Mind wandering during creative incubation predicts increases in creative performance in a writing task.
Scientific reports July 9, 2025 Colin McDaniel, Assal Habibi, Jonas Kaplan 2 citations
Taking a break from a creative writing task can improve subsequent performance if the mind wanders during that break, even though the type of break activity itself does not matter. In a preregistered experiment, participants wrote two short stories separated by a 10-minute incubation period involving a memory task, meditation, or no break. No single break type boosted creativity more than others. However, across all conditions, participants who reported more mind wandering during the break showed greater improvement in the semantic creativity of their second story—but only when they continued working on the same story prompt. This benefit was specific to mind wandering and not to other thoughts, such as deliberately thinking about the story, and held even after accounting for people's general tendency to mind wander.