The Doodle Revolution: Why You Should Never Stop Doodling in Class

The Doodle Revolution: Why You Should Never Stop Doodling in Class

            Picture this: a classroom full of students who are studiously writing down on their notebooks during class. I bet the teacher would be delighted for such a beautiful sight. However, some students’ notebooks, upon a closer look, would instead contain small drawings scattered randomly on a page. These are the inattentive scribblers that teachers hated, and they would always get the passive-aggressive line, “thank you very much for paying attention,” when in fact the underlying statement is exactly the opposite. These people are called doodlers, and they are closely related to fidgeters who are people who constantly spins pens during meetings and classes.

            However, I have never stopped doodling on the margins of my notebook because I’ve always thought that I remembered most of the relevant information after walking out of a classroom. Fortunately, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Recent studies proved doodlers and fidgeters to be the victors of this long-battled war. So the next time your teacher or your boss caught you scribbling randomly on a piece of paper, tell them that you’re just trying to improve your concentration and memory…and it is backed up by science!

            In a small study published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, Jackie Andrade found out that doodlers actually retain more information than non-doodlers during a lecture. In testing this out, he asked forty participants to help in their research right after these participants came from a boring, unrelated psychological experiment. These participants were asked to go to a quiet room and to listen to an audio tape with a dull tone, making them even bored as ever. In all honesty, dull is such an understatement as one cannot find the right word to describe a pointless voice-message. In this message, exactly eight names and eight places are mentioned, alongside with other supporting information like the weather, a cat, and a museum. Before they started listening, Andrade asked half of these participants to shade some little squares and circles in a piece of paper provided to them, careful not to use the word “doodle” as it may provide subconscious thoughts on the participants. The other half did not do anything aside from listening. While the clip was playing, they were asked to list down the names mentioned in the clip, which means that the doodlers team needed to switch from scribbling to listing down names which is a rather more tedious job than those of the non-doodlers.

            The results showed the doodlers as the cream of the crop, writing down a whopping 28% more information than the non-doodlers. Those who doodled wrote down an average of 7.5 words apiece, while the non-doodlers only remembered 5.8 words apiece. In addition to this, participants were also asked to orally recite the names that they can remember from the voice clip. This memory battle was again won by the doodlers, remembering 30% more information than the non-doodlers. The results clearly put light on the beneficial effects of doodling not only in attention but also in memory.

Idle Mind vs. Working Mind

            In an interview by Newsweek’s Dina Fine Maron, Andrade spoke about his interest in doodling and how it was rooted to his interest in daydreaming. When someone is doing a boring work, his mind wanders – he imagines himself going to a trip. Later, he will think of how he is going to book a ticket for the trip, then what to do during the trip. Then his mind will jump into shopping clothes for the trip and thinking of what to eat for dinner. The list goes on. During daydreaming, a lot of mental energy is being taken up while not doing any work, making a person distracted and unproductive. Thus, Andrade thought of a small and simple activity that can help the mind be focused on a boring task at hand while using just enough cognitive energy to avoid a person getting bored and surrender to the world of daydreaming. If a small task can refrain you in finding the task less boring, it can help you maintain your focus.

Making Thoughts Come Together: Implications in School Setting

            In making the choice between doodling and daydreaming, the former is ultimately better off for students. Although seeing students doodle may imply that a professor’s lecture is boring, the act itself does not necessarily mean that students are naughty. Rather, these students might need to do something visual to help them concentrate more. Samantha Wilson, for example, was able to come up an idea for her technical paper in graduate school while doodling. Jesse Prinz, a professor at City University of New York, claimed that doodling people’s head during lectures and conferences helped him pay more attention. Michiko Maruyama also improved her concentration as a medical-school student by drawing doodles on her notebook while switching to writing key words during class lectures. According to a study by Gabriela Goldschmidt, a professor emeritus at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, doodles stimulate ideas for improvement while sparkling a dialogue between the mind, hand, and eyes.

            Doodling does not always work in all tasks, especially if the main task at hand also involves the visuals. One may find it hard to remember images while doodling, but it can make you remember more key words if you only need to listen. Now, in the next class or meeting that you will attend, when you hear people criticizing you for being the absent-minded doodler you always were, you can now see with confidence that you’ve been listening to every word and even dare them to recite all relevant information that some of them might have missed.

Works Cited

Andrade, Jackie. "What does doodling do?" Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, no. 1 (February 27, 2009): 100-06. Accessed September 17, 2017.

"Can Doodling Improve Memory and Concentration?" PsyBlog. October 16, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/01/can-doodling-improve-memory-and-concentration.php.

Maron, Dina Fine. "Why Doodling May Help Improve Your Memory." Newsweek. September 14, 2010. Accessed September 17, 2017. http://www.newsweek.com/why-doodling-may-help-improve-your-memory-82665.

Shellenbarger, Sue. "The Power of the Doodle: Improve Your Focus and Memory." The Wall Street Journal. July 29, 2014. Accessed September 17, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-the-doodle-improve-your-focus-and-memory-1406675744.