You’re cooking, cleaning up some work data, walking down the street … and suddenly you realize that you’ve been ‘on automatic’ for a long time and not paying attention to your activity: “What was I cooking?” “Did I get the number right on the table?” “I passed the store I wanted to go into!”
You feel identified? Surely so, according to a study published in Science , we spend about 50% of our time ‘in the clouds’ or, what is the same, thinking about something that has nothing to do with our present activity: perhaps planning something for the future, remembering an event from the past or thinking about things that have never happened. The results of the work also revealed the great capacity of our mind to escape: we managed to do it up to once a minute.
To reach these conclusions, the Harvard University researchers developed an iPhone application that allowed them to track 2,250 adults aged around 34 years. Randomly, the app asked them from time to time to rate how they felt at that moment in a range from 0 to 100 (from very sad to very happy). Afterwards, I would ask them what activity they were doing at that moment and, finally, the participants had to answer the question: “Are you thinking about something different from the activity you are doing right now?”
The more disconnection, the more unhappiness
The authors found that, regardless of the activity performed, people were more unhappy when they were in a moment of mental disconnection , and that being focused on the task being performed is a good predictor of the state of satisfaction. Some results that confirm something that for many Eastern religions and philosophies is a dogma: the ability to concentrate on the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ is a guarantee of happiness, and our trips to the clouds have a significant emotional cost. Practices such as yoga, meditation and mindfulness are suitable for training the mind and working attention in the present moment .
As a curiosity, the data also revealed that the participants used to scatter their minds while performing any task , except when having sex. Perhaps this activity is another good exercise to help us maintain mindfulness in the present moment …
