The Art of Doodling: Boosting Creativity Through Drawing
The art of doodling gets dismissed as a sign of a wandering mind, but the research on it says something closer to the opposite: doodling while doing something boring can help you pay attention, not distract you from it. This piece looks at what doodling actually does for focus, memory, and creative thinking, and how to build a doodling habit that does more than fill margins.
What Doodling Is (and Isn't)
Doodling is spontaneous, low-effort drawing done while your attention is mostly somewhere else, on a lecture, a call, a meeting. It doesn't require drawing skill and it isn't the same as sketching with intent. That low-stakes quality is exactly why it's useful: there's no outcome to protect, so your hand can move while your mind works on something else in the background.
The Study That Started the Doodling Conversation
The most cited evidence for doodling's benefits comes from a 2009 study by psychologist Jackie Andrade at the University of Plymouth. In the experiment, 40 participants listened to a deliberately dull two-and-a-half-minute mock phone message about a party, while half the group shaded in printed shapes as they listened. On a surprise recall test afterward, the doodling group remembered 29% more names and places than the non-doodlers, 7.5 items on average versus 5.8 (Andrade, 2009, Applied Cognitive Psychology, reported via ScienceDaily). Andrade's explanation wasn't that doodling adds focus out of nowhere; it's that boring tasks invite daydreaming, and daydreaming pulls attention away from the task much more than a small motor activity like doodling does. Doodling seems to occupy just enough spare mental capacity to keep the mind from wandering off entirely.
That's a specific, modest claim: doodling can help you stay engaged with something tedious. It is not evidence that doodling makes you smarter, more artistic, or better at your job in general, and it's a single study design (a phone-message recall task), not a universal law.
What Doodling Is Actually Good For
1. Staying Present Through Boring Stretches
Long calls, slow meetings, and dense lectures are where the Andrade effect is most directly relevant. Keeping your hands lightly occupied with shapes, patterns, or margin sketches gives the restless part of your attention somewhere to go, which can leave more of your working memory free for actually listening.
2. Working Through a Creative Block
When you're stuck on a problem, switching from typing or talking to unstructured drawing changes the kind of thinking you're doing. You stop trying to force a specific answer and start making loose associations instead, one shape suggesting the next. That shift doesn't guarantee a breakthrough, but it's a reasonable low-cost thing to try when direct problem-solving has stalled.
3. Taking the Edge Off Stress
Repetitive, low-pressure drawing shares some features with other calming activities: it's rhythmic, it doesn't demand a correct outcome, and it gives your attention something concrete to rest on. A 2016 Drexel University study measured cortisol (a stress hormone) in 39 adults before and after 45 minutes of open-ended art-making with markers, paper, clay, or collage materials, and found cortisol dropped in 75% of participants regardless of prior art experience (Kaimal et al., 2016, Drexel University). That study used a full art-making session, not a two-minute doodle, so treat doodling as a smaller, more convenient version of the same idea rather than an exact match for the study's results.
4. Supporting Note Recall
Pairing a quick sketch with written notes gives you two different memory traces for the same idea, a visual one and a verbal one, instead of just one. Educators who work with dual coding (the idea that combining visual and verbal information can strengthen recall compared to text alone) point to this as one reason simple sketches or diagrams next to written notes can help material stick better than notes alone (The Learning Scientists, on dual coding and visual note-taking). This works best for a rough diagram of an actual concept, not an unrelated doodle in the margin.
5. A Low-Stakes Outlet
Because doodling has no technical bar to clear, it's one of the few drawing-adjacent habits most adults will actually keep up. That consistency, more than any single session, is where most of the benefit above comes from.
How to Start a Doodling Habit
1. Use What You Already Have
A pen and any scrap of paper is enough. Don't wait for a nice notebook or the right pens; the barrier to doodling should be close to zero, or it stops being the low-effort habit that makes it useful.
2. Attach It to a Specific Trigger
Doodling works best tied to a recurring moment: every recurring Monday status call, every lecture in a specific class, every time you're on hold. A fixed trigger turns it into a habit instead of something you have to remember to do.
3. Keep Sessions Short
Two to ten minutes is the useful range for most of the benefits described above. You're not trying to produce a finished piece; you're occupying a small amount of spare attention.
4. Don't Aim for Good
Shapes, loops, hatching, boxes, and simple repeating patterns all work in the studies referenced here just as well as representational drawing. The mechanism is about keeping your hand moving with low cognitive demand, not about artistic quality.
5. Use Prompts When You're Stuck on What to Draw
If a blank page feels like its own kind of pressure, start with a fixed shape (a grid, a spiral, a row of the same small icon) and vary it as you go. Removing the "what do I draw" decision keeps the activity effortless, which is the point.
Where Doodling Fits in Daily Life
At Work
Sketch a quick diagram of a process you're describing instead of only writing bullet points; it doubles as a note and a doodle. During long calls, shape-shading or margin patterns can help you stay with a slow speaker instead of checking out.
In Class or Training
Small diagrams next to written notes, not instead of them, are the version of doodling most likely to help you remember material later.
On Your Own Time
Ten minutes with a notebook before bed or during a break is enough to get the stress-easing and creative-loosening effects described above, without needing to treat it as a serious art practice.
Common Doodling Myths
"Doodling means you're not paying attention"
The Andrade study points the other way for boring, low-demand tasks: doodlers recalled more, not less, information than people who sat still and let their minds wander. That doesn't mean doodling helps you focus on something that already demands your full attention, like a complex negotiation or a fast-moving discussion; the benefit shows up specifically when the alternative is disengaged daydreaming.
"You need to be able to draw"
None of the research behind these benefits used trained artists or required representational skill. Shading printed shapes counted as doodling in the original study.
"It's a habit for kids"
The Andrade study used adults, and the Drexel stress study used adults aged 18 to 59 with no art background required. Doodling as a focus or stress tool isn't age-specific.
FAQ
Does doodling actually make you more creative?
The direct evidence is narrower than that: doodling has been shown to improve recall during boring tasks and to lower stress hormones during longer art-making sessions. Its role in creative problem-solving is more anecdotal, useful as a low-cost way to loosen up when you're stuck, but not something with the same level of controlled study behind it as the focus and stress findings.
How long should a doodling session be?
A few minutes is enough to occupy spare attention during a call or lecture. If you're using drawing specifically for stress relief, longer open-ended sessions (the Drexel study used 45 minutes) showed a bigger, more reliably measured effect.
Does doodling help me remember what I'm doing while I draw?
It helped in a specific study design: shading shapes while listening to a monotonous recording. Doodling while trying to follow something dense or fast-moving is a different situation, and there's no evidence it helps there the same way.
What should I doodle if I don't have any ideas?
Start with a repeating shape or simple pattern. The content of the doodle matters far less than the fact that your hand is lightly occupied.