anxiety that may be even more helpful. According to psychologist Kalina Christoff and her colleagues ...

  13. Mind wandering and education: from the classroom to online learning

    The incidence of mind wandering during videorecorded lectures was notably high—at least as high as the rate of mind wandering during classroom lectures reported by Lindquist and McLean (2011). One possible contributing factor is the 1-h length of the videorecorded lectures used by Risko et al. (2012). Some advocates of online education, such ...

  14. Distressed to Distracted: Examining Undergraduate Learning and Stress

    In Study 1, we measured COVID-19 distress in an undergraduate sample and report how distress threatened learning by increasing mind wandering. In Study 2, we replicate and extend findings from Study 1 by probing what students were distressed about and testing stress regulation strategies as one way to mitigate the effects of distress on mind ...

  15. Mind Wandering: Tips for staying focused while studying STUWO

    Therefore, you need a quick and powerful defence. Create your own mental coping mechanisms. Look for a motivating and positive affirmation that you can use against mind wandering. This affirmation will bring you back to your task. 6. Breaks. If your brain is tired and exhausted, it's harder to focus on your task.

  16. Where do our minds wander? Brain waves can point the way

    Irving worked with Alison Gopnik, a UC Berkeley developmental psychologist and philosophy scholar who is also a co-author of the study. "Babies and young children's minds seem to wander constantly, and so we wondered what functions that might serve," Gopnik said. "Our paper suggests mind-wandering is as much a positive feature of ...

  17. Mind wandering and stress: When you don't like the present moment

    Neutral mind wandering may also be indicative of more time spent future planning, as many self-generated thoughts during mind wandering are future oriented (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015), and mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder may need to do more planning to coordinate caregiving activities compared to control mothers ...

  18. Why Do Our Minds Wander?

    A scientist says mind-wandering or daydreaming help prepare us for the future. Tim Vernimmen, Scientists are beginning to understand when and why minds start to wander. Knowable Magazine. When ...

  19. New Science: Why Our Brains Spend 50% Of The Time Mind-Wandering

    The debate about mind-wandering. On the depressing side of the debate, Matt Killingsworth's Track Your Happiness project concluded that mind-wandering makes us unhappy. His data showed that our ...

  20. Concentrate! How to tame a wandering mind

    In one tricky attention test used by researchers, the idea is to avoid clicking this face "Betty" among a series of male faces. I later find out that my score on this test is off-the-scale bad. My ...

  21. 3 Ways to Stop Your Mind from Wandering

    Download Article. 1. Slow down your breathing to occupy your mind. Concentrate your thoughts on controlling your breathing to bring your mind into sync with your body in the present moment. [1] Breathe in slowly while you count to 4-7, then breathe out slowly and count to 4-7 again, for example.

  22. The role of smartphones in college students' mind-wandering during

    The current study propounds that college students are more likely to experience smartphone-related mind-wandering due to their habitual use of smartphones during lectures or whilst studying. Elhai, Levine, O'Brien, and Armour (2018) found an inverse association between smartphone addiction and mindfulness, which is the opposite to mind-wandering.

  23. How to stop your mind from wandering during studying?

    You need to practice. Even studying. To help your mind to get into the right state you should create a routine that helps you with this. Most often the reason for the mind to wander is that it is not stimulated. -> If you see studying as an annoying thing you have to do it will not get better. You need to find joy in your studies.

  24. How speechwriters delve into a president's mind: Lots of listening

    How speechwriters delve into a president's mind: Lots of listening, studying and becoming a mirror. FILE - President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. ... He has thrived the most during small chance encounters with Americans, where interactions ...

  25. Uber Study on Instagram: "Staying focused can be a challenge, but here

    2 likes, 0 comments - uberstudy on February 20, 2024: "Staying focused can be a challenge, but here are some tips to help you stay on track: 1. Create ..."

  26. Fasting at Ramadan while keeping health in mind

    Many people will fit in a third meal at night, he said, "so their caloric intake for the day is about the same, if not more, than during a normal day. And this is really problematic for many patients." What non-Muslims should know. Just being aware of what Muslims go through during Ramadan can go a long way, Basir said. Small gestures help.

  27. Biden's State of the Union address, annotated and fact-checked

    Biden's numbers are correct; the national debt rose from about $19.9 trillion to about $27.8 trillion during Trump's tenure, an increase of about 39% and more than in any other four-year ...