Friday, October 10, 2008

Doodling and Flow

I find the renewed interest in doodling quite interesting and see a relationship with flow.
After all, doodling satisfies the some of the fundamental requirements of a flow activity.
Firstly it offers immediate feedback - lines emerge on a blank page just by us moving a pen around. Simple but effective. There is a form of validation we get by impacting our world, even in such a simple way.
There is also variable challenges provided by doodling and we have the opportunity to progressively increase the complexity as our capabilities grown. We can lose ourselves in the activity and lose sense of time. OK, not sure if we can really get any transcendent experiences out of doodling or feel somehow united in our humanity but hey, it is really simple innocent fun so I'm not going to complain.
I'll take flow where I can get it.