Only Idiots Can Concentrate in Meetings, Study Says

Picture yourself in a meeting. It's one of those Monday meetings that chew up time and produce nothing and you're admiring your ability to balance an empty coffee mug on your knee. On the edge of your consciousness you can hear Brenda from accounts receivable saying something boring and so you focus a little harder on the mug. You're very good at balancing mugs. Unusually good. Maybe there's a TV show you could be on. Maybe you could do two mugs at once, while eating a KitKat. Fucking hell. That'd be something. I'm too good for this meeting, you think to yourself. Just too goddamn good.

And the weird thing is you're actually right. Scientists have established that more creative, intelligent people are more likely to daydream in meetings. But there's a catch: Only the smartest people are able to dip in and out of conversations without missing a beat.

The study comes from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where researchers measured the brain patterns of 100 people while they lay in an MRI machine.

Participants were asked to stare at a fixed point inside the machine while researchers examined which parts of their brain were active while they thought nothing in particular. The idea was to map out how unrelated brain areas worked in unison in a resting state. Researchers then tested participants on their creative abilities, to compare with the MRI data. Participants were also asked whether they regularly daydreamed.

The result was that people who used the most diverse range of brain structures in rest, were generally the ones who scored higher on tests for creativity. On top of that, those same people were the ones who admitted to daydreaming the most.

"People tend to think of mind wandering as something that is bad. You try to pay attention and you can't. Our data are consistent with the idea that this isn't always true. Some people have more efficient brains," study co-author Professor Eric Schumacher explained to Science Daily. "Our findings remind me of the absent-minded professor—someone who's brilliant, but off in his or her own world, is sometimes oblivious to their own surroundings."

Both authors warn that the results are incomplete, as obviously there's a line between daydreaming because you already get what's being talked about, and daydreaming because you don't. "There are important individual differences to consider as well, such as a person's motivation or intent to stay focused on a particular task," the study's other co-author Christine Godwin said.