Conf Call Doodle goes Super Luminal

Sales conference calls can be boring. But they do offer the
opportunity to doodle.

The following is from "The Miseducation of the Doodle" by Sunni Brown:

Doodling may be better described as ‘markings to help a person think.’ Most people believe that doodling requires the intellectual mind to shutdown, but this is one misrepresentation that needs correcting. There is no such thing as a mindless doodle. The act of doodling is the mind’s attempt to engage before succumbing to mindlessness. Doodling serves a myriad of functions that result in thinking, albeit in disguise. This universal act is known to:

• increase our ability to focus (especially when handling dull or complex subject matter),
• increase information retention and recall,
• activate the “mind’s eye,” or the portions of the visual cortex that allow us to see mental imagery and manipulate concepts,
• enhance access to the creative, problem-solving, and subconscious parts of the brain, while allowing the conscious mind to keep working, and
• unify three major learning modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

That last benefit of the doodle is no slouch. Learning experts assert that, for information to be truly integrated, it must incorporate at least two of the major learning modalities or it must incorporate one modality coupled with a strong emotional experience. For the doodle to offer up the possibility of all three modalities and an emotional experience is an impressive feat for such an outwardly simple behavior. Lo and behold, this “useless act” is really a highly functional technique with broad applications for the way we work and the way we think. It’s no happy accident that Thomas Edison was a prolific doodler and also one of our most applauded inventors. Neither is it a coincidence that many of the most innovative companies use doodling and visual language to stay ahead of the curve.