Why a Wandering Mind Can Make You Unhappy

According to a Harvard study published in Science, wandering thoughts may be making us miserable.

Researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert tracked more than 2,000 people in 2010 using a smartphone app that pinged them at random times throughout the day.

Each time, participants reported what they were doing, how happy they felt, and whether their mind was focused or elsewhere.

Across 22 everyday activities, from working and resting to talking and exercising, people’s minds wandered 46.9 percent of the time.

Even during pleasant activities, such as relaxing or chatting, thoughts drifted elsewhere almost half the time.

“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,” it said.

That uniquely human tendency to dwell on things outside the present moment, the authors found, is often detrimental to emotional well-being.

The researchers concluded that “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

Nicholas Fabiano, who write about science on X, shared the study and noted that: “You’re not depressed, you just lost your quest.”