Jonathan Schooler was a daydreamer as a kid, as his first grade report card made evident. “It said something to the effect of ‘When I think of Jonathan, I imagine him at the end of the line, five feet behind everybody else, shoes untied, totally preoccupied, and completely content,” Schooler recounted. Schooler, who is now a professor of psychological and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara, says his teacher struggled with his mind-wandering – a situation he guesses isn’t unusual. In his case, it all worked out. “Apparently I won her over when she caught me crying at the end of Charlotte's Web ,” Schooler said. “She decided that whatever my peculiarities were, she was happy to live with them.” Schooler says more of us should be happy to not only tolerate, but embrace, mind-wandering. For one, it’s unavoidable. “The bottom line is that your mind is always doing something, it's always somewhere,” Schooler explained. “When you're not actively engaging it in something, it will find his own
Jonathan Schooler was a daydreamer as a kid, as his first grade report card made evident. “It said something to the effect of ‘When I think of Jonathan, I imagine him at the end of the line, five feet behind everybody else, shoes untied, totally pre