September 22 is Doodle Day  Be not ashamed doodlers; you aren’t wasting time

How do you doodle? Elaborate flowers?  Vines vining up a page? Little faces with smiles and frowns?

However you doodle, you probably don’t give it much thought because the nature of a doodle is that it is done while thinking about something else.

Although once dismissed as a waste of time or the product of inattention, recent studies say that’s not so.

Yes, there has been serious research on doodling. Here are some findings:

Doodlers remember more: In a 2009 study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodlers remembered 29 percent more information than non-doodlers.

Doodling can create new ideas: In a 2014 study, a researcher found that doodling stimulated ideas.

Doodling expresses emotions: When doodlers are instructed to doodle, they will sometimes express emotions too difficult for words. In a 2011 study, a new father drew a frazzled brain; an overwhelmed grad student drew a huge tower looming over a childlike figure.

Beware, though. According to the Wall Street Journal, the visual task of doodling conflicts with other visual tasks. It is best to listen to something and doodle. Watching something at the same time causes a traffic jam in the brain.