Doodle at the Right Time to Boost Learning by 29%

When faced with a long or boring lecture, phone call or other interaction doodling can improve your recall of key information by 29%.  This was the finding of a randomized controlled study recently reported in Applied Cognitive Psychology.

This is a strange finding because normally a second task would distract us and lower performance.  Jackie Andrade, the University of Plymouth professor that did the research believes that the doodling may work because it keeps us from engaging in daydreaming and losing focus completely.

Doodling in the face of boredom then becomes a way to maintain not disrupt mental focus and should result in improved recall and learning.

Although simple, any technique for maintaining mental focus in a difficult task environment (boring, interruption prone, noisy, etc.) is key to improving cognitive performance and will be covered on the Next Brain Blog.

I am interested in hearing from readers that use doodling or other secondary techniques to improve mental focus.

Source:  A doodle from Henri Poincaré’s Student Notebook