Why Doodling Is Fun (& Productive) Both Offline – And Online With Dudl.Me
You must’ve been in this situation at least once: you’re listening to someone talk about something and suddenly you find yourself drawing shapes on first available surface, most usually a piece of paper. Some people prefer just making random lines, some prefer shapes and some people are into a little more artistical approach, making quick drawings that parody the situation around them. There’s a lot of different types of doodlers, but the main thing that brings everyone together is the process of doodling itself. So, what’s that all about?
The term “doodle” first appeared in the 17th century, but in a rather more straightforward meaning, describing a fool or a simpleton. It was not until the 1930s that the term actually started to mean what it does today. Interestingly enough, doodles are described as drawings made when a person is otherwise occupied but are mainly made by not raising the hand off the paper. If you do happen to raise your hand, it’s no longer a doodle, but a scribble, actually.
Doodling Is For Everyone, Not Just For Kids
There has been a lot of research on the topic of doodling, and a lot of it agrees with one thing: it’s good for you. There’s proven effects that doodling has on memory and focus, and neuroscientists have even said that doodling can affect how we process information and solve problems.
You must agree that some of the best doodles are made when you aren’t paying any attention to them in the first place. You simply doze away in your thoughts and your arm starts drawing weird squiggly lines on the paper as if it had a mind of its own. But why do we actually do this? Scientists are as confused as we are, apparently, because there has been a number of possible reasons. The favourite one we’ve seen is that doodles are the manifestations of our subconscious, and if we look long and hard at them, we will find actual meanings.
Doodles have graced numerous notebooks, walls, paper margins, and now even online, with dudl.me. You could say that doodling has made its way into the 21st century, and doodling online is probably as fun as doodling offline.
To start doodling online, head to dudl.me, and simply click the big green button. The site will then change to the “doodle-friendly” version, and you’ll be able to use different thicknesses of brushes, different colors and all sorts of tools to doodle to your heart’s desire. To doodle on other pages you’ll have to pay a 5$ monthly fee, and you’ll be able to also doodle with your friends and whoever you think doodles the best on whichever site you’d like to.
Other things that dudl.ME can help you are for example leaving notes on websites that ou visit, creating mockup versions of sites and actually anything else you might imagine, as long as it can be done by drawing on pages. The possibilities are really limitless, and doodling can really help you make yourprojects a little bit better!
Online Notebooks? Online Doodling!
Doodling on paper, and doodling online can be a little bit different, and have a few different uses also. While doodling on paper can help you relieve stress, get amused, and simply get lost in your thoughts while making something, dudl.me will let you doodle on any site you wish, whether consciously or not. This, of course, leaves you with a lot of options from a technological point of view, because it’s simply not that easy to doodle with your mouse, but you tend to make some shapes that have much more sense when you’re actually looking at it.
To get this out of the way right now, yes, we tried to doodle online, and yes, we mostly doodled moustaches on people from the websites we visited.
Aside from great moustaches, it’s entirely possible to use dudl.me as a tool to make other people see what you want them to see on certain pages. Your doodles can be visible by other dudl.me users so you can use the tool to be productive and leave notes on sites. This is very useful when working in a team on a website or something similar because you can highlight the parts you think need work, and they are visible to anyone you want.
Bill Gates Doodles, And You Doodle, Too
Doodles like this help you combine things that you used to do as a child, with more advanced activities like surfing the web. It’s the reason Evernote is so successful, by the way. By letting you put your notes into notebooks, the app and website allow you to recall the feeling of actually taking notes in the physical notebook, something we all did at least a few times in our lives.
And as Evernote doesn’t need you to write anything in your handwriting, you’ll be able to remember what you noted a few days after, something that simply isn’t the case for me because of my terrible handwriting skills. Truth be told, doodling doesn’t need a good sense of handwriting, and you can do it absolutely everywhere, which is one of the reasons people are doing and exploring it so much.
If you ever get lost in thought and start doodling, and in the end feel ashamed for it, please don’t. It’s pretty reassuring that Bill Gates once doodled in a meeting with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bill was in a meeting and doodled a lot in a notebook he then left behind.
The press got hold of it and immediately presumed it was the Prime Minister’s, and the news and analysis of the doodle graced the headlines of British newspapers for days. All sorts of experts gave their depictions of the doodles that were supposedly made by Tony Blair, ranging from “not a natural leader” to “an unstable man under enormous pressure” only to be debunked by the government sources that claimed that the doodles were actually made by Bill Gates, not Tony Blair. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation later backed up the Downing Street’s claims, and it turned out that Bill Gates did, in fact, doodle. So if Bill Gates can doodle in front of Tony Blair, so can you.
When it comes to doodling, you should definitely not feel bad for doing it. Of course, it’s not nice to doodle in meetings or in school, but rest assured that it’s nothing wrong with you if you do doodle. When it comes to doodling online, dudl.me is your place to go so enjoy your moustache-drawing, you know you want it bad.
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