"distracted thinking" is a correct phrase that is used in written English.
You can use it to describe the thought process of somebody who is preoccupied with something irrelevant. For example: "John was so preoccupied with his cell phone that his distracted thinking prevented him from focusing on his studies."
Meetings there seem endless and becomes distracted, thinking about the TV people.
"Yes, he said 'subliminable,"' Stewart explained after one clip, "but he was probably distracted thinking about executing some criminables".
But I'd just stand there barefoot in the dark, completely distracted, thinking about the next day's scenes".
Research shows that highly anxious students score 12 percentile points lower than averagely anxious ones, and parental pressure increases the risk of children feeling physical symptoms of anxiety and distracted thinking in exams.
"I just sort of – poof – exploded…" "Lost what?" I asked, distracted, thinking back through what I knew of Blythe – her endless photos and reviews complete with Gifs and links, which I now realised must have taken hours to write.
The past couple of days I've been distracted thinking about this.
I was writing "Travesties" at the time, and I didn't want to be distracted into thinking about some band's album.
As The Atlantic article points out, if we focus on the problem, we become "significantly more depressed and for a longer period of time than people who simply distracted themselves thinking about something else".
The researchers found that such ruminating caused the depressed people to become significantly more depressed and for a longer period of time than people who simply distracted themselves thinking about something else.
So whatever I'm doing, or wherever I am, it can be a little hard for me not to be slightly distracted by thinking about the music which I'm currently composing or the music about to be composed.
Set in Senegal and directed by Joseph Gai Ramaka, this new version lacks cohesion, but generates so many B.T.U.'s -- Karmen's gorgeous skin is perpetually beaded with photogenic sweat -- that you'll find yourself distracted from thinking about the doom-oriented denoument, at least temporarily.
