I’ve never been good in social situations and I generally avoid them, and I used this kind of day dreaming to play out various scenarios like a decision tree to “workshop” how to interact with specific people, and it has served me well for practical purposes, but I started using it more for “fun” since the pandemic.
Seems like a reinvention of empathy.
> I am a pretty empathetic person (maybe less so to strangers than friends),
I feel the same, strongly so in fact. I think the accuracy of the mental models used for empathizing depends on experience; experience with that specific person and one's own life experiences in general. The better I know a person, the more accurate my mental model of their behavior and feelings will be. General experience socializing with other people also enhances empathy since that experience enables somebody to create more accurate models of how people in general think or feel about things. Further, personal experiences allow somebody to better empathize with people who have similar experiences.