Doodling helps you pay attention
people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn't
clipped from blog.wired.comA Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling
Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention
Asked to remember names they'd heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn't
This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander
"People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate,
We might not be aware that we're doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream.
Andrade's findings
are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: The mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli
it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming
