HARMONYthoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their daily activi-
ties. The goal of the study was to learn more about the relationship
between a wandering mind and happiness. Over five thousand people
from eighty-three countries volunteered to be in the study.
The app contacted the participants at random times to request
data. It asked the volunteers, “How are you feeling right now?” “What
are you doing right now?” and “Are you thinking about something
other than what you’re currently doing?” People answered yes to the
last question about half the time, no matter what they were doing. All
activities produced the same amount of mind wandering except sex,
which was very good at keeping people’s attention. In every other situ-
ation, though, thinking about other things happened so frequently that
the researchers concluded that a wandering mind, what scientists call
stimulus-independent thought, was the brain’s default mode.
When they looked at happiness, they found that people were less
happy when their mind was wandering, and once again, it didn’t matter
what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV,
or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what
they were doing. They researchers concluded that “a human mind is a
wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”
But what if you don’t care about happiness? What if you’re so
dopaminergic that the only thing you care about is achievement? It
doesn’t matter, because no matter how brilliant, original, or creative
you are, your dopamine circuits aren’t going to achieve much without
the raw material provided by the H&N senses.
Michelangelo’s Pietà, depicting the Virgin Mary cradling her dead
son, powerfully communicates the abstract ideas of grief and accep-
tance. But it took a block of marble to realize the artist’s conception.
The sad beauty of Mary is an idealized depiction of femininity, but
Michelangelo could not have conceived this image had he not used his
eyes to study real women and his emotions to feel real sorrow in the
here and now.
By spending time in the present, we take in sensory information
about the reality we live in, allowing the dopamine system to use that
information to develop reward-maximizing plans. The impressions that