Doodling is the act of creating drawings in an unconscious or unfocused manner. While it may be considered rude to doodle during classes at school, or in a meeting at work, doodling can actually be incredibly beneficial.
For many, doodles consist of a repeated pattern of designs familiar to the doodler. No two doodles are the same, but we often return to the same patterns, which may be down to their pleasing familiarity, how enjoyable they feel to draw, or simply the fact that they’re what we’ve always doodled.
1.Improves Concentration:
Andrade theorizes that doodling helps you to concentrate because it requires enough cognitive effort to keep you from daydreaming, and yet not enough to prevent you from paying attention to what is going on around you. In other words, one of the benefits of doodling is that it helps you to anchor your attention and stay engaged instead of zoning out.
2.Spurs Creative Insight:
According to Brown, when you doodle “you are lighting up different networks in the brain” and “engaging different information.” This can lead to “ah-ha” moments when the solution to a problem you’ve been struggling with suddenly becomes evident.
In fact, Brown’s professional work includes training company managers to translate ideas and concepts into doodles or visual language in order to spark ideas and improve communication.
Doodling is thinking in pictures. The next time you’re stuck on a problem, try expressing the problem as a doodle and notice what ideas pop up into your mind.
3.Handles Emotions:
Emerging studies show that art expression may help individuals reconnect thinking and feeling. While journaling is a great way to get in touch with your thoughts and feelings, you can get even better results if you add doodles to your journal entries. After all, doodles can help you to recognize and express your emotions.
4.Alleviates Stress:
Doodling might be even better than coloring books for getting stress under control because of its simplicity. Drawing a continuous line across the page that curves and crosses itself many times as a technique to help you unwind. You can then use a different color to fill in the blank spaces created by the lines.
The repetitive motion of moving the pen across the page making the same shape over and over again is relaxing. In addition, a lot of stress comes from the fear of making a mistake, and, when you’re just drawing a continuous line and shading in wherever the mood strikes you, there are no mistakes.
5.Gives a Creative Outlet:
Creativity is proven to boost relaxation, happiness and even problem-solving skills. However, few of us have a creative outlet that we engage in consistently. Doodling is the answer to this dilemma. It can be done anywhere and at any time, and all you need is a piece of paper and a pen.
If you’re looking for a simple creative outlet without a steep learning curve, start doodling for five minutes a day. Doodling is fun and can be very satisfying.
6.Improves learning capacity:
During my research I came across the concepts of focused thinking and diffused thinking. Both forms of thinking are important for effective learning.
Focused thinking, as the name implies, is when you’re concentrating on the information that you’re trying to learn, analyze, or understand. Diffused thinking, on the other hand, is a more relaxed thinking state, one the brain settles into at resting. It allows for the subconscious incubation of ideas and information.
After a while of focusing intently on a subject that you’re trying to learn, sit back with a pen and paper and relax your mind that is, enter the diffused mode of thinking–by doodling. You’ll learn better.
Doodling helps you to concentrate. So, if you find your mind wandering during a lecture, start doodling in the margins of your notes in order to bring your mind back to the attention sweet-spot so you can listen to the lecture, and learn.
7.Helps in Big-Picture Thinking:
when you’re too focused on something you tend to overthink. This can lead you to focus on details that aren’t particularly important and miss the big picture. Think of the saying, “miss the forest for the trees”.
When you doodle you tend to focus on the overarching ideas and concepts, which is paramount to big-picture thinking. Therefore, the next time you feel yourself drowning in details, stop for a moment and create a doodle. Doodling represents whatever it is that you’re working on. It’s highly likely that you’ll find yourself regaining perspective.
