Absent-mindedness is where a person shows inattentive or forgetful behavior. It can have three different causes:

1. a low level of attention ("blanking" or "zoning out")
2. intense attention to a single object of focus (hyperfocus) that makes a person oblivious to events around them;
3. unwarranted distraction of attention from the object of focus by irrelevant thoughts or environmental events.

Absent-mindedness is a mental condition in which the subject experiences low levels of attention and frequent distraction. Absent-mindedness is not a diagnosed condition but rather a state people experience in their daily lives from a variety of different causes including boredom, sleepiness, or focus on internal thoughts instead of external surroundings. When experiencing absent-mindedness, people tend to show signs of memory lapse and weak recollection of recently occurring events. This can usually be a result of a variety of other conditions often diagnosed by clinicians such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of consequences affecting daily life, it can have more severe, long-term problems.