You’re sitting at your desk, writing a short story. You remain focused but after several hours, you still can’t see how to end it. So you go for a run, allowing your thoughts to run with you. Instead of stumbling on a rock, you fall onto a solution.

Sometimes, problems do not have obvious answers. The “eureka” solution comes when we are not expecting it, when our mind wanders. But what causes our mind to wander? What about running lets us come up with an answer that sitting at our desk does not?

While we often think of mind wandering as detrimental, it can spark creativity. By better understanding the situations in which mind wandering emerges, we can better design our work and play not just to solve problems, but also to enjoy where our mind takes us.

My recent study, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, aims to explore what aspects of a task result in mind wandering.

It has long been thought that mind wandering follows a U-shaped curve in relation to task difficulty.

Let’s go back to the example of writing a short story to understand this. Though “optimally” difficult for you, making you stay on task, for me, it is too difficult. I switch off and my mind wanders more.

However, reading a book to........

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