Have you found your mind wandering during lockdown?
Credit: Rick Gomez/ Corbis
As the rules keep changing, and the news grows more jaw-dropping, our ability to remain focused on daily activities – on almost anything else – feels more and more elusive.
In some ways that’s not surprising. In 2010 Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard developed a phone app that asked 2,250 users to record what they were thinking and feeling, as well as what they were doing, at random times throughout the day. Results revealed mind wandering occurred 46.9 per cent of the time – then under “ordinary” circumstances. Now, when we’re facing a constant threat and changing rules, no doubt that figure is much higher.