Finding Kernels of Truth in Doodling
My
Starch-Toony Popcorn
RE: The Article Doodling Can Help Memory
I'm a doodler. Always been a doodler, always will be a doodler. Legendary school doodler (remember my Illustrated Man story?), on the phone doodler, during work meeting doodler, even right now as I type this blog post, I'm doodling! (Well, not really.)
Doodling is one of America's most famous things, don'tcha know? Well, you've heard of Yankee Doodle, haven't you?
But seriously, when I awoke this morning to this doodle-affirming article, Take Note: Doodling Can Help Memory, it sure jogged mine with flashbacks of zillions of micro-doodles that have spilled out of my brain-fingers throughout my life.
That popcorn doodle above? Doodled just a nare week ago in the middle of an intense note-taking session in a class I'm enrolled in. Oh, there's plenty more doodlings in the margins because my brain was bursting with little starchy popcorn-like ideas. Now I know why I'm so drawn to doodling. It's not because I'm ADD, but it's because it's helping me to remember! Visual learning, I say. The article notes:
"You might look like you're not paying attention when you doodle, but science says otherwise. ... Researchers in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle. The findings were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology."
There's plenty more to read in this article, which I hope stays online for your reference, but it wraps up with the study's professor, a researcher named Jackie Andrade, saying, "doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."
I can't say that I'm always bored when I'm doodling — or even if I'm bored at all. I think doodling helps me channel excess energy while I'm learning or overwhelmed with new information towards better integrating and processing what I'm learning, much like dreaming helps organize data while our minds rest. I think. Well, that's my theory... for now. I love learning and I love doodling and I think life is too full of juicy learning moments to ever admit to boredom.
Sometimes my mind wanders, but I'm also a non-linear thinker and doer. Oh, look! More doodles from that same notebook (five pages before the popcorn, if you're interested):
I am so glad our instructors don't collect our notebooks along with our homework! Shhh! Keep this our little creative secret. •
© 2009 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved. |
