Regardless of what they are doing, almost without exception, people’s minds wander — whether they mull over arguments with loved ones in the shower, think about weekend plans at work, or stumble on a creative new insight on their commute. Everyone knows they do it, but new research by Harvard researchers, which used the iPhone to periodically interrupt 2,250 people’s lives, found that about half the time, people’s minds are wandering. Most strikingly, they found that overall, people whose minds are wandering are less happy than those focused on the task at hand.“It’s paradoxical and ironic, in the sense that you would think if you leave the present, you’d go someplace better, but people seem to go to places that make them less happy,’’ said Matthew Killingsworth, a psychology graduate student at Harvard University and lead author of the work, published today in the journal Science. He said mind-wandering obviously has its benefits, but the research has given him some insight into his mood when he is feeling down.
