Creative productivity tip: The importance of doodling

WARNING: The words doodle, doodles and doodling will pop up repeatedly in this post. It IS funny. You ARE allowed to laugh. Don’t feel bad about it. Enjoy the little things in life. 🙂

I was never a big doodler until just recently. The perfectionist in me wouldn’t let me do it. The thought of taking pen to paper and potentially making a “mistake” was just to much. Even though I would stare at a blank journal cover or school maths book and want nothing more than to draw all over it I just couldn’t get past the mental block of potentially not being happy with what appeared from the tip of my pen.
It wasn’t until I was experimenting with a few pens I had recently bought that I felt the amazing creative rush from just putting pretty pens to paper and going for gold. 🙂

This feeling had such an effect on me that I just had to share the importance of doodling with all of you! Here is one of my recent doodle creations.

Now I am not claiming this is an amazing piece of art but when I created this I was feeling really uninspired and unproductive. This colourful page of scrap paper got my creative juices flowing and from there I had a rush of idea for other projects and pulled out a few solutions to projects I was stuck on. Here are a few tips for making your doodles work for your creative flow…

Turn off your judgmental thoughts.
This part is important. To get the most out of your doodle make you need to not care how it turns out. Experiment with patterns, colours, shapes and lines. Draw whatever comes freely from your hand. If it ends up a total mess WHO CARES!

Use whatever materials you have access to easily.
Don’t go hunting for a particular pen or pastel. I pulled out what ever I had close to me and just started drawing. Nothing special. As you can see it is all basically a combination of lines. I really loved the addition of the adhesive rhinestones. That brings me to my next tip.

Don’t be afraid of mixed media.
Have some stickers lying around that you have never known exactly what to use them for? Paper embellishments you have been holding on to for a while? This is their time to shine! Pull them out and whack them on the page.

Next time you are stuck with no creative ideas give this a try. If you really switch off your judgmental thoughts you will be amazed at how it makes you feel. 🙂