

Important work can be done while daydreaming - mpjolk
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/08/31/daydream_achiever/?page=full
Something for the first day of school: a retort to all of my teachers who adminished me to stop daydreaming....
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mixmax
When I embark upon a project, work or fun, I always spend a good deal of time
up front just daydreaming about it. Sometimes I do this for months before I
get anything down on paper. Over the years I have perfected the skill of
prototyping in my head - thinking through use cases, what-if scenarios etc.
The advantage of this is that it is much faster than anything else - but you
have to be able to juggle a lot of stuff in your head at once. The result of
this is that I can slowly build a complete mental model of the project in my
head so that when I actually start the project I know exactly what I want to
make, how I want to make it, what problems I will run into and how to solve
them.

Work-wise this is sometimes a problem because co-workers seem to think that I
often just sit and stare out the window, but when at last I get going they
can't believe how fast I get things done.

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swombat
Of course, great discoveries are often made while daydreaming. I bring to your
attention this quote from Nietzsche:

"Not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what
is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes
the truly original minds. _The first discoverer is ordinarily that wholly
common creature, devoid of spirit and addicted to fantasy - accident_."

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tjr
When I've done work on music arrangements, I've found the best approach is to
get away from instruments... go into a quiet room with a pad of paper, and
imagine in my mind what the music ought to sound like.

Trying to hack it out on a keyboard results only in what I already know how to
play, not what I really want it to sound like.

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nuclear_eclipse
Perhaps this is why the deaf Beethoven was one of our greatest composers,
because he was not limited by his own hearing to that which was already
possible and achievable?

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bradpatel
Daydreaming is a part of just creative thinking, using your right side of the
brain. You can say its even a form of meditation,

