Your doodle can say a lot about your noodle. Handwriting experts say there is much more to casual scribbling than simple boredom. What you doodle about shows hidden signs to your personality and moods.
Circles symbolise harmony and union; boats depending on size tell you if your emotions are tranquil or turbulent. Faces say you are a people person; hearts reflect love and romance; boxes may suggest a self-controlled and perhaps controlling nature, flowers, especially when drawn with round shapes, show warmth, sensitivity and vulnerability; and stick figures show intelligence and analytical minds.
What did you draw when you were growing up? Or, are you still drawing when you have to sit in long business meetings and make mindless doodles just to relieve your boredom?
I wonder what young budding entrepreneurs drew at school? Did they draw treasure chests full of gold coins or stacks of banknotes? Yet the purists would say this would have shown greed rather than passion.
The doodle experts believe that mindless doodling may relate to basic human needs for love, security and survival. Some say these little impromptu drawings increase creativity and productivity as well as encourage strategic thinking. Who knows whether they might even lead you to new business ideas?
Perhaps visual information, which is been around for thousands of years in caves, can help increase creativity because it frees your mind from conventional linear thinking and into right-brained organic thinking.
All I can remember at school was drawing pictures of waves and surfing, waves so high that I was probably just dreaming. I also drew boats simply because of my interest in fishing. My fish always looked bigger than they were in real life. What do you remember drawing when you were at school, growing up?
Just the mention of fishing brings up a picture of hangman drawings. So-called “fishers” (PC for fisherman and fisherwoman) have been hung out to dry by the fisheries department which has taken away the fishing rights of traditional line fisherman. A hangman game with the word “fishers” would be tough to crack for most people unless you were a fisherman in Kalk Bay, Cape Town. Of the traditional line fish permit holders in 2013, only 115 are allowed to continue into 2014. They will be accompanied by 100 new entrants who have no prior experience in traditional line fishing.
The remaining tiny shoals of fish left in False Bay must be twittering with delight on hearing this news. Just think about it: a whole bunch of tweets or twerps will now try to catch fish with no prior experience. I’m not sure how the fish in False Bay got to hear the good news but a bar hand at a local hotel told us one evening while on holiday at the coast that perlemoen or abalone poachers use cell phones sealed in condoms to communicate with poacher scouts from the seabed to the shore. Perhaps the small band of fish leftover in the bay have got hold of this technology.
Doodling may possibly be a good way to come up with new creative strategies for businesses that are being killed by red tape or confiscation.
Unless you want to get hung high and dry, your doodles may need to be about under-the-radar business opportunities or you will just continue to play hide and seek with predatory lawmakers.
There is one hangman word that’s worth getting right. I’ll reveal it in a moment. But before I do remember that doodling encourages fresh insights or helps you look at a problem from a different angle. Use your doodling skills (not your Googling skills) to connect neurological pathways and you might come across the unbeatable hangman word innovate”.