Daydreaming at Work

Have you ever been caught daydreaming at work? Ever woke up with a blank expression… “huh!” in a soporific meeting when someone asked you a question? Walked into your boss’s cabin and forget why you entered? Listened to an entire conversation and then asked “who in the what now?” This can be embarrassing, but it is very normal.

Stress or boredom can be the culprit, as they somehow let your mind wander away. In my previous  job, I called Monday the ‘Stress-Day,’ as there was tons of work waiting for me on my table. The Big Boss man would walk in with a huge frown as if I was the one that caused Monday to happen upon everyone. Then I would notice the list of pending emails, documents and notes that I had ignored on TGIF!

With neck-deep in work and totally stressed out my mind would automatically deviate towards randomness. Next thing you would notice is that I’m either lost staring at the computer screen or lost in my own world while someone was giving me a brief. Sadly, I was lost daydreaming regular stuff and not something imaginative and sci-fi like Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes. Remember how Calvin kept transforming his teacher Miss Wormwood into an alien while daydreaming in his classroom, wish I could imagine something similar, transforming my boss into an alien emperor who had abducted me and was forcing me to work in kryptonite* and energon* fields.

Boredom, the other reason is equally bad. It usually allows the mind to imagine extreme things in-depth as there are no wake up calls by anyone reminding you of pending work. To stay away from boredom, take a break, read or do puzzles. These days’ social networking sites come in handy when you have nothing to do and can keep you entertained while you keep on learning new stuff. Lastly, were you actually reading this post or daydreaming?

Kenneth Peter — kennethpeter.com

*Kryptonite – fictional element in Superman
*Energon – primary source of power for Transformers
Comic strips taken from Google