I always thought that people who doodled at company meetings looked like idiots…
But apparently they’re much smarter than me.
A new study says doodling helps you concentrate better and remember stuff. A bunch of researchers got 40 people together to listen to a telephone message. The message had details about a party—who’d be there, who wouldn’t; presumably, what they’d be smoking.
Then the people were asked what they could remember about the message. The people that didn’t doodle remembered SOME. Those that DID doodle remembered a third more. And the people smoking at the party couldn’t remember much at all.
None of this is any surprise to me. I’ve been telling my boss for months that text messaging during meetings increases my ability to concentrate. He wouldn’t bite. So instead, I “carefully record his well-considered thoughts” on my I-Phone, explaining that the chime he occasionally hears is just the noise that it emits when it detects a particularly insightful nugget of wisdom.
PS: I just read about the study more closely. It says that the people who were doodling were more likely to write down the party details. And then were more likely to remember those details. Doesn’t the study just prove that writing stuff down helps you remember s&*t? Yeah; thought so. Scientists are punks.
