It’s finally springtime—the season to zone out during class. Perhaps you find yourself gazing unfocused out of the window, taking in the bright, raw colors of the almost–summer day. Perhaps you turn to your laptop, mindlessly scrolling through Reddit to keep you on this side of consciousness. Or maybe you do it old school and put pencil to paper, tracing lazy loops around and around to indulge your boredom. If you haven’t tried doodling in a while, you definitely should.
It’s Art Therapy: Doodling can be therapeutic. Channel all your latent emotional energy into your pen. Let it out all over the page. Hmm, did that sound Freudian? That’s fitting, since art therapy in the West has psychoanalytic origins. The idea is to convert your repressed Victorian–era emotions and stress into a charged drawing. If you were never a big fan of Sigmund, take a look into zen doodling instead. Much more geometric and repetitive, this style of doodling can take on a meditative, peaceful quality.
It Makes Your Notes Pretty: Aesthetics matter. Just as you might unfairly be marked up or down for your handwriting, your enjoyment of studying can also depend on the visual appeal of your notes. Curlicues and patterns in the margins add life to your otherwise drab bullet points, making those cramming all–nighters that much less unpleasant. And who knows with whom you might be studying. That lovely art history major you’ve been so busy day–dreaming about might just take a liking to your style.
It Aids Memory: According to some studies, doodling during a boring task can improve memory retention by as much as 30 percent. In that class that can barely hold your interest, doodling can distract the creative mind just enough to keep from descending into endless daydreaming and procrastination. The theory is that keeping the right brain happy means that the left brain can finally concentrate and get some work done. It’s twice as productive, in a sense; you’ll study more efficiently and get pretty drawings as well.
You’ll be in Good Company: Many of history’s greatest thinkers were doodlers. Da Vinci preemptively doodled helicopters centuries before their invention. Ralph Waldo Emerson apparently really liked to doodle fish when he wrote. President Barack Obama presented one of his favorite doodles on national Doodle Day. Look online and take inspiration from their drawings.
Doodling is a healthy part of cultivating a creative mind. As finals loom ever nearer and tension builds up, compounding over and over like that concept you should understand by now in finance...Crank it down a notch. Put pencil to paper, let go and just create.
