"In psychology, tests of memory or attention will often use a second task to selectively block a particular mental process. If that process is important for the main cognitive task then performance will be impaired. My research shows that beneficial effects of secondary tasks, such as doodling, on concentration may offset the effects of selective blockade," added Andrade. "This study suggests that in everyday life doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing."
In fact, when considering children and teens who might be constantly entertained by technology, you might encourage them to work through occasional boredom. This can help them learn how to find creative solutions for entertaining themselves.
Bored Doodling Can Help You Focus, Says Science
According to a 2009 study by professor of Psychology, Jackie Andrade, doodling while listening to information can help our memory. Andrade conducted a study where she measured how well participants recalled details from a monotonous fake telephone message. Some participants were asked to shade in printed shapes while listening, and others simply listened to the message. Those who shaded performed far better at recalling information.
Andrade theorizes that doodling engages our minds enough to keep them from daydreaming. This is particularly useful when information is tedious or boring, but also seems to help concentration when listening to information-dense material.
Forsythe is a Special Projects Facilitator for the Center of Pedagogical innovation at Brock University. She works with course design and instructional strategies. Forsythe helps faculty make their curriculum using visual notes and doodling, and incorporate it as a teaching and learning method.
The work on fidgeting and doodling has led to classroom practices that help students remember and attend to work. Exercise balls, for example, serve as chairs so that students can fidget away and not disturb others. Playing with small fidget toys while doing a sustained task, like writing a story, helps some students stay on task. Fidget toys also help adults at work who spend hours at computers.
Many people use food as a coping mechanism to deal with such feelings as stress, boredom or anxiety, or even to prolong feelings of joy. While this may help in the short term, eating to soothe and ease your feelings often leads to regret and guilt, and can even increase the negative feelings. You aren't actually coping with the problem causing the stress. Further, your self-image may suffer as you gain weight, or you may experience other undesired effects on your health, such as elevated blood sugars, cholesterol levels or blood pressure.
It should be clear that if you are having trouble keeping yourself from constantly being interrupted by technology, you are not alone: you are a typical modern-day high-tech user. We have provided you with numerous strategies to combat this negative influence on completing important assignments. These strategies focused on the four factors of the MVT model, helping you alleviate the stress on your cognitive control limitations: improving metacognition, decreasing the accessibility of interruptive technologies, decreasing your boredom, and minimizing your anxiety of missing out. There are undoubtedly other situations in which you find your attention being pulled away, and these same strategies should work to benefit you there as well. Regardless of the scenario, the suggested strategies are meant to be adapted to the specific situation, and by applying them you will get better at maintaining your focus on what is important rather than being interrupted by what is not critical at the moment.
Discover 7 more science-supported break ideas to help you improve focus. Learning how to do one of them will help you develop a unique skill among your peers. Click the button below to download the list:
In her groundbreaking study, Andrade had forty subjects listen to a long, boring recording. Listeners who were given a task similar to doodling actually performed better on a memory test based on the recording than those who were not allowed to doodle. These results show that some people doodle spontaneously when they find their attention drifting and it helps them to stay on track, explains Andrade.
Be sympathetic to doodlers. Doodling in your school book might not be beneficial because it makes your work look messy and makes it hard for the teacher to read, admits Andrade, but doodling on a piece of scrap paper is a fair compromise if it helps your kid concentrate.
Even with all of this research, parents and teachers may argue that some kids are truly distracted by doodling. Andrade says that this may be true for some. If a child who often doodles is struggling academically, the first step should not be to forbid doodling. Instead, explore why he's finding it so hard to concentrate and determine what would make the lesson more interesting.
When you are bored, your brain starts to find ways to be engaged in other physical activities that help you stay alert. Fidgeting and playing with pen/pencil are some habitual physical activities that people resort to when they try to avoid a mind wandering session. Similarly, doodling allows your brain to engage in an activity that keeps you from blankly staring at the wall or worse, fall asleep.
However, these specific and intricate doodling techniques are not what you need when you want to increase your focus. On the contrary, random and unthoughtful doodles are the ones that will help you stay alert and focus on the boring lecture you are listening to. If you concentrate too much on the complications of your patterns, then you will lose your focus from your primary objective (boring lecture).
Sometimes doodling words on a notepad that you pick from the lecture or office presentation, helps to increase your retention value. Picking up words or specific jargons to doodle from your lecture helps you recall it later when required.
Mostly, I used to associate the patterns with the subject of the lectures. At times, I would remember something the teacher said a few weeks ago during my exam because I was doodling a certain pattern during that lecture. Remembering the pattern would help me recall particular points from the lecture and vice versa.
There is no hard and fast for doodling. It is even hard to tell the scientific reasoning behind doodles increases your focus and concentration. However, it can be easily concluded that doodling helps you retain more information than others, particularly when you are bored. 2ff7e9595c
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