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In the following, I hope to convince deeply professional, well-educated, multi-degreed grown-ups to doodle. And sure, doodling may be the very last activity you\u2019d look at to boost productivity, uncork your creative genius or deepen your listening skills. Just one long sentence into this post, and you are already rolling your eyes so hard your hat fell off. But stay with me. There\u2019s science. There\u2019s history. There are famous people. <\/p>\n
And there are at least four ways doodling improves your productivity.<\/p>\n
1. Doodling Develops the Mind<\/h2>\n
Doodling occupies one part of the mind while another part of the mind does important work. Here\u2019s the part where I link to a paper by a cognitive scientist<\/a>\u00a0and an article from the Atlantic<\/a> and PBS.<\/a>\u00a0But you don\u2019t really need scholarship here, because you know this. Once in your life, you were 7 years old, armed with a crayon, facing a wall in the living room that you subsequently improved with a drawing of a dog and some stars and what historians insist is the sun, but which may also be a yellow balloon with hair.<\/p>\n Doodling engages the mind in active cognition, just like writing notes by hand. (Scroll the end of this post for more on that.)<\/p>\n This is not the same as simply occupying someone\u2019s time while they fidget with a fidget spinner (which has exactly zilch science backing up every $15 sale). People who doodle during lectures are typically better at recalling cogent parts of the lecture. They\u2019re not distracted, they\u2019re engaged.<\/p>\n So, should you doodle on the job when your job involves law and justice and generally being freakishly smart?<\/p>\n It might not be a bad idea. The science related to doodling shows that engaging the brain in the generative act of scribbling allows the creative mind to run loose in the background. This is why highly creative people sometimes seem like they\u2019re in la-la land, drawing anime on a legal pad, and then suddenly bark out the perfect solution to a problem. <\/p>\n Just because they don\u2019t look like they\u2019re thinking doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n Consider Stanislaw Ulam. A brilliant mathematician, Holocaust escapee and one of the bigger brains on the Manhattan Project, Ulam once parked his dazzling dome at a lecture in 1963. Like anyone at a lecture, Ulam found himself bored enough to doodle. Being a math guy, he drew positive numbers in a square spiral. As the lecturer droned on, Ulam marked all the prime numbers appearing in the square and discovered Ulam\u2019s Spiral. This mathematical exercise not only shows the gorgeous spatial relationship of prime numbers, but it may also have provided a solution for the Goldbach Conjecture, which has been driving mathematicians nuts since 1742.<\/p>\n But isn\u2019t doodling just daydreaming on paper? Not according to that 2010 paper<\/a> published by Jackie Andrade of Plymouth University. When evaluating the benefits of doodling in meetings, Andrade determined that doodling does not distract from the primary task; rather, it acts as a focusing agent.<\/p>\n Imagine you\u2019re in a meeting about prior art\u00a0in a patent case. During the brief introduction, your mind wanders into a daydream about surfing. Then you start wondering if you have enough moola in your vacation fund to get to Maui in January and, no, you don\u2019t, but if you sell some stock from the mutual fund and use some miles for the flight \u2026 Oh crap! The actual meeting has started and you have no idea what\u2019s under discussion.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because daydreaming is not an idle exercise \u2014 it uses enough executive functions that you cannot pay attention to the speaker. Unless you doodle. <\/p>\n Unlike daydreaming, doodling doesn\u2019t use a lot of cognitive resources. It uses just enough brain power to keep you from daydreaming \u2014 but not so much that you don\u2019t pay attention. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a focusing agent.<\/p>\n Andrade\u2019s study had 40 college kids listen to a phone call. Some doodled, some didn\u2019t. Doodlers were able to recall 29 percent more of the call than non-doodlers.<\/p>\n For the purely competitive, if you doodle during a call or in a meeting, you might end up nearly 30% more informed than your peers.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most valuable and intangible benefit of doodling in meetings (and any other time) is the simplest. It reduces stress. I could cite Psychology Today\u00a0to prove it, but come on: How stressed can you be when you\u2019re filling up a page with little drawings of cats?<\/p>\n You wouldn\u2019t think doodling needed an instruction manual, but what if you\u2019ve been disassociated from your 7-year-old self for so long you\u2019re rusty with the squiggles? <\/p>\n Fortunately, there are books like \u201cThe Doodle Revolution<\/a>,\u201d \u201cDoodling for Academics,\u201d and \u201cDoodling in French.\u201d There are also books predating the doodle revolution \u2014 by a long shot. \u201cWhat to Draw and How to Draw It\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was published in 1920. It will teach you how to draw squirrels, pastoral scenes, fat rich guys and more by giving you doodle hacks.<\/p>\n Check out the image below. From just two squares and some easy outlining, one can draw a decent picture of a cat.<\/p>\n Drawing hacks are important stepping stones for many people who are not talented illustrators. But there\u2019s another benefit: Learning these tricks allows you to draw the same image over and over perfectly. Doing so is a kind of meditation, like drawing a mandala. The drawing focuses your attention. The ritual of drawing the same image from practiced strokes allows you to do this while actively listening.<\/p>\n Of course, the resurgence of doodling has reached retail. Not only can you become a certified doodle instructor through Zentangle,<\/a> you can doodle in style with drawing tools like the Mastermind desk pad from Baronfig. <\/a>It\u2019s a luxuriously designed scratch pad with a 12-by-8-inch footprint printed with a dot grid. It takes ink without bleed-through. Or, there\u2019s a similarly featured Notsu Dot Grid Notepads on Amazon<\/a> in sizes ranging from 11\u00d717 to 3\u00d76.<\/p>\n Below, I used a Palamino 602 and a Pilot Metropolitan to follow the easy instructions in the 1920s manual. In just a few minutes, I\u2019d knocked out a passable horse, a terrible dog and an indifferent owl.<\/p>\n Famous and celebrated doodlers include John Keats, Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace and most American presidents. A surely incomplete list of doodlers-in-chief: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n Some people claim Picasso doodled, but Picasso was Picasso, and anything he drew was art. Same with Walt Disney \u2014 if he drew Mickey Mouse in the margin of a book, it wasn\u2019t a doodle. It was a cartoon.<\/p>\n Ed. Note: Much has been written about the benefits of writing by hand, including by your favorite doodling author, Bull Garlington. If you\u2019ve thought about improving your handwriting skills, you will want to read his article, \u201cHow Writing by Hand, and Slowing Down a Little, Improves Your Work<\/a>.\u201d) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Illustration \u00a9iStockPhoto.com<\/small><\/small><\/p>\n \u2022 Fear of Mingling<\/a>2. It Lets Your Brain Run Creative Problem-Solving in the Background<\/h2>\n
3. Doodling in Meetings Is Active Listening<\/h2>\n
4. Doodling Helps Lower Stress<\/h2>\n
How Do You Doodle?<\/h2>\n
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You Were Promised Famous Doodlers<\/h2>\n
Writing By Hand Is Another Way to Focus Your Mind<\/h2>\n
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