A quick experiment. Before proceeding to the next paragraph, let your mind wander wherever it wants to go. Close your eyes for a few seconds, starting … now.<\/p>\n
And now, welcome back for the hypothesis of our experiment: Wherever your mind went \u201d\u201d the South Seas, your job, your lunch, your unpaid bills \u201d\u201d that daydreaming is not likely to make you as happy as focusing intensely on the rest of this column will.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure I believe this prediction, but I can assure you it is based on an enormous amount of daydreaming cataloged in the current issue of Science. Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.<\/p>\n