Why Doodling Helps You Concentrate
The study behind the famous 29% figure, why doodling may block daydreaming — and the caveats that rarely get quoted with it.
Doodling has a bad reputation it does not entirely deserve. A margin full of drawings looks like proof that somebody stopped listening.
The research points the other way, at least for certain kinds of task. Doodling may be what keeps a wandering mind tethered to a dull one.
That distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to stop a child doing it, because the answer turns out to depend almost entirely on what kind of doodle it is.
Key takeaways
- In a well-known 2009 study, doodlers recalled 29% more than non-doodlers from a dull recording.
- The proposed mechanism is that doodling blocks daydreaming, which is the bigger thief of attention.
- It appears to help most with boring, low-demand listening — not with demanding work.
- The evidence base is small and mixed; it is a promising finding, not a settled law.
- Repetitive, undemanding doodles are the kind that help. Elaborate drawing is a different activity.
The study everyone quotes
In 2009 the psychologist Jackie Andrade published a study in Applied Cognitive Psychology that has been cited ever since, usually as a single statistic.
Forty participants listened to a deliberately dull two-and-a-half minute phone message about a party, and were asked to note down the names of people attending. Half were also given a shading task — filling in printed shapes — while they listened.
Afterwards both groups faced a surprise memory test covering the names they had monitored and the place names they had not been asked to track. The doodling group recalled around 29% more than the control group, and did better on both.
Why it might work
Andrade’s proposed explanation is not that doodling adds anything. It is that doodling prevents something worse.
During a boring task the mind drifts into daydreaming, and daydreaming is genuinely demanding — it consumes the same resources needed to follow what is being said. A simple, repetitive doodle occupies just enough capacity to block the daydream while leaving the listening intact.
| What you are doing | Attention on the task | Attention elsewhere | Likely recall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening only | Partial | Drifting into daydream | Lower |
| Listening while shading shapes | Mostly held | Minimal — the hand is busy | Higher |
| Listening while drawing something detailed | Divided | On the drawing | Lower |
| Listening while on a phone | Fragmented | On the screen | Lowest |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
The third row is the important qualification. A doodle that becomes an actual drawing stops being a doodle and starts competing for the same attention you were trying to protect.
The honest caveats
That 29% figure gets repeated a great deal, usually without context. It deserves some.
- Forty participants is a small sample, and the effect came from a single task.
- The task was deliberately boring. Nothing here says doodling helps during demanding work.
- The doodle was prescribed — shading printed shapes, not free drawing.
- Later research is mixed. Follow-up studies have found the effect varies with how memory is tested.
None of this makes the finding wrong. It makes it specific, which is a different thing, and specific findings are more useful than sweeping ones.
The reasonable conclusion is narrower than the headline: for monotonous listening, a simple repetitive doodle probably helps more than it hurts. Reporting on the original findings is available via ScienceDaily.
What counts as a helpful doodle
| Activity | Mental demand | Effect while listening |
|---|---|---|
| Shading shapes | Almost none | Helps — the original task |
| Repeating patterns | Very low | Helps |
| Filling in letters | Low | Helps |
| Drawing a person or scene | Moderate to high | Competes |
| Writing unrelated notes | High — uses language | Competes directly |
| Scrolling a phone | High | Displaces listening |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
The rule of thumb: if you could not describe what you drew afterwards, it was probably the helpful kind of doodle.
In the classroom
This puts teachers in an awkward position, because a doodling child looks exactly like a disengaged one and sometimes is.
The useful distinction is whether the doodling is accompanying the listening or replacing it. A child shading a margin who can answer a question has not gone anywhere. A child two pages into an elaborate drawing has.
Asking the child is usually quicker than guessing. Most will tell you honestly whether they were listening, and many are quite aware that the doodling is what kept them there.
Some teachers give restless pupils a deliberate low-demand outlet for exactly this reason. It sits alongside the other regulation tools covered in no-prep classroom brain breaks, and it costs nothing.
When doodling is the problem
There is a version of this that genuinely is avoidance, and it is worth naming.
If the doodling is happening instead of work rather than alongside listening, the doodle is a symptom rather than a strategy. That usually means the task is too hard, too long, or unclear — and the fix is the task, not the pen.
For the child who cannot settle at all rather than one quietly shading a margin, activities for early finishers covers the version of this problem that arrives when work is finished rather than unstarted.
Worth remembering too that doodling is one of the very few things a child can do with a pencil that requires nothing else at all. That is much the same appeal as two-player pencil and paper games: no setup, no equipment, and it stops the moment it needs to.
Frequently asked questions
Does doodling actually help you concentrate?
Evidence suggests it helps during monotonous listening tasks. In Jackie Andrade’s 2009 study, participants who shaded shapes while hearing a dull recording recalled about 29% more than those who simply listened. The effect is specific to low-demand tasks rather than universal.
Why does doodling improve memory?
The proposed explanation is that it prevents daydreaming. Mind-wandering consumes the same mental resources needed to follow what is being said, and a simple repetitive doodle occupies just enough capacity to block the daydream without disrupting the listening.
What kind of doodling helps?
Repetitive and undemanding kinds: shading shapes, filling in letters, repeating patterns. Detailed drawing of a scene or a person demands real attention and competes with the task rather than supporting it.
Should children be allowed to doodle in class?
Often yes, with a caveat. If a child can still answer questions while shading a margin, the doodling is accompanying the lesson. If they are absorbed in an elaborate drawing and have lost the thread, it has replaced it.
Is the doodling research reliable?
It is promising rather than settled. The original study had forty participants and used one specific task, and later research has produced mixed results depending on how memory is tested. The 29% figure is widely quoted with less context than it deserves.
When is doodling a bad sign?
When it happens instead of work rather than alongside listening. Extended doodling on an untouched task usually signals that the work is too hard, too long or unclear, and the task is what needs adjusting.