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Comment by mattkevan | Hacker News Reader

Finally proof! Doodling has always helped me focus. It channels distractions onto paper, leaving me free to concentrate.

If I can’t doodle in meetings it’s hard not to either fidget or fall asleep.

People have called me out on it, thinking that as I’ve been drawing I wasn’t paying attention - only to be surprised when I recite the last 5 minutes of conversation.

Here are some examples, all done in meetings, and in some cases the most productive result: https://www.instagram.com/mattkevan.art/

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I've never been able to focus while doodling; I always get too sucked into the drawing and truly only focus on that, though I usually doodled faces and bodies, which maybe requires more bandwidth to do? Not sure. Either way, while I'm not surprised that doodling can aid in focus, I can totally see why people would take it to mean you aren't paying attention. Not saying you don't understand either, but its unfortunate that something beneficial to the exact goal of the meeting (transmitting knowledge) is read as exactly the opposite.

Yeah, I know. It's especially annoying as when becoming more senior, being present is no longer enough – body language, and behaviour becomes just as important.

These are much better versions of the exact kind of doodling I used to do in school. Small shapes drawn very close together eventually resulting in a huge mosaic. Would be fascinating to see some kind of study on the types of doodling people do and whether certain patterns lend themselves to thinking more than others.

How long are your meetings that you can draw those?! Wow! The art is amazing.

Thanks! The bigger ones can take months - add a little bit every day.

Tacking on my anecdote, I doodled through all my classes in high school. There were a couple times I tried taking notes and my scores plummeted. It's hard to recommend though, I think the fear of not having something important written down is significant (I figured I could ask someone else if that ever happened).

I discovered the same thing in college. For me, taking notes became a distraction. It kept me from actively thinking about what I'm listening to.

If I'm trying to understand something presented verbally, I now limit my "notes" to questions I can't ask immediately and quotes I find useful.

If I ever decide that my goal is to chronicle a meeting, I do so with the understanding that I'm not going to be participating much. I also send out an email summary of my notes to everyone in the meeting so people can confirm that I interpreted things correctly. I've discovered that I often misunderstand nuanced arguments when I'm focused on chronicling. Giving people the opportunity to correct my misunderstandings helps counteract that.

This is nice. I doodle but it is the visual representation of the meeting/presentation. I try to map out the key points of the meeting in visual forms. People have referenced my doodle to remember the key meeting points.

I have been doing for quite a while but I never tried to improve the doodle part. My belief was that the essence of the doodle was the key point that gets highlighted in an easy to understand way.

However, recently, a good friend (designer + engineer) introduced me to the books by Dan Roam[1] and I'm learning to improve to tell a better story visually.

1. https://www.danroam.com

Thanks for the link, those books look really interesting.

Is this doodling on an iPad or do you scan this in? Looks amazing.

iPad. The smaller ones are pen and ink, but Procreate and the Apple Pencil is such a good combination.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doodles with square symmetry like that. Mine are far less detailed than these wonders, though. :)

separate from the main topic, i like your use of coalescing multiple insta posts together into one huge art :)

It's really a pity your art can't be seen on that page without enabling Javascript.

Or having an Instagram account, apparently.

You can view the first few images without being logged in, but once you scroll down a few rows you get a login prompt that you can't close. Maybe OP also posts their art somewhere else?

https://www.kevan.tv/projects/doodles/

No JavaScript or logins needed here...

Thank you!

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