musingT

According to a recent study published in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodling may actually help improve your memory.  The basic premise is that doodling serves as a simple secondary task, a slight distraction to prevent your mind from wandering off into daydreams, while reserving the bulk of your mental resources for the primary task.  This means that you have a higher level of concentration and can retain more information than you would otherwise.  I found this article particularly interesting because growing up, I always littered the margins of my textbooks, notebooks, and any other paper product that lay near by, with an array of doodled art.  Sketching in general has always been a therapeutic process for me, and apparently it’s also good for my brain.

One of the most prolific doodlers I know, is actually our very own John Slater.  If you’ve ever sat with him through a conference call, a meeting, or even casual conversation, you might notice that he sheds pages of  doodles while giving you his undivided attention.   Aside from observing his artistic talent and unbound creativity, I’ve always been rather intrigued by the concepts that he sketches.  Personally, I sense a recurring theme of “heads”.  A rich futuristic universe of unique characters and obscure shapes that both inspire and raise concerns at the same time.  If you see any of these mysterious doodles laying around, I suggest you save them as they may be worth a lot one day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Design, Planet Mozilla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.