I appreciate your thoughts on the value of mind wandering and creative thinking. While I agree that many institutions necessarily focus on immediate outputs, I've seen interesting counterexamples - from companies institutionalizing 'free thinking time' to schools incorporating mindfulness and creative thinking exercises. There is always room for improvement, but perhaps the landscape is shifting to better recognize these different thinking modes. Or, more likely, it has always been recognized, capitalized on, and very highly appreciated when it happens to produce valuable output, probably in almost any organization not just those encouraging free thought.

What has been your specific experience with this in schools or workplaces?