To Darren Paul, doodling is no mindless activity.
As co-founder of Night Agency, a Soho-based creative digital company, he scribbles cheering stick figures to illustrate happy clients and rocket ships to point to goals his team needs to achieve. The whiteboard is his canvas. The picture is a blueprint for bold ideas.
“Getting things from mind to market involves getting on the same page — so we literally get on the same page with whiteboard or a piece of paper,” says Paul, whose clients include Nestle. “It keeps your brain alert and turns boredom into beauty.”
We’ve all been there: You’re listening to a long-winded speaker droning on about a subject that barely interests you when your pen starts scribbling. Before you know it, flowers, faces and myriad squares fill your page.
But the days of hiding those designs are over. Now, big-name companies — like Paul’s — are encouraging their employees to doodle and are even bringing in consultants to help their workers brainstorm and retain information through drawing.
“They want to expose employees to a different methodology to support thinking,” says Sunni Brown, who wrote the new book “The Doodle Revolution” and helps corporations teach workers how to craft ideas through icons, boxes, arrows and a smattering of text.
The theory is that distracting one’s mind by drawing actually helps narrow one’s focus, thereby allowing creative solutions to problems to flow more freely. Too many words — either spoken or on the page — bore the brain, making it difficult to retain information and think outside of the box, doodle enthusiasts charge.
Instead of calling it a tool to dillydally, Brown defines doodling as a way “to make spontaneous marks with your mind and body to help yourself think.”
Still, even she was skeptical at first. When her boss at a strategic planning company introduced the concept to her 10 years ago, she thought the frowned-upon practice would be a waste of time.
“You might as well be farting on the job, it’s so inappropriate,” thought the 36-year-old graphic facilitator, who has no formal art training.
Then she started drawing — and something clicked. She became more focused and was quickly convinced that doodling was no distraction — “quite the contrary,” she says. “When we doodle, we are elevating our focus and concentration and giving ourselves insight into something we normally don’t have access to.”
Indeed. A 2009 study published in “Applied Cognitive Psychology” found that that those who doodled during a brief but dull conversation recalled 29 percent more information than those who didn’t.
So in 2010, Brown ventured out on her own, starting BrightSpot Info Designs and landing clients such as Zappos, Dell and Disney. She charges thousands for one-day workshops where she acts as a “graphic facilitator,” someone who listens to ideas and crafts elaborate infodoodles on a whiteboard. She also teaches teams how they can do the same.
Jesse Prinz, a philosophy professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is also sold on the power of the doodle.
“When you are doodling, your mind hits that sweet spot where you can’t overthink, and your mind doesn’t wander too much,” says the academic and lifelong doodler, who encourages his class to doodle instead of taking traditional notes. “There was so much anxiety about getting every word that students weren’t
listening.”
Still, says Prinz, if you are a chronic doodler, it’s best to give the speaker a heads-up that this habit helps you think — so they don’t think you are being rude.
To make sure the doodler is actually paying attention, the speaker should quiz him or her, according to Prinz and Brown. The doodler should still be able to answer basic questions about what was said.
The workplace jumped on the doodle bandwagon in recent years as social media and Web sites dominated the business world, making visual communication and new ways of thinking vital, regardless of industry.
“The business world has changed. New media has created a culture that is more freewheeling. The idea that people’s decisions are being visually guided is essential to business,” says Prinz.
So convinced was Paul that in 2013 he launched the website, doodle.ly, which has been likened to Instagram for doodles. Instead of posting pictures, members post their doodles, and others can “like” them. Already, 120,000 drawings have been published on the site.
“We are huge believers in the power of visual images and want people to share their drawings, and there was nothing available to do that,” he says.
Brown warns against reading into doodles too much, instead urging prospective doodlers to just draw. “It’s not the subject that matters,” she says. “It matters that they are doing it.”
Doodling Tips
Don’t overthink the design: If you think too hard about doodling, it’s no longer mindless and productive. Go with simple graphics, like a circle around an important word. When the doodle is too elaborate, it may stop you from paying attention to the speaker or subject, according to Prinz.
Create a code: If banking is your game, use dollar signs or piggy banks as icons for money. An electric company might use a light bulb. Stick figures are fine for people or customers.
Words matter: The ideal doodle is half text, half picture. The key is to put boxes around keywords that relate to the same idea and arrows between words and pictures to show links.
Give everyone a chance: Don’t assume the employee who majored in art is the best doodler. Instead, give everyone a chance to doodle on a whiteboard and encourage all of them to use drawing in their own note-taking.
Leave the timer at the door: A doodle can take five seconds on a napkin to explain a business model, an hour in a team meeting or days if you are studying for an exam (think of transforming that biology chapter into a simple graphic you can digest).