In his seminal 1921 essay, On Various Kinds of Thinking, Robinson referred to

these moments when our minds wander as reverie. For Robinson, reverie was so
important to our well being that it constituted the “chief index to our fundamental
character.”

“[Reverie] is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our ideas to
take their own course and this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our
spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our
loves and hates and resentments. There is nothing else so interesting to
ourselves as ourselves.”

Robinson argued that practical thoughts–those utilitarian considerations that we

face throughout the day (should I ride the subway today? Did I turn off the
stove?) – “are a more difficult and laborious thing than the reverie, and we resent
having to ‘make up our mind’ when we are tired, or absorbed in a congenial
reverie.” In other words, we feel most fulfilled when free to daydream. Of the four
types of thought Robinson identified–reverie, decision making, rationalizing, and
creative fact–reverie, he believed, is the most enjoyable.

Reverie allows for thinking that is just as long as it is wide, extending into the past,
present, and future, helping the thinker form new ideas and inspirations.

It’s easy to see why: the word literally means to be pleasantly lost in thought.
Reverie allows for thinking that is just as long as it is wide, extending into the
past, present, and future, helping the thinker form new ideas and inspirations.
Like in sleeping dreams, in reverie we build worlds of our minds creation and
forge paths that can and often do manifest themselves in the real world. Without
reveries, would an entrepreneur come up with her next world shaping idea? Or
an artist her next masterpiece?

What would Robinson say about reverie today? That it is more important now
than ever. With notifications, and text messages, emails and comments, and
thousands of other distractions constantly vying for our attention, it has never
been more difficult to make time for reverie. And that’s a shame. So much good
can come of losing oneself in thoughts and dreams from time to time. It gets us
excited for the future, helps us find answers to gnawing questions, and guides us
to important life decisions. In a world that often feels overwhelming and beyond
our control, we can all benefit from a little more of that.

About "On Various Kinds of Thinking"

In "On Various Kinds of Thinking" Robinson says, “The truest and most profound
observations on Intelligence have in the past been made by the poets and, in
recent times, by story-writers.” In his opinion, these artists had to hone to a fine
point their powers of observation so that they could accurately record or recreate
on the page life and the wide array of human emotions. Robinson also believed
that philosophers were ill-equipped for this task because they often displayed “…a
grotesque ignorance of man's life and have built up systems that are elaborate
and imposing, but quite unrelated to actual human affairs.” In other words, many
of them failed to grasp how the average person’s thought process worked and
separated the study of the mind from a study of emotional life, leaving them with
a perspective that did not reflect the real world.

He notes, "Formerly philosophers thought of mind as having to do exclusively

with conscious thought." The flaw in this, though, is that it doesn't take into
account what's happening in the unconscious mind or the inputs coming from the
body and outside the body that influence our thoughts and our emotions. 

"The insufficient elimination of the foul and decaying products of digestion may
plunge us into a deep melancholy, whereas a few whiffs of nitrous oxide may exalt
us to the seventh heaven of supernal knowledge and godlike complacency.
And vice versa, a sudden word or thought may cause our heart to jump, check our
breathing, or make our knees as water. There is a whole new literature growing
up which studies the effects of our bodily secretions and our muscular tensions
and their relation to our emotions and our thinking."

He also discusses all that people experience that has an impact on them but that
they forget—just as a consequence of the brain doing its daily job as a filter—and
those things that are so habitual that we don't even think about them after we've
become accustomed to them.

"We do not think enough about thinking," he writes, "and much of our confusion
is the result of current illusions in regard to it."

He continues:

"The first thing that we notice is that our thought moves with such incredible
rapidity that it is almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to
have a look at it. When we are offered a penny for our thoughts we always find
that we have recently had so many things in mind that we can easily make a
selection which will not compromise us too nakedly. On inspection, we shall find
that even if we are not downright ashamed of a great part of our spontaneous
thinking it is far too intimate, personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal
more than a small part of it. I believe this must be true of everyone. We do not, of
course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tell us very little and we
tell them very little....We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as
silly as our own, but they probably are."

"The Reverie'"
In the section on the reverie of the mind, Robinson discusses stream of
consciousness, which in his time had come under scrutiny in the academic world
of psychology by Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries. He again criticizes
philosophers for not taking this type of thinking into account as important: "This
is what makes [old philosophers'] speculations so unreal and often worthless." He
continues:

"[Reverie] is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our ideas to
take their own course and this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our
spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our
loves and hates and resentments. There is nothing else anything like so
interesting to ourselves as ourselves....[T]here can be no doubt that our reveries
form the chief index to our fundamental character. They are a reflection of our
nature as modified by often bidden and forgotten experiences."

He contrasts reverie with practical thought, such as making all those trivial
decisions that come to us constantly throughout our day, from writing a letter or
not writing it, deciding what to purchase, and taking the subway or a bus.
Decisions, he says, "are a more difficult and laborious thing than the reverie, and
we resent having to 'make up our mind' when we are tired, or absorbed in a
congenial reverie. Weighing a decision, it should be noted, does not necessarily
add anything to our knowledge, although we may, of course, seek further
information before making it."