JustASC

I feel vindicated: I doodle during meetings and lectures, and for years have insisted that it improves my concentration.

Now a small study confirms “doodling aids concentration.” The author hypothesizes that “doodling may have reduced daydreaming by selectively loading central executive resources” — our visuospatial “sketchpad” — and keeping us from sliding off into random thoughts (or reaching for our Blackberries?). 

Here’s my experiment — during a weekday meeting, sketching little cartoons and such on a notepad, I’m fully present . But in synagogue on Shabbat, where writing is a no-no, there is always a moment during a sermon where I’ve drifted off, no fault of the speaker (okay, sometimes the fault of the speaker).

And I never concentrate so well as when I am doing the dishes and listening to a podcast. Take away the dishes and my mind’s a butterfly, flitting from here to there. But give me a mindless physical task, and suddenly I can focus on such snooze buttons as “margin debt” and “mortgage-backed securities.”