Busy hands equal a happy brain! Learn how fidgeting can help increase productivity and decrease stress, with 101 ways to tap, jiggle, doodle, and click your way to better concentration and creativity. Fidget spinners are the latest popular trend, but pen clicking, pencil chewing, and stress-ball slinging have been commonplace for decades. According to recent research, it's been shown that fidgeting helps you concentrate and prevent stress. If something we are working on isn't interesting enough to hold our attention, the additional sensory-motor input of fidgeting allows our brains to become fully engaged and focused. In Fidget! you'll discover 101 ways to help increase your productivity and decrease stress, so you can fully engage at work and achieve calm, creativity, and mindfulness.
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BOUNCING, TAPPING, DOODLING, AND OTHER PHYSICAL FIDGETS
Squirming, tapping, clicking, pen chewing: these behaviors are the bane of teachers, parents, and managers worldwide. Chances are, if youâre someone who needs to fidget, youâve been yelled at a few times to put down your pen and stop scribbling. You may have received a side-eye or two as you drummed your fingers on your desk during a meeting or scrawled images of trees, cats, or underwater landscapes instead of actually taking notes. Though âfrivolousâ physical movement is typically misperceived as a sign of inattentiveness, it often signals just the opposite: the fidgeterâs desperate attempt to stay on track.
Movements like bouncing, tapping, and writing come with a whole host of mental benefits, including improved concentration, increased productivity for employees, and enhanced creative thought. Movement fidgeting is even thought to boost listening skillsâand itâs fun.
Psychologist Abigail Levrini explains that movement helps release excess energy and offers relief to the brain. The more we attempt to focus without moving or giving in to distraction, the faster our minds become exhausted. Allow yourself to wiggle, bounce, or walk, and youâll feel less mental stress. Further research indicates that doodling frees up both short- and long-term memoryâimproving information retentionâand that even the tiniest of movements spark the release of dopamine and norepinephrine, neurochemicals known to sharpen focus. And though it might give the appearance that youâre ready to give up, moving around while working isnât evidence of distraction. Rather, fidgeting with your hands or feet turns part of your attention away from a concept thatâs taxing you and lets different parts of your brain come to understand these challenging new ideas with the aid of distraction. Movement fidgeting, in essence, helps you tune out exhausting details and simultaneously zero in on the bigger picture.
Physical fidgeting is often spontaneous, and it should be. However, there are situations in which actively choosing to fidget is smarter than forcing yourself to sit still. Go ahead and fidgetâquietly, of courseâduring lessons, presentations, meetings, and even phone calls. Any time youâre listening to someone speak and find your focus beginning to wane, itâs a smart idea to get a part of your body moving. Just make certain you arenât drawing all the attention in the room to the bouncing of your feet or the whirring of your fidget spinner! The next time your coworker or your boss cracks a joke about your doodle-filled notes or wonders why you need to walk to the watercooler every half hour, donât let it bother you. Physical fidgeting is firing up your brain, improving your memory, and inspiring you to be your most creative.
DOODLE WEIRD AND RANDOM NEW CREATIONS
Has a coworker ever looked over at your notepad and smirked at your scrawls of fish swimming through kelp or your dolphins splashing out of ocean waves? Have teachers taken offense at your assignments featuring surprise drawings of your favorite flowers and blooming greenery? Random doodles, though often a little out of place in a professional or traditional academic setting, serve a great purpose: they can introduce new ideas, perspectives, and angles. As you doodle, practice mixing and matching unrelated concepts and thoughts to create funny, strange, and entirely new inventions. Feel free to get weird with your doodlesâthey donât need to be related to the topic at hand. This can be a tricky one to get the hang of, but keep at it. For example, you could:
⢠Put a flamingoâs stick-thin legs on an elephant
⢠Scribble a pair of cat ears on a leafy tree
⢠Add a unicorn horn to a sketch of yourself
⢠Draw an underwater scene set in a forest, not an ocean
⢠Transplant your blooming flower garden onto the moon
These odd mash-ups will encourage your brain to think in unique ways. As a result, youâll start seeing beyond the typical and conventional. Weird and wacky doodles are especially helpful when listening to dull information, like a droning lecture with no visual component. Your scribbled creations provide an outlet for your boredom, inspiring your brain to think in different ways while your ears continue to take in the information being discussed.
