Don't think.

I was slumped on the train home the other day, probably reading another depressing copy of the Evening Standard, possibly for the second time, trying to wile away the many minutes of my evening commute, when I overheard something.

Teenage Girl:  "Mum...mum...mu...MUM!"

Mum:  "Oh sorry darling, I was deep in thought."

Teenage Girl:  "Well, don't think!"

It's probably one of the most innocuous, throwaway comments I've heard in a while but it got my head ticking. Why had the girl told her Mum 'not to think'? Was it just a hormonal statement intended to be antagonistic, or was there more to it? I decided to observe this girl, albeit surreptitiously, in order to get to the bottom of this Monday night mystery. Just call me Poirot.

The more I watched her, the more I realised she appeared to do very little 'thinking' at all. It's only an hour's train journey, but in that time she chattered, texted, tweeted, typed, talked and tittered pretty much non-stop. While this in itself is not particularly uncommon, the glittery BlackBerry rarely left her hand throughout it ALL. I wondered if it ever did.

Then it hit me. Was there a connection between the girl's 'don't think' statement and the phone glued to her? Maybe it's possible the more we kill our 'dead time' with distractions and disruptions (provided courtesy of our pocket pals), the less time we'll have for the luxury of getting lost in our own thoughts.

Some of the greatest thinkers of their times often removed themselves from any interruption for weeks on end; meditation to bolster genius is nothing new. Take, for example, the Prophet Mohammed (or Jesus, for balance), who both disappeared into the desert to 'think'; the revelations derived from their solitude today inspire and lead 1.6 billion and 1.2 billion people respectively.

Would they have been as productive if they had been interrupted every 2 minutes with a new friend request, a photo comment or a notification of a re-tweet?

A respected Diplomat once said "Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events: Small minds discuss people." And yet, while we now have a forum to discuss the ideas that could make us great minds, we perhaps do not afford the time to actively create them. In reality, our growing obsession with social media (coupled with our inability to switch off) has potentially driven us all, via a quick stop in category two (talking about events), firmly into this third category - discussing other people all day long. A somewhat depressing realisation...

So, the next time you reach for your smartphone to distract yourself, maybe instead you should spare a thought for your thoughts.