The Art of Daydreaming

I came across this article on Medium sometime back. It talks about
“7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Intelligence Every Day”.

Apart from the seven ways described in the article, I believe I have one more way to improve our intelligence every day and that is “Daydreaming”. Yes, you read it right!

I will explain, how can we use Daydreaming as a technique to improve our intelligence but first, let’s read the definition of Daydreaming.

Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.

Notice the words “visionary fantasy”, “hopes”, and “ambitions”.

Daydreaming actually helps you visualise your ambition i.e. What it may look like when you reach there? What all challenges you may face in achieving it? What will you do when you face those challenges? You can actually start architecting your ambition (your startup’s goal?) step-by-step from there.

I believe we can consciously make an effort to daydream, which can take us closer to our ambition. This is how I do it (and I am sure many of you already do it but just don’t know it!).

I generally start thinking of various instances, which may happen in my daily life, in my startup, in my product, and how will I handle them. This can happen anytime. When I am driving to work, when I am on my desk, or even when I am talking to someone (embarrassing!). Obviously they all are imaginary situations (fantasies). They may never happen but sometimes in real life, I land up in the exact (or similar) situation, which I had daydreamed and now in reality I am well equipped to handle it!

Sometimes this makes me look much smarter than I am! Also, it takes me one step closer to my ambition as I successfully overcame a situation to reach there.

So I think when smart people say that you should dream, they also mean “You should daydream!”.

Wait, before you start daydreaming, read more about it in following articles.

The Science of Daydreams
Daydreaming makes you more creative
Benefits of Daydreaming