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Why we Doodle?
Have you ever been in a boring meeting and start drawing on the margins of your notepad? What about in a class or while talking on the phone? We all do it, but do we know why? Do they mean something?
WHAT IS IT?
Doodling is an absent minded scribble or marks without aim, purpose or thought. Some definitions describe it as a foolish or wasteful act. In some circles of psychology that is not the case. While a definite reason for the act is not that clear, there are some commonalities and hypotheses about the act of doodling.
Doodling usually happens when people are stuck in a place where we do not want to be. If you are in a boring meeting and you have other priorities or prefer to be someplace else, doodling is likely to occur. Like daydreaming, doodling helps us displace our thoughts to something more pleasurable.
Another characteristic is that it usually happens where open expression is disallowed. If you are on a conference call or in a class lecture and you cannot expresses yourself freely, doodling is a way to compensate for that restriction. The drawings can potentially have a meaning to the person creating the doodle.
THEORY
Some theories, including Freud and Jung, think that doodling is an act where the individual is conscious, but the meaning of the drawings is unconscious. Alfred Adler suggested that we tend to seek symmetry and doodles meet that need. Other psychologists suggest that doodles are a manifestation of an unconscious or emotional state.
What is interesting about doodles is that we all have a pattern. Some draw circles, while others draw shapes or jagged lines. Sometimes the doodle is based on an internal or external stimulus. If you look at your previous doodles, you may find patterns.
So my question to you is: When do you doodle and what do you doodle?
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I doodle on Conference Calls, when I have nothing to do with what they are saying, or already know what they are talking about. The reason I do it there is becasue know one knows that I am. I make shapes most of the time. Once and a while I liek to do the alphabet or letters in different fonts.
I doodle in my college classes all of the time. A lot of my doodles are stars or other shapes with shading. Sometimes I draw little creatures or characters, too. I also doodle while talking on the phone. I don’t know why, it just gives me something to do.
I doodle all the time, like many people. But my teacher in high school had to give me a page to doodle on during class, so i wouldn’t disrupt anyone (ADHD!) I have two pieces of ‘art’ now - one hanging on a wall at my parents’ place - and they were really a connected series of doodles made at different times; but, it looks really cool. My dad’s doodles, conversely, are rough and disjointed, and couldn’t be mistaken for art. My husband prefers outlining things like letters, and making double lines. Interesting topic, thanks.
I doodle whenever my hands are not otherwise occupied, and especially when I’m deep in thought — or, conversely, barely thinking at all. And the less thinking that’s going on, the more literal the images: I doodle cartoon characters when watching television, for example, but never when thinking about a project or talking on the phone. My doodles then are usually of wild paisley shapes all joined together, or oleaginous lettering like something from the side of a hippie’s VW microbus.
When in class I usually do lots of meaningless doodling but there i only one shape that has got my attention, it’s a parallelogram intersecting with a circle at the left-bottom corner. The thing is, I try not to draw it but I just end up with lots of them.
@Maan Mohammad - Maan,
That is very interesting, a mathematical doodle! Do you doodle in all classes or in just one?
@Roberto Montanez, M.S. -
yes, I do it in every single class.
I doodle a lot, but it is not so much of a drawing more of names and words. Most of the times it is my name and last name. Once in a while it goes to other words that have form similar letters as my name. Like Math, my first name, last name. Once in a while I will doodle small faces which start out as a M but then I close it off to make eyes and smiling or angry most of the time smiling with the tounge sticking out. But I found I write my name all over the place if I am on the phone or looking over paper work and just reading. I have to keep a scrape paper by so that I don’t write on any important paper work.
Have pen and paper..will doodle! It usually starts with a scribble, then I have to use my imagination to create a picture out of the scribble. You should see my school work, oh its a sight. I’ve been called out in the middle of class to show and explain what my pictures are. haha
well recently i have found myself doodling in class. one day i was really sick of my teachers crapand i just started to doodle. for some reason i tend to draw spaceships and or roads.
I just don’t do “normal” doodles. As a matter of fact, I draw a whole picture when I’m bored in class, etc. Now that’s something.
I doddle all the time same patterns opposite from eachother but I don’t know what it means it jus strange I can fill up an entire page and very neatly as if I was writing a regular page. Its something I do when I am at a meeting or taking on the phone.
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