daydreaming/staring off into space

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Does anyone else do this? I find I do this a lot when I'm at work, or in the shower, or sometimes even just lying in bed. I'll stare off into space, daydream, talk to myself, and just get really lost in thought, to the point that I lose track of time and almost completely forget about what I'm supposed to be doing in the "real" world. It becomes kind of a hassle for me when I'm trying to get ready in the morning, or get things done at work. I also remember that this was commonly cited as an issue for me back when I went to school.

I don't talk to myself, but I stare into space, daydream and get lost in thought a lot

all the time for daydreaming. almost to the point of going catatonic. i'm always having to be snapped out of it. other times it's deep thinking and at those times i'll be mumbling to myself and sometimes making hand gestures like i'm rearranging invisible objects.

Totally. Have always done this.

I have always done this too as long as I can remember. And I do all of the the above and very often.

I do it too but when I "click back" I try to remember where my mind was - sometimes it's useful to know. It's not necessarily a pointless experience.

But it's so vivid...

I do this all the time. For me though, it's mostly that I completely space out. There are a fair amount of times when it's not because I get distracted or I'm thinking about something else. My brain just completely zones out for a couple of seconds. But there are also times that feel sort of the same for my brain, but instead of zoning out into nothing, I find myself thinking about other random unrelated things. Or sometimes I zone out/get observed in an activity that I lose all track of time and I become almost unaware of what's going on around me.

It makes me late for things. I miss stuff that the professor says in lecture, or what someone is saying in a conversation. It can also make it take longer for me to do things like shower, eat breakfast, study, and get dressed because I zone out.

Yeah. That's why kids called me outer-space in grammar school.
It used to upset my mother and I don't know why. It seems pretty normal to me.

Yes all the time. People usually get upset with me for not paying attention to them or listening... I talk to myself too a lot of the time without realizing it. My Dad mentioned I did a few years ago and I never even knew.

I do it all the time as well. Sometimes nothing is on my mind. I just stare and get lost and I can't even say where I am. I find it refreshing however. Other times when I am working on solving a problem fixing or designing something, this is when I get my most creative work done. I think in images and when I get into this mode I can see the equipment running in my head as my code runs in the computer. I can't describe it any other way but have always done this. I know they teach flow charting and such, but I have always programmed on the fly and worked it out this way. I don't have adequate words to describe it either, sorry.

I can do this for hours literally. But it's not necessarily Autism, right? Lots of people do it. Like Clardoon said, it can be productive.

No it isn't necessarily Autism. But any NTs I have known only do this briefly. I can quite literally go into this mode for sometimes an hour or more. I come out of it and I can't tell you if I was thinking or what was going on. Just zoned out and then I notice a fair bit of time has elapsed. I don't know of anyone else personally this happens to at least for the amount of time it sometimes consumes. I think for most off the spectrum, it is a short lived kind of thing. Be interesting if anyone has ever done a study on it.

Like Imeldajace said, I think of randomly unrelated things very often.
Woz, I don't think that it is just a Spectrum thing but I know that I can literally, and I am not exaggerating, do it all day every day and into the night until I fall asleep. The times that I not talking to myself or daydreaming are few and far between. I zone pretty often too but not all the time. So I wonder if the all day every day being able to do it part and doing it so subconsciously is a Spectrum thing.

Yes I always did this. I don't think I was actually daydreaming about anything in particular tho (eventho I do that too sometimes), it was more like an unintentional meditative state (being "in the moon"), and when I was doing this at school (which I did quite often) the teachers would always try to catch me by asking me a question about whatever they were talking about, and I always could answer despite not having been actually paying attention (but I guess there was a side of me that was since I was able to answer their questions), that really annoyed them lol.

All the time! The weirdest thing is that when I snap out of it (or have been snapped out of it by someone else) I tend to not even know what I was thinking about. I think I spend most of my day living in my head; it's usually a more comfortable place to be.