As long as I can remember, I’ve been a doodler. There’s scarcely a page of my school notes from middle school through college that doesn’t have some sort of text ornamentation, swirly lines, song lyrics, cartoon characters or other marginalia. Even now, in the real world with real responsibilities and things I need to pay attention to, I often doodle during meetings or while waiting for slow progress bars on huge files.

Doodling may carry the outside perception that I’m not listening or not soaking in the big picture, but on the contrary, it seems to help me remember what was said and what I need to glean from the meeting at hand. That client’s major competitors? They’re right here, next to this swarthy pirate guy. The soft and live launch dates for that website? Oh yeah, I wrote those down right here in the middle of this alien robot space battle.

A study performed at Plymouth University last year found that people who doodled while being fed names and places recalled 29% more information than a control group of non-doodlers. Perhaps it has something to do with people’s learning preferences, correlating the visual stimulus with the more dry or unexciting information. I tend to be in that visual learner category (as opposed to auditory or kinesthetic), so maybe that’s why it helps me out. According to Wikipedia, John Keats and Ralph Waldo Emerson were doodlers. Leonardo Da Vinci was a rampant doodler. Many US presidents were known to doodle, according to this (disappointingly photo-free) article from CBS News and this article from The Atlantic (which rectifies the situation). Other world leaders doodle as well, as shown in this recent photo of Vladimir Putin, showing him scribbling during a meeting.

So is doodling a sign of genius? A handy learning tool? Or simply an offshoot of being bored? I suppose it could be some combination of all three.

Now, if I’ve learned anything from researching doodles, I have to show some examples. So here you are, a bunch of the more significant doodles I’ve done since being hired. Yes, I have a tendency for lasers, robots, creepy skulls and blunt weapons. No, there’s nothing (seriously) wrong with me. You might notice I tried to create an ambigram logo for the company band, Job Order (as we were named before we had an identity crisis).

Do you like to doodle? Does it help you in any cognitive sense? Would you like to share some of your doodles with me? I’m going to collect a whole bunch of doodles from people around here as well. If I get enough of them, I’ll make another blogpost and show ‘em off!