Goodness gracious. I flake out for two weeks and then I forget what my update schedule actually is. Well, time to get back on the horse.
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Anyhow, today we’re going to turn our backs on the gloomy winter weather and turn our attention inside. Let’s imagine that you’re sitting in a meeting, or perhaps in a classroom, or just on the phone bored to death with the person on the other line. Almost without noticing it you find that your hand has a mind of its own and that the notepad in front of you has strangely developed new civilizations and landscapes, geometric patterns and whimsical creatures that climb up on the shoulders of stick figures and the intricate stems of flowers. You catch yourself mid-doodle and, shamefaced, quickly turn to a new page of your notepad and work at paying closer attention.
And that, perhaps, is the worst possible thing that you can do.
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| Credit mcglinch.com |
Despite our best intentions, most humans can only pay attention to one thing for up to 20 minutes. And that’s a best case scenario- when dealing with a particularly boring topic or when you’re sleep deprived or hungry that time could easily be cut in half.
What happens when you reach your attention span threshold? Often times you start daydreaming, which is the antithesis of paying attention. It may seem like nothing, but when you’re planning what you’re going to eat after you’re free of the meeting you’re in you’re actually using quite a few of your brain’s executive functions comparing different options and planning for the future. This leads to zoning out, where your brain is no longer focused at all on the subject at hand and is completely lost in its own little world.
Doodling can keep you from daydreaming by providing just enough distraction to keep you from dying of boredom while listening to the presenter but leaving you plenty of cognitive function available for you to keep track of what is going on.
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| Some doodles are better than others… Credit |
Still skeptical? Of course you are.* Well, thankfully we have Psychologist Jackie Andrade and her ability to create mind-numbingly boring phone messages to thank for the evidence to prove our points. That message, which Kelly Redinger over at Time.com says “Guantánamo officials should consider as a method of nonlethal torture,” which rambles from inviting the listener to a 21st birthday party to the host’s sick cat, from all the different people who are coming to house redecorating.
In the study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, participants were asked to listen to the 2 1/2 minute tape after completing an unrelated experiment and then quizzed to see what they remembered. Half of the participants were encouraged to doodle by providing them with a sheet of printed shapes that they were supposed to shade in while listening to the message.
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Those half that doodled managed to maintain a whopping 29% more of the rambling information than those who didn’t. But even without taking the potential memory benefits into account doodling may have another important side effect: stress relief.
Some stress-relief professionals (an interesting title in itself) advocate doodling as a way of relieving everything from day-to-day to extreme stress. Carol Ross Edmonston, of Los Angeles, told the New York Times that doodling saved her life and helped her cope when she was dealing with her two bouts of breast cancer. She gives seminars and has written a book on the subject and explains that doodling is an excellent way of helping people deal with chaos and make the world seem more manageable without costing the oodles of cash that things like hypnotism treatments charge.
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It’s possible that the simple act of returning to a childhood activity like doodling or coloring can help remind you of a different time and offer a bit of relaxation, or that the process of doing something with your hands can help distract your mind from a difficult situation. But either way, we shouldn’t stop people from doodling, we should encourage it.