🌀 ADHD, daydreaming, and the genius of getting distracted

If ADHD is your superpower, mind-wandering might be your cape. And even if it’s not, it might still help you fly.

If, as our sister publication Upworthy reports, thinking is letting your mind walk, then new research shows that the ADHD habit of zoning out might be like letting your mind off the leash.

Two new studies presented by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (talk about a nightmare spelling bee word!) suggest that “deliberate mind wandering”, described as consciously allowing your thoughts to drift, can unlock next-level creativity. Though the research focused on people with ADHD traits, the underlying idea may benefit many of us.

But even the spontaneous kind (yes, the “oops I spaced out during that email” kind) has perks. Creative thinking, problem-solving, and emotional processing all get a boost when your brain is allowed to roam.

As Erik Barnes reports, the big idea isn’t to fight distraction but to schedule it. Daydreaming on purpose could be the creative hack your busy brain’s been waiting for.

Image of the day

🎧 Punk was peaking. Prog was dying. Then Genesis wrote a love song.

In 1978, Genesis had every reason to fail.

Punk had exploded. Prog was passé. Steve Hackett had quit. Peter Gabriel was long gone. And yet, in the middle of the wreckage, this band of former fantasy nerds accidentally stumbled into a tender, stripped-down love song that would become their first major crossover hit.

“Follow You Follow Me” wasn’t just a fluke hit. It was a quiet reinvention. It had no dragons, no twelve-minute keyboard solos, no weird time signatures. Just a warm groove, a vulnerable lyric, and a band learning how to whisper instead of roar.

Ryan Reed digs into how a fluke of a ballad, born from one flanged guitar riff and a ten-minute lyric sprint, helped Genesis pull off a musical plot twist no one saw coming.

💸 A $75K wedding write-off and other IRS fever dreams

Tax season may be months away, but the cringe is evergreen.

We’re as far from tax season as it gets, which means it’s the perfect time to laugh about it. Because let’s be honest: come April, nobody’s chuckling.

Most of us don’t enjoy doing taxes. If you’re self-employed, it’s a special kind of paperwork purgatory involving 9,000 forms, a shoebox of receipts, and existential dread about what counts as a deduction.

But while most of us try to stay in the IRS’s good graces, some folks are willing to play audit bingo, writing off everything from Ferrari purchases to strip club outings.

In this roundup by Ryan Reed, we get five of the weirdest, boldest, and occasionally successful deduction attempts, as told by real tax pros. Spoiler: someone tried to claim their entire $75,000 wedding as a business expense.

Tap to vote and we’ll share the results tomorrow.

And what did we learn?

Sour candy can help with anxiety? That’s what our reporting shared yesterday.

What do GOOD readers reach for when stress gets bad? Almost half of you reach for the chocolate, and I’m right there with you.

• Chocolate. All the chocolate. No regrets. (46.7%)

• Coffee. The counterintuitive classic. (6.7%)

• Wine. It counts. Don't @ me. (15.0%)

• Ice cream. Cold comfort in a bowl. (25.0%)

Reader TGiraffe had their own fix, and I plan to give it a try myself. Their go-to? “Gelato or sherbert with Aldis speculos cookies are my go-to!”

On this day in 1969, UCLA grad student Charley Kline (go Bruins!) tried to log into a computer about 350 miles away at SRI in Menlo Park. At 10:30 p.m., he managed to type L and O, the first two letters of “LOGIN”, before the connection crashed. About an hour later, after a quick reboot fixed things up (doesn’t it always?), a second attempt was made. With SRI’s Bill Duvall on the other end, they completed the login, and the internet’s story was properly underway.

Do you have something GOOD to share?

We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

💬 From the group text…

I kid you not, I took out a pencil and paper. It was like going back to 4th grade! Can you solve it?

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