The creative capacity of the human mind therefore appears to be immense and also immensely wasteful (to judge by the mundane nature of most mind-wandering). Nonetheless, this cognitive quirk is in fact an efficient, indeed brilliant, evolutionary strategy: a single useful thought can conceivably mean the difference between life and death; a single important insight can potentially precipitate a continuous cascade of technological innovation or scientific discovery.
I think this validates the innovative principle of “winning by quantity”. The brain generates millions of ‘wasteful’ ideas (daydreaming) to filter out the one insight that can change the world. For instance, this aligns with the logic of “taking small steps and making quick mistakes” in entrepreneurship. Since the metabolic cost of the brain is extremely low, we can seek those 1% breakthrough opportunities through a large number of low-cost attempts (daydreaming).