PACE WHILE YOU CHAT
The next time your phone rings, get up out of your chair and start walking. You can pace a set path or forge a new trail every time you take a callâeither way, try to keep your feet moving for the duration of the conversation, whether itâs out the door and around the block or just within the confines of your cubicle.
Walking while speaking and listening improves creative thinking, according to a Stanford University study, and gets ideas flowing more freely. The study results illustrated that participants who walked while talking experienced higher and more consistent levels of creativity compared to those who stayed seated.
So, whenever you answer a call or invite someone in for a brainstorming session, get up and go. Take a stroll around the cafĂŠ, wander on foot around your house, or circle the parking lot. You donât need to walk farâeven pacing in a small circle around your cubicle at work boosts creative thought just as much as a lengthier walk. If possible, take your pacing outside for even more inspiration and creativity. While the physical movement of walking while talking should be the primary goal, stepping into a different environment is thought to offer a breath of cognitive fresh air. Thereâs another bonus to pacing, too: by getting your body moving, youâre adding steps and a little bit of exercise to your day!
DRAW WHAT YOU HEAR
As you listen to a lecture or sit through a meeting, draw images of exactly what youâre hearing. Really try to free your mind as you do thisâ whatever words seem âloudestâ to your ear, those are the ones you should sketch, whether itâs a crucial, central concept or a small piece of the larger message. This style of doodling helps you focus on the important pieces of complex ideas:
⢠Did someone mention a projectâs outcome with a significant cash increase? Draw dollar signs or stacks of bills.
⢠Are you learning something new in a training session, such as a new company policy on travel? Draw out the details, like an image of a credit card or a plane.
⢠Is your mind wandering while listening to the renovation plans for a new business? Sketch out a storefront, a table, and a chair or two as these details are mentioned.
⢠Trying to wrap your mind around the content of a literary lecture? Doodle important thematic points or keywords that describe what you need to knowâshadows and sunlight to represent light and darkness, a frowny face for an evil character, or images that define a character, like a straw hat and a pair of overalls.
Unlike taking verbatim notes in words and letters, doodling specific images encourages the brain to see concepts in a different light. This doodle-fidget works for any listening setting, from watching a TED Talk online to chatting about party planning over brunch.
GET SWIVELING IN YOUR OFFICE CHAIR
Most office or computer chairs have a built-in fidget feature: they swivel, allowing you to swing from side to side, if not completely around. While composing an email, working your way through a spreadsheet, or tackling a longer project, take advantage of the chair youâre sitting in. Keep your hands focused on the keyboard as you swivel your seat, twisting right and left with the lower half of your body. You can also use the chairâs wheels to move back and forth and laterally as you swivel.
The supposedly âsillyâ act of spinning in your seat can get you pumped to power through a tough workday.
Researchers think swiveling or rolling around in a moveable chair increases motivation to work, improves engagement, and boosts creativity. Swivel chairs have been added to classrooms throughout the US thanks to new studies that correlate student engagement and success with the ability to move, turn, and twist in their seats. Universities that provide swivel chairs in the classroom see studentsâ motivation riseâand their grades increase too.
If youâre stuck with a stationary chair, donât fretâyou can still fidget for better focus. Turn your four-legged chair into something a little less ho-hum by cutting two tennis balls to fit onto the front or back legs. This will create a chair that wiggles just enough so you can lean from side to side and play with your balance, generating the same motivation, learning, and attention span benefits as a swivel chair.
âATOMIZEâ CONCEPTS THROUGH DOODLES
Struggling to understand big ideas in a long-winded meeting or the romantic plot twists in a phone conversation with a friend? Scribble out your confusion with doodles! Turn your notepad into a fidget- and doodle-friendly center of understanding: take the concept at hand and break it down into its tiniest partsâits atoms, if you like.
For example, if youâre trying to solve workplace woes in the messy break area, sketch out a piece of trash, a banana peel, or a dirty dish. Need to figure out how to fit t...
