How can I stop my mind wandering during boring meetings? In the age of Zoom, it can be tricky to stay focused – or awake. We tuned in to a video call with our expert David Stawarczyk to find out how to keep our minds on track. Society © fizkes, Shutterstock As the meeting wears on, your eyes glaze over, giving off the impression of rapt attention, but disguising the reality: that your mind is on holiday somewhere else. A wandering mind is universal, which is why scientists such as Stawarczyk are focusing their attention on the phenomenon. “I must say that currently, we don’t really know why it happens,” remarks Stawarczyk, a neuropsychologist at Washington University in St Louis, United States. “But we do know that it's a natural phenomenon that everyone experiences, between 20 % and 50 % of the time.” Humans have a unique mental ability to think beyond the present, either remembering past events or imagining future scenarios. Mind-wandering is essentially this skill playing out, even when we don’t really want it to. “This is especially the case in low-demanding, monotonous and boring situations,” Stawarczyk says. Most research in this area focuses on online lectures. The sense of distance felt in these increases mind-wandering, so Zoom meetings likely suffer from a similar pattern. “Mind-wandering can be triggered by things in the environment,” Stawarczyk notes. If you’re on a video call you’re likely to be in your office – or worse, at home – where distractions lurk in every direction. So what can be done? Stawarczyk notes that sleep deprivation and stress can lead to mind-wandering; a good night’s sleep and meditation could help. He also advises that you try to finish the work you were doing before the meeting, rather than just pausing it. Avoid the temptation to multitask: people who do this tend to have more wandering minds than others. And take notes: this can help maintain focus on the meeting content, no matter how boring it is. How the workday impacts focus In the EU-funded CPA-EST project, Stawarczyk researched how the way we experience everyday events impacts mind-wandering. Specifically, the event structure of our days: how our mind separates the sequence of events we carry out from dawn to dusk. Brushing your teeth, say, or going to work. Stawarczyk’s team studied the transition periods between these events, which they term “event boundaries”. Their initial results suggest that directly after these boundaries, mind-wandering is reduced, and focus is sharper. This information could be used by those planning meetings, says Stawarczyk. If the meeting is only one person speaking with no slides, people will mind-wander a lot, he says. To avoid this, meetings could be dynamic, with slides, multiple speakers and interactive elements. “It's also good to include some breaks for people to replenish their attention, to be able to focus again,” he adds. A wandering mind can help creativity If you catch yourself mind-wandering, don’t get upset about it. Mind-wandering is mostly planning for events that will happen a short time later, rather than dwelling on the past or the imaginary. This can actually help us generate plans to deal with future scenarios better, adds Stawarczyk. It could be a source of creative ideas, and could even improve mood, either by thinking about positive things or putting negative things into perspective. Ultimately, Stawarczyk explains, it comes down to context. “People should learn to maximise the positive aspects of it when you're in a situation where you can mind-wander, and suppress it when you really shouldn’t.” Whether that includes your next Zoom meeting with your boss, well that’s up to you. Click here to find out more about Stawarczyk’s research: Is your mind wandering? Getting a handle on our inner autopilot Keywords CPA-EST
