Just Enough Distraction: Boredom, Music, Doodling
I just read an interesting articlehttp://www.npr.org/templates/
about doodling. It reports a scientific finding that people who doodle are better able to retain what they're hearing when hearing something boring.
It turns out that if you don't doodle, you are terribly bored, and detach completely, zone out and think about something else entirely. This results in your retention of nothing. However, there are some tasks, like doodling, that take up just a little of your attention. Enough so that, in combination with the boring thing you're listening to, you are not terribly bored overall. This allows you to pay some attention to what you're hearing. Doodling helps you pay attention.
This aligns perfectly with my menton theory (forthcoming).
I remember when I was working on my dissertation project, I was programming day after day. It sometimes got boring. If I listened to music I would get distracted. But there were certain kinds of music, mostly instrumental, that would not. I described it as being just entertaining enough to keep me from being bored programming. I think this study is vindicating this interpretation.
Pictured: a doodle of a Zeta, one of the mythological aliens that some people think are abducting people.
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