Hijacked
Bottom Line Up Front: Your mind is AWOL 30-50% of your workday. Not creating strategy. Not solving problems. Rehearsing confrontations that aren't coming, defending against criticism that doesn't exist, creating problems from nothing. Here’s what that means and how to change your mind.
Yesterday afternoon, 2:47pm. Major client strategy due tomorrow. I'm at my desk, supposedly working.
Except I'm not.
I'm having a full-blown conversation in my head with someone who questioned my approach... three weeks ago. I'm brilliant in this mental replay. Devastating comebacks. Perfect data points. Unshakeable logic.
Twenty-three minutes of my life. Gone. Defending myself to absolutely no one.
The kicker? That person probably forgot the conversation five minutes after it happened. But here I am, three weeks later, still fighting.
And I KNOW this stuff.
The Great Business Time Heist
Harvard researchers discovered that our minds wander 47% of our waking hours. Not 10% like we'd guess. Nearly half.
But here's what kills productivity: During "focused" work, our minds still drift 30-50% of the time.
The breakdown:
90% idle during waiting (for calls, meetings, responses)
75% during routine tasks (email, reports, admin)
65% in meetings we're "attending"
50% during "deep work" sessions
40% during one-on-ones
We call it thinking. We call it processing. We call it strategizing.
It's not. It's our Default Mode Network running antiquated programs—replaying past confrontations, rehearsing future disasters, defending against threats that don't exist.
Thanks to neuroscience we now understand the DNS is stealing half your productive capacity.
My Mind's Greatest Business Hits
After tracking my own idle mind for a month, here's what plays on repeat:
The "Deal That's Definitely Dead" Series Client hasn't responded in 48 hours? They hate the proposal. They've gone with a competitor. They're telling everyone we're overpriced. I write their rejection email in my head. Plan my comeback strategy. Rehearse the post-mortem. Reality? They were on vacation.
The "Everyone Knows I Screwed Up" Series Make one small mistake in a presentation. The mind immediately creates an entire narrative: Everyone hears it. They're questioning my competence. My reputation is damaged. The board is discussing it. Meanwhile, nobody noticed but me.
The "Confrontation That's Coming" Collection Someone disagrees with my strategy. My idle mind spends hours preparing for the battle that's surely coming. Building arguments. Gathering evidence. Preparing devastating responses. The confrontation never happens. They just had a different perspective.
Each mental movie feels real. Necessary. Even productive.
It's none of those things.
The Business Cost of Mental Time Travel
Here's what this actually costs:
Lost Hours: If our minds are AWOL 30% of an 8-hour day, that's 2.4 hours. Daily. That's 12 hours weekly. 600 hours annually. Fifteen weeks of work, gone.
Degraded Decisions: When our minds return from wandering, it doesn't return fresh. It returns exhausted from fighting imaginary battles, or from thinking about things that take its energy even if they are positive and happy.. The next three decisions suffer from that mental fatigue.
Missed Signals: While our minds rehearse what went wrong in 2019, we're missing what's happening in 2025. Market shifts. Team dynamics. Customer signals. Opportunities. All invisible because our attention is elsewhere.
Energy Drain: Every mental confrontation triggers the same stress response as a real one. Cortisol. Adrenaline. Fight-or-flight. We’re exhausting ourselves fighting ghosts.
The Pivot That Changed My Business Life
I discovered this pattern as I was studying our minds around the globe.
Driving to a crucial meeting—biggest opportunity of the year—my mind started its usual performance. Rehearsing failure. Creating objections. Building defenses against attacks that hadn't happened.
I caught myself crafting my "why we didn't get the deal" email. To my team. Before I'd even walked in the door.
That's when it hit me: I was creating failure in the parking garage.
So I tried something different. I laughed at the absurdity. Out loud. "Really? I'm writing the failure email already?"
Then I redirected. Consciously. Deliberately. I created a different movie: The client leaning forward, interested. The moment they say "this is exactly what we need." The energy in the room is shifting. The partnership began.
Not fake positivity. Just different programming. Highly sensory so my Unconscious mind could absorb it fully.
I walked in carrying that energy instead of defeat.
We closed the deal.
Making Idle Mind Your Strategic Partner
Now I use my business idle mind deliberately. When I catch myself ruminating during the workday, I redirect that energy toward what I want to create.
Here's the exact technique:
1. Catch it - Notice when your mind drifts. Waiting for a call? Mind wandering during routine tasks? Just notice.
2. Laugh at it - Seriously, laugh. That confrontation you're winning? That disaster you're preventing? It's a theater. Pure fiction.
3. Redirect it - Give your mind a better movie to play. Not fake positivity. Just redirect to what you actually want:
See the client nodding, engaged
Feel the energy when the deal closes
Hear them saying "this is exactly what we need"
Make it sensory, specific, real
The key isn't to stop your mind from wandering at work. You can't. That 30-50% idle time is going to happen whether you like it or not. Your Default Mode Network doesn't care that you're on the clock.
The key is to catch it and choose where it goes.
The Bottom Line
Our minds are hijacked 30-50% of our workday, and most of us don't even know it's happening. We think we're thinking. We're not. We're rehearsing old patterns, fighting imaginary battles, creating problems that don't exist.
Many leaders I work with discover the same thing: Half their "strategic thinking time" is actually their mind running reruns of old fears.
I still catch myself in those old patterns. And I pivot, Less and less often.
The question isn't whether your mind will wander. It will. The question is: Will you catch it?
Want to understand how your unconscious mind shapes your business reality? Download my Power of Attention ebook to discover the mechanism behind your success—the power that no one ever told you about, til now.