The art of planning ahead: When do we prepare for the future and when is it effective?

The Wandering Mind

“…Still, self-generated thought may also have adaptive properties (Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013). Engaging in self-generated thought may provide an opportunity to make sense of our experiences (Christoff et al, 2011), to come up with creative ideas (Baird et al, 2012;Leszczynski et al, 2017;Tan et al, 2015), to remind ourselves of due intentions (Szarras & Niedźwieńska, 2011), to plan ahead for the future (Baird et al, 2011;Huijser et al, 2021), and possibly much more -self-generated thought clearly plays a key role in our daily functioning.…”

“…However, something we have not discussed is how individual differences in cognitive function may influence the adaptiveness of self-generated thinking. Trying to plan ahead when the present task demands working memory resources may result in interference, costs to the present task, and reduced benefits from planning (see e.g., Huijser et al, 2021;Levinson, Smallwood, & Davidson, 2012b;Pereg & Meiran, 2019;Smallwood, Brown, et al, 2011).…”