Is the employee who DOODLES at office meetings a goof-off
who's neglecting his or her responsibilities? Or is he or she actually
exercising something that could be called "Doodle Diligence"? A question
this morning for our Lee Cowan:
How many of us, when we let our
minds drift, find that our pencils drift right along with it?
To the doodler, the canvas can be
anything -- a napkin, a margin, a soon-to-be-discarded envelope.
Yet for all its ubiquity, the doodle
seems to be the artistic equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield -- it just gets no
respect.
Even the Oxford English
Dictionary reduces the doodle to a "drawing made absentmindedly."
And boy, does that upset doodler
Sunni Brown: "I don't like the definition! I'm not pleased with the
definition, that is correct!"
What's wrong with it, Cowan
asked? "It's totally inaccurate," said Brown. "It's not an
accurate representation of what's happening for a doodler."
Brown is convinced that doodling isn't
a mindless activity, but instead engages the mind in a way that helps us think.
So much so she's written a manifesto
of sorts, called "The Doodle Revolution," that lays out her
case.
"I want to flip the entire
conversation and be like, okay, let's actually acknowledge this as a valuable
tool and as a valuable technique. What, then, can we do with it?" she said.
For her, drawing what she calls "Info-doodles"
can help in problem-solving, and aid in memory retention, by creating a visual
language that she insists is more powerful than most people know.
"I've seen people tackling
serious challenges, and they inevitably go straight to the white board or
straight to the wall and start mapping it to have a more effective conversation,"
Brown said. "And then you have that visual explanation to help people understand what's really happening."
Her Austin-based consultancy, SB
Ink, now offers doodling workshops. Her clients are major retailers and media
companies . . . who are starting to catch on.
But the doodle, she says, still has
doubters.
"There are skeptics everywhere,
and I encounter them all the time -- and I love them," Brown said.
"They say all the usual stuff: 'Oh,
it's a waste of time.' 'Oh, it's mindless scratching.' They say everything that
you would expect them to say when you misunderstand and you underestimate
something."
Andrew Silton stopped
underestimating the power of the doodle after he realized he'd been doing it most
of his professional life.
"For me it was definitely
something more," Silton said. "I actually think it was rather
important."
Andrew Silton drew this when he was supposedly doing something else.
Courtesy Andrew Silton
Over a career that spanned three
decades in asset management, Stilton amassed oodles of doodles, drawn while he
was actually leading important financial meetings all over the world.
The longer the meetings, the more
detailed the doodles.
"What do you think prompted it?
Were you just bored in the meetings?" Cowan asked.
"No. I think it was actually a
way of staying engaged in the meetings," he replied. "I suspect that
what it does is, it occupied me from thinking about other stuff."
That notion -- that doodles may open
the door to better concentration -- has been getting the attention of
researchers of late.
In a study published in 2009 in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, researcher Jackie Andrade played a
tedious voicemail to a group of volunteers. Some were asked to doodle, while
others simply listened to the message. Turns out the doodlers remembered 29
percent more details than the non-doodling group.
"Doodling has been grossly
under-studied," said professor Jesse Prinz. "It is one of the most
neglected day-to-day activities."
Prinz teaches philosophy of the mind
at the City University of New York.
His blue hair is as much a trademark
as his obsession with doodling heads.
He's drawn thousands of them, all
while he was supposed to be paying attention to something else.
"Every single picture you see
here was drawn during an academic lecture," Prinz said.
Some of Morley Safer's doodles.
CBS News
He's so convinced that doodling
helped him remember those lectures better that he actually encourages it in his own
classroom.
"So, do you want kids to be doodling
while you're lecturing?" Cowan asked.
"Absolutely!" said Prinz. "I
think we should train people to doodle."
The reason is simple: to his mind, doodling
isn't just a distraction from boredom -- it may actually keep us from daydreaming
and zoning out altogether.
"Think about mindless drawing
as a way to take all those things that distract you, all those subjects that
you ruminate on, and clearing them away, and opening this space where
information can get in," said Prinz. "Doodling is the attentional
sweet spot."
For a perspective a little closer to
home, Cowan turned to our own artist in residence, Morley Safer of "60
Minutes." He
says he does between five and 10 doodles daily. His desk is covered with them, from
the obscure to the familiar.
"Now this one is purely
abstract. Don't ask me what the hell that one means!" Safer laughed.
"It's sort of drawings by the
unconscious mind, in a certain way, it's where the hand kind of takes over."
"Does it serve some kind of
purpose for you?" Cowan asked.
"It's very satisfying,
obviously," Safer said. "I mean, if it was painful, I wouldn't be
doing it."
"So what do you think makes a doodler and somebody who just doesn't really doodle?" Cowan asked.
"I think dull people DON'T doodle!" Safer laughed.
Perhaps that's why so many U.S. presidents
doodled. John F. Kennedy often doodled
sailboats. Ronald Reagan drew cowboys. Former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton was caught doodling during a U.N. Security Council meeting.
Mark Twain and Fyodor Dostoyevsky both were habitual doodlers.
There was a time, it seemed, when doodles were
black-and-white proof that the usually embarrassed artist wasn't really paying
attention. And while everyone agrees it warrants more study, it just may turn
out that doodling is a window to clarity.
"Maybe doodles define us,
right?" said Safer. "It tells us who we are."
Or who we're not? For more info:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered