“Oh, am I boring you?” is a common response a doodler might get every now and then. Why doodle when you should be paying attention? However, for some people, doodling can be evidence that they actually are paying attention. The action can actually help stimulate the mind in boring or information-dense environments and helps keep the doodler’s attention on-subject. Though the act of doodling is increasingly discouraged the older you get, it’s actually an ingenious method of paying attention and is used by some very intelligent people. President Obama doodles faces in conferences. John F. Kennedy wrote words in different fonts, sometimes over and over again, accompanied by little drawings. J.R.R. Tolkien doodled landscapes.

Doodling is effective for learning because it helps alleviate boredom. Classes just aren’t quite as interesting after the first six weeks, especially if your professors tend to drone on in their lectures. A common response is to start daydreaming. The brain does not, in fact, shut down when it encounters an environment dry of entertainment — it actually puts forth a greater effort to create new stimulus, which keeps the mind active.

The problem is that this doesn’t work to our advantage in the classroom. We miss information because we’re using too much brainpower in trying to calculate how to react if a bear suddenly showed up, or what to do over Fall Break, or figuring out the dimensions of the classroom. The lecture becomes lost in a sea of internally generated information, created by one’s own mind to keep itself awake. We cannot stay focused on both the present information being communicated and the stimulating questions our mind can create.

Doodling, long seen as a waste of time, can actually be a very useful tool for listening. It keeps you awake and listening while simultaneously giving your mind just enough stimulus to keep paying attention. Jackie Andrade, a psychology professor at the University of Plymouth, performed a case study monitoring participants’ ability to memorize names and places from a phone conversation. Half of the participants were encouraged to doodle while the other half were encouraged to write down the names. Andrade found that the doodling group recalled 29 percent more information than the other.

What’s suggested is that there is a basic level of activity that the brain wants to satisfy called its “default networks.” Doodling is an act that can satisfy this basic need without competing for attention.

However, doodling has much more potential than just being a convenient tool for paying attention. It’s a great device for memorization as well. The more parts of the brain you can activate around one activity, the greater your memory retention. It’s the reason they say you never forget how to ride a bike. In a classroom you typically only process information through textual sources. We translate everything into letters and sounds. Professors try to avoid this by bringing in pictures, slideshows and other devices to help visualize concepts, but this is ultimately someone else’s interpretation. It doesn’t teach students how to visualize the problem, just gives them the problem in picture-form so they can translate it back into text.

Researchers at three Australian universities conducted a joint study, encouraging elementary students to take notes by doodling. The study concluded that not only did the students who doodled retain more, but they were also able to engage with the material better than non-doodlers. The study determined that “[t]he use of drawing caters to individual learner differences, as a drawing is shaped by the learner’s current or emerging ideas and knowledge of visual conventions.” The problem with slideshows is that they focus on another’s interpretation of the subject matter. Doodling is a way to show that the student is able to construct their own visualization of the subject.

The results suggest that drawing is just as important as writing, reading and talking. “It’s a thinking tool,” said Sunni Brown, author of a book titled, “The Doodle Revolution.” Most of our information is conveyed verbally and textually. Being able to create an image in the mind and then conveying it through drawing is something we typically believe is limited to artists. But Brown is convinced this idea holds us back from the value of doodling. Being able to draw is just like being able to speak. Doodling not only helps us focus but can also help us convey ideas to each other.

So doodlers — doodle away! Just don’t let the doodle become more important than the classwork.

letters@chronicle.utah.edu

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