Giving people a chance to let their minds wander can actually be quite good for productivity.
Mind wandering is actually how the brain tries to increase productivity, by making use of “spare cycles” to continually work on random problems even when it’s not the immediate focus. The fact that the wandering sometimes is unproductive is simply a natural side-effect of that. Basically, it’s a recognition that not everything we’re doing requires full attention — and perhaps “continuous partial attention” is how are brains were originally wired for some very good reasons.
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