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Turns out that filling the margins of your notebook with hearts, stars or ligers during business meetings may actually help you remember the mind-numbing details being discussed. A study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology revealed that subjects who were instructed to doodle while listening to an uninteresting phone message had 29 percent better recall than the non-doodlers.
According to University of Plymouth Professor Jackie Andrade, PhD, "A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
If you've already forgotten what this post was about, try doodling online.
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Saturday 28 February
By Darth Nader
I discovered this method when going to college, the second time, long after I should have. I was always a poor student. I found that taking the words I needed to recall and more or less doodling them I could remember them much easier. To remember multiple parts of a subject I would draw, not write, the first letter of each part of the subject (likely answers on a test) in such a unique way I could visualize them easily and remember the first word, which made the full statement far easier to remember. Tape recording my notes and then listening while I doodled was the best way.
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Sunday 01 March
By Ace of Spades
This finding is a good addition to what memory reserachers have been studying for the past 80 years. It is however not entirely new or surprising. As with Tony Buzan's "mind mapping", they have been effectively employing very similar techniques for the past two decades. I would like to stress however that the doodling should still be related to the boring topic being discussed. Otherwise, daydreaming shifts to creative thinking and would therefore be re-directing attention. Only Savants can memorize detail without a high level of focus and attention.
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