Autopilot and the wandering mind

Welcome to my first audio post. This arose after a lecture I did for the MSc Students at City, University of London. I was there to share my experience of selection and assessment but I also shared my frustration about the relatively low profile of our discipline. There are lots of things going on in organisations at the moment and I've never seen an organisational or occupational psychologist sharing their views on the news or other media.

This is my response to my own challenge and also something outside of my comfort zone. In this post I spend just under 7 minutes and 30 seconds talking about autopilot and the wandering mind - finishing with an easy way to practice present moment awareness.

We can spend a lot of time on autopilot - research by 2 Harvard University Psychologist found that we can spend about 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes us unhappy (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010)

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” Killingsworth and Gilbert write. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

You can access the recording by clicking here.