Doodling helps me focus?

[lord_carbo]

I was doodling in social studies. It's not that I think that the teacher is boring. He is actually pretty good at making it fun. It's probably more or less just history. It bores me unless we are watching a fictional documentary or something else.

Well, anyway, I was doodling while the teacher was telling us the story about Gilgamesh, and here comes the student teacher who tells me to stop doodling. I complied with his rule, and stopped doodling.

Suddenly, I totally lost focus. Everything that I heard was going in through one ear and out the other. The part inbetween where Gilgamesh and Inkidu (spelling might be wrong) are fighting and the part where they kill the bull totally went through me because I wasn't doodling. I only remember a few vague details from that.

I started doodling again at about that point, and something was quite odd: I was focused. No more did I only get a little of what the teacher said, but I heard the entire lesson. I wasn't even doodling anything that had to do with the lesson. I was just doodling random stuff.

The fact that I couldn't focus was definately from my ADD. There is no doubt about that. What is odd is how when I was doodling I took in more from the lesson.

I'm guessing is that I am so used to doodling, that I can do it subconciously so I do not get distracted by something that would make me lose any focus at all. When I try to fully focus, though, I instead start daydreaming, which makes it a lot harder to pay attention to someone talking at the same time, in fact, impossible for me.

Think of it as this:

I can only do one thing at a time: Doodle or daydream.

If I do none I'll start to daydream, but I don't want to daydream because it makes me lose a lot of focus. If I doodle, it doesn't take much focus, but it makes it so I cannot daydream.

I assume that there is something everyone can do so they pay more attention, and perhaps not just doodling as in my case.

Discuss?