A doodle caused quite a controversy four years ago at a renowned world economic forum. According to NPR, after a panel including Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bono and Tony Blair concluded their session, a journalist wandered onto the stage and discovered left-behind papers near Blair’s seat covered in doodles: boxes, circles, triangles and arrows.
The journalist then exchanged his find to a graphologist who, after reviewing the doodles, determined that the prime minister was clearly, “struggling to maintain control in a confusing world”, “not rooted”, and “not a natural leader, but more of a spiritual person, like a vicar.”
A thorough investigation was conducted into the matter, and determined that the doodles were in fact not made by then-Prime Minster Blair, but Bill Gates.
So I actually share something in common with multi-billionaire Bill Gates: I too am a doodler. Apparently many others share this trait, according to the interesting story I heard on NPR this morning, and from my own observations during work meetings. But why do we doodle? Here’s the explanation provided on NPR:
To understand where the compulsion to doodle comes from, the first thing you need to do is look more closely at what happens to the brain when it becomes bored. According to Jackie Andrade, a professor of psychology at the University of Plymouth, though many people assume that the brain is inactive when they’re bored, the reverse is actually true.
“If you look at people’s brain function when they’re bored, we find that they are using a lot of energy — their brains are very active,” Andrade says. The reason, she explains, is that the brain is designed to constantly process information. But when the brain finds an environment barren of stimulating information, it’s a problem.
“You wouldn’t want the brain to just switch off, because a bear might walk up behind you and attack you; you need to be on the lookout for something happening,” Andrade says.
So when the brain lacks sufficient stimulation, it essentially goes on the prowl and scavenges for something to think about. Typically what happens in this situation is that the brain ends up manufacturing its own material. This brings us back to doodling. The function of doodling, according to Andrade, who recently published a study on doodling in Applied Cognitive Psychology, is to provide just enough cognitive stimulation during an otherwise boring task to prevent the mind from taking the more radical step of totally opting out of the situation and running off into a fantasy world.
Andrade tested her theory by playing a lengthy and boring tape of a telephone message to a collection of people, only half of whom had been given a doodling task. After the tape ended she quizzed them on what they had retained and found that the doodlers remembered much more than the nondoodlers. “They remembered about 29 percent more information from the tape than the people who were just listening to the tape,” Andrade says. In other words, doodling doesn’t detract from concentration; it can help by diminishing the need to resort to daydreams.
I don’t really need to feel guilty when I’m doodling during team meetings after all! Even the leaders of our very fine nation doodle. Take a look at the images below and see if you can guess which president doodled which picture (hint: your choices are: Ronald Regan, Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, Benjamin Harrison, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, and Lyndon Johnson). For an analysis of your own doodles, check out this site: http://www.annakoren.com/doodles.html
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