Another boring meeting? Don’t despair, daydreaming at work ‘will boost your …

  • Allowing the mind to wander in the workplace could prove beneficial, researchers claim
  • Daydreaming allows lateral thinking which could assist with problem solving, study shows

By
Jenny Hope

00:02 GMT, 9 January 2013


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00:03 GMT, 9 January 2013

Staring into space at work could help you become more creative, psychologists have claimed.

All those boring meetings might serve a useful purpose after all, they say, because they give the mind a chance to wander.

Two studies carried out by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire suggest daydreaming in work time could boost your brain’s creativity and even help the business.

Productive: A new study suggests daydreaming at work could boost the brain's creativity

Productive: A new study suggests daydreaming at work could boost the brain's creativity

Senior psychology lecturer Dr Sandi Mann said: ‘There is a stigma attached to boredom  – parents are always worried about their kids being bored – but it gives your mind a chance to wander.

‘Our work shows that daydreaming could be potentially beneficial in the workplace, as it allows lateral thinking that could assist with problem solving.’

In the studies, volunteers were given a deliberately boring task to complete. They were then given another task to measure their creativity – and fared better than those who had not performed the boring task beforehand.

Dr Mann, whose findings will be presented today at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology in Chester, said having a stimulating job that never allowed the brain any ‘down time’ could be counter-productive.

The two studies carried out by Dr Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the University of Central Lancashire explored the effects of ‘passive’ boredom, such as staring into space during meetings

In the first study 40 people were asked to carry out a boring task in which they copied numbers out of a telephone directory for 15 minutes.

They were then asked to complete another task which asked them to come up with different uses for a pair of polystyrene cups, giving them a chance to display their creativity.

Another dull meeting: Employees allowing their minds to wander at the office could actually prove beneficial in the workplace, a new study claims

Another dull meeting: Employees allowing their minds to wander at the office could actually prove beneficial in the workplace, a new study claims

It turned out that the 40 people who had first copied out the telephone numbers were more creative than a control group of 40 who had just been asked to come up with uses for the cups.

To see if daydreaming was a factor in this effect, a second boring task was introduced that allowed even more daydreaming than the boring writing task.

This second study saw 30 people copying out the numbers as before, but also included a second group of 30 reading rather than writing them.

Again the researchers found that the people in the control group were least creative, but the people who had just read the names were more creative than those who had to write them out.

This suggests that more passive boring activities, like reading or perhaps attending meetings, can lead to more creativity - whereas writing, by reducing the scope for daydreaming, reduces the creativity-enhancing effects of boredom.

Dr Mann said having a stimulating job that never allowed the brain any ‘down time’ could be counter productive.

Novelists such as Anthony Trollope worked for the Post Office while developing a literary career, and others in mundane jobs may get similar inspiration, said Dr Mann.

She said ‘Boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but perhaps we should be embracing it in order to enhance our creativity.

‘What we want to do next is to see what the practical implications of this finding are.

‘Do people who are bored at work become more creative in other areas of their work - or do they go home and write novels?’

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