Concentrate Better By Doodling 94
Kelson writes "The next time you see someone doodling during a meeting, don't criticize them for drifting off. It turns out that doodling is the mind's way of keeping itself just busy enough to avoid checking out entirely and slipping off into a daydream, and doodlers actually remember more of that boring talk. (Judging by my college notes, this probably helped me remember a lot of otherwise-boring lectures.)"
Silly Slashdot! (Score:4, Insightful)
We know doodling works for us. But people don't because they want to give the appearance of attention. The people who actually set doing work above the appearance of doing work have already found a way to not be in the meeting in the first place.
Not convicing enough (Score:3, Insightful)
I find the conclusion they came up with after the study interesting, but I'm not convinced that it is the only practical explanation.
I'd like the dissuade anyone from taking this article as proof enough to start arguing to start making artists out of us all.
Re:What works for me is being Drowsy (Score:4, Insightful)
Random internet theory: Those classes were easier.
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't consider something explained until it has been fully explained. Once it has, I almost always get it. Sometimes, a teacher thinks they are explaining something but they aren't, or they're only giving part of the explanation, or they're just doing it wrong in general. In those cases, I press them for more information.
Generally though, school is designed for the lowest common denominator, and so the concepts being communicated are so simple that it would be hard NOT to get it in one go.
Meetings are BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Most meetings are merely excuses to avoid working, so doodle away!
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:1, Insightful)
Bingo: "school is designed for the lowest common denominator"
By and large, public school teachers are not particularly well trained or paid for the task. They're regular folks doing the best they can of a difficult job, and if a kid does not appear to be paying attention, then s/he must be made to pay attention. It's a responsibility.
As rare as good teachers is bright kids like yourself, who was getting more out of the class lecture by staring vacantly at your sketching hand.
Notable in TFA is the the test was done on "a collection of people". What collection? From where? Typically studies are done on volunteer students of the tester's university. That's not the same sort of social slice as a public school class. Perhaps doodling kids, by and large, are not paying attention, and the teacher is correct to hassle them.
I'm saying they might not have been "fucking idiots", just wrong in your particular case. I appreciate that's hard to swallow -- I still get steamed about the teachers I had and it's been forty years now.
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand things the first time I hear them in almost all cases. This has been true since childhood. As a direct result, the normal teaching style in most gradeschools (say something, then repeat it in slightly different ways many many times) was nearly unbearably boring for me. I would try and allieviate this boredom by doodling, and this often got me in trouble.
Boredom is the curse of people with higher than average intelligence going through school. Grade school completely fails in my experience to deal with it, and it only gets marginally better in High School.
The sad part is that not everyone can deal with this lack of stimulation, and start causing trouble, in the worst case undermining their future.
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:1, Insightful)
The worst part of that is when you get to college and take difficult classes where you actually have to study, only to find out that you don't really know how.
That killed me my first year. If it weren't for a couple really good profs my second year and a girlfriend that taught me how to study, I would never have graduated.
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of the major difficulties I had in college. I never learned to study properly in high school, and I also had difficulty adjusting to the concept of homework. In high school I managed to complete nearly everything in class because the teachers often gave time to do work in-class. Not so with college.
Re:Someone tell gradeschool teachers (Score:3, Insightful)
My high school was located in a smallish town that was also home to the state's teaching college and a major medical school. So our teachers were quite good and prepared us for college by giving college-style homework loads (two hours homework per hour lecture). Unfortunately, high school keeps you incarcerated eight hours a day whereas in college you have lecture only two or three hours a day. As a result I was up past midnight most nights and back up around 5:00 AM to finish my work for the next day.
What this all taught me was how to sleep in class and catch just enough to get started on the next homework assignment. I kept this habit through college, and it wasn't until grad school that I had to adjust to staying awake in class (since the content of the lecture was more advanced than the textbook or there was no textbook).
Also, when I was awake I doodled, brainstormed for my projects, or did crosswords.