Title: The Cognitive Benefits of Doodling
Context: If one must think, one should first doodle.
Synopsis: The art of doodling is in fact exactly not at all that. It is not about aesthetics, or style, or museum quality renderings suitable for framing. Doodling is a mechanism that allows your brain to embed information in visual patterns to help recall, clarity, and cognition. The mind works in mysterious ways and using a multiplicity of patterns simultaneously has a way of knocking the cobwebs loose and, counter-intuitively, helping to organize thoughts in ways that may not be possible within a single-minded construct. Of course one can’t let one’s ego get in the way when it comes to the act of doodling. As hard as it may be, one must separate style from substance and concentrate on not concentrating in order to free the mind to flow across the page uninhibited as tangible metaphor for its internal mechanisms which can appear as sloppy, meandering randomness but are actually the subconscious at work trying things out and making connections that our intuition can discard or accept at the speed of thought. Thinking—and indeed doodling—may not always be pretty, but process doesn’t need to be pretty as long as it gets you where you need to go.
Best Bit: “For most people, the big question isn’t ‘when did you start drawing?’ but ‘when did you stop drawing?’”
via theatlantic.com
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