Matthew A. Killingsworth* and Daniel T. Gilbert did an amazing study that brought us all a huge insight into our (wandering) minds. They write: "Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all." They explain that this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows people to learn, reason, and plan but, as the study shows, this comes with an emotional cost. This is what they found:

1) People’s minds wandered frequently, regardless of what they were doing. Mind wandering occurred in 46.9% of the samples and in at least 30% of the samples taken during every activity except making love.

2) People were less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not. This was true during all activities, including the least enjoyable. Although people’s minds were more likely to wander to pleasant topics (42.5% of samples) than to unpleasant topics

(26.5% of samples) or neutral topics (31% of samples), people were no happier when thinking about pleasant topics than about their current activity and were considerably unhappier when thinking about neutral topics or unpleasant topics than about their current activity.

3) What people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than was what they

were doing.

In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.