If you’re anything like me you probably spend a significant part of you life behind the steering wheel of a car – not necessarily driving. We spend hours parked outside schools waiting for children to finish that choir rehearsal or rugby practice. We sit waiting at “stop/go” diversions for long minutes.
Even on the highway we seem to spend long, wasted minutes waiting for the traffic to move forward the next five metres. Then it’s wait, wait, wait again.
It’s tempting to pull out the old cellphone and chat to Charley, who is stuck in a different traffic jam. The trouble is you’re liable to hear a tap on your window and look up into the face of your friendly neighbourhood traffic cop wanting to confiscate your cellphone.
“I haven’t moved for 10 minutes, officer.”
“Take out your SIM card and hand over that phone. I saw your car roll forward at least 10cm.”
So phoning is out if you’re a law-abiding citizen (which all Tavern readers are, of course).
You could sit and daydream. Nobody can confiscate a dream. In fact, you could be doing yourself a whole lot of good, according to a scientific paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The article claims that daydreaming can “help consolidate memories and improve future learning”. When you relax your mind and let it wander off, the brain engages “mechanisms” that boost learning and unlock suppressed creativity. So dream away.
I believe there’s an art to creative daydreaming. It must be disguised as intelligent thought. If you allow you jaw to go slack, your mouth to fall slightly open and your eyes to cross you’ll end up looking like such a gormless prat the motorist in the next car might honk his horn thinking you’re a danger to society. That could well get you releasing the clutch and shooting forward into the back of the car in front.
I have a friend who has perfected the art of daydreaming. I’ve seen her at official functions, seated next to a monstrous bore who is droning on and on about the relative merits of two obscure junior rugby players – and actually managing to look as though she is completely fascinated.
Afterward she hasn’t the faintest idea who he was or what he was waffling about. On the other hand he goes round saying what a delightful companion she was. “I’ve decided against the green material for the lounge cushions,” she tells me.
That’s black-belt daydreaming.
On the other hand I know an earnest guy who really listens to the rubbish spoken in company meetings. He’s so keen not to miss a word that he sits with his eyes closed to prevent outside distractions.
He’s regularly hauled up before the boss and reprimanded for sleeping in planning meetings.
One excellent office daydreaming trick is to sit “taking notes”. Either tap away quietly on your iPad or fill pages of your notebook as the bores drone on. You’ll end up with screens full of mindless daydream doodles and the boss will admire you diligence.
Last Laugh
Overheard in a bar: “That cabinet minister is an absolute moron.”
“Hey, hang on a moment there. The man has no formal education, has never done an honest day’s work in his whole life and yet he earns millions. That’s not a moron. That’s a genius!”