Doodles And Doodling - Do You Know About That?

How many of you have sat down making round and round swirls on your notepad while you had planned to study those notes made in class?

Almost all of us had done that mindless scribbling once or twice, and if you are talking about me, then I’ve done it many a times.

Doodling is a process of creating small mindless sketches

Too formal definition?

Well, it means all those mindless scribbling you do on the margins of your note books, at the back of your copy, at the margin of your books or any where you find some paper and a pen. All those hours spent thinking about someone while you scribbled away hearts, and hearts with their name on them, all those times when mom thought you were studying while you were sitting there drawing trees or bubbles on the last page of your homework notebook; It is the sometime beautiful mosaic art that you create unknowingly while you burnt in rage for your brother fighting with you. Also those lines while on call with your friends which you didn’t even realise you were creating at first place.

These are what doodles are, and you creating them is called doodling.

What a word, Doodle. It creates a feeling of lightness and bubbles while rolling off your tongue. I personally am always reminded of Donald duck while spelling it out, lol. But this word can trace its history back to 17^th century, when it used to mean – a fool or a simpleton.

Quite old, eh?

The modern day usage of this word varies a lot from that, we never say to our friends, what a doodle you are. Present day use of doodle emerged in 1930s. Now it means, mindless scribbling.

Oh my god, what a difference! We better not find some time machine or it’ll be a mess.

Enough of that history and stuff about the name; what’s in name? Let’s focus on doodle after 1930s for now. We cannot control the habit of doodling, it’s just inside us for too long, and I, actually, don’t want to. But wait, it’s not as useless as we think, it actually helps our mind.

Doodling creates balance of thinking; if you are over thinker or an under thinker, doodling will help in both the cases. So next time you feel too overwhelmed by your thoughts or too restless, you know where to find a pen and a page. And start doodling.

Doodlers retain 29% more information than the non doodlers. Whoa! I’m day dreaming about my, marks this semester after I take up doodling, lol. But wait, doodling will help me in decreasing day dreaming as well. Instead of getting my mind worked up in day dreaming, which will lead to nothing, doodling will take up that energy and help me build focus.

The most ancient and, I think, the most known use of the doodling is - as a stress reliever. The repetitive and rhythmic motions, created by us on paper, soothe the brain and helps in fighting stress. In today’s world, stress has become an issue. We might use some of the fun from doodling to make our lives happier.

So let’s doodle out some of our problems and give them some makeover to create something funny.