We spend almost half our time thinking about something other than what we are doing, according to the Track Your Happiness project which used an iPhone app to track people's happiness levels and to connect these with what they were doing at the time.
The researchers, at Harvard, concluded that mind-wandering lowers happiness levels. This seems to be because the mind wanders towards the negative as well as the positive even if you are doing something enjoyable.
For more, see this New York Times article or this summary on mindful.org
Mindfulness resources and courses: www.padraigomorain.com
