If you’re like me, then you’re a dreamer, day or night.

And if you’re even more like me, you have a go-to fantasy. Here’s mine: I’m walking in downtown Los Angeles with Danny DeVito on my arm. He asks me if I’m cold, I say yes, he offers me his jacket. A woman passing by attacks me, Danny remains calm. He holds out his hand, signaling her to stop. She becomes tearful. “Here, have my Dominos gift card,” the girl says as she drops the gift card to the pavement. The paparazzi flocks to the gift card. Luckily, I am very agile in my dreams, and I retrieve the gift card. I am victorious.

“You have five minutes left on the exam.”

I snap back into consciousness. I am greeted by the stark reality of my world. I have only answered the first three questions on my exam and still have 20 questions left — all because of DeVito.

Daydreaming is my favorite recreational activity, and, if I could pursue it professionally, I would. But I, like many others, typically daydream when I am performing a routine task such as taking an exam. However, it turns out that, although entertaining, daydreaming has a lasting negative impact. 

We spend 50 percent of our waking lives daydreaming.

According to a study by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, the majority of people spend as much time daydreaming as they spend thinking about the task at hand. The researchers also found that daydreamers, on average, are unhappier than non-daydreamers. When the research participants were daydreaming, only 56 percent of the participants reported feeling happy. But 66 percent of participants who were focused on the task at hand reported feeling happy.

Daydreaming has its benefits: It can boost your creativity, solidify your values and help build empathy. However, as you have probably heard many times, there can be too much of a good thing.

Daydreaming is a pleasant escape, especially when you’re performing a task that doesn’t take much effort or if you’re in bad company. But it’s easy to forget how it can impact our daily lives. 

While daydreaming is the most exciting part of an uneventful life, the amount of time you allow yourself to daydream should be limited, especially when the amount of time spent in reality pales in comparison. Instead of daydreaming, make your own life exciting. Maybe instead of daydreaming about walking arm-in-arm with a certain celebrity, you search for their fan mail address and write to them about how you’d like to walk arm-in-arm with that celebrity. 

Focus can curb daydreaming, but building focus skills takes practice. Focusing is especially difficult when we are surrounded by buzzing electronics, all commanding our attention. David Rock, author of “Your Brain at Work,” said, “[the] brain’s reward circuit lights up when you multitask.” College students have hectic schedules and are prone to multitasking, especially when pressed with school and work. Rock recommends that “20 minutes a day of deep focus could be transformative.” This means deep focus on one task.

I wouldn’t know what being focused most of the time feels like — I’ve never done it before. Here it goes. You can practice focusing by doing yoga, playing brain training games and meditation. At the risk of sounding like a rip-off Dale Carnegie, “Stop worrying, and start living.”