Doodling offers two big benefits: It entertains—and, even better, keeps us focused, finds an experiment at the University of Plymouth. Doodlers listening to a long-winded recording of names and places remembered
nearly 30 percent more of the information than non-doodlers. The explanation: Scribbling keeps us from daydreaming. An uninterested brain usually stimulates itself by thinking about
anything but what's going on at the moment—which drains our executive resources. Because doodling isn't nearly as cognitively demanding, we concentrate more on the task at hand.
