It is powerful in terms of the few first minutes of the day. The world is silent, your brain has not been filled with emails or missions to complete yet and your energy has not been exhausted by work and roles and duties. To a lot of people it is a single instance in which the brain gets rested as well as available. That is why now it is the right moment to start a light and low-stress creative routine: a 5-minute sketch in the morning.
It is not about skills in art, or creating something impressing. Before breakfast doodle session literally means an area, five or fifteen minutes, where you do not do anything particular, but leave the pen to drift. Pause is the individual connection that learns your creativity to emerge at the correct moment. And with time, it turns into a creative anchor which can realign your entire relationship with ideas, attention, and mental vitality.
Here you will find out why doodling before breakfast is a cool habit and why you should do it, how to start a simple and easy routine without any special tricks, materials, or ability in art.
The Reason Why Doodling Before Breakfast is Effective
Many individuals use their phone as soon as they get up. Alerts come in avalanche. Texts, news feed, scroll, and your mind instantly loses focus in all directions. However, what do you usually pick up the first in the morning and it is not your screen, but a pen?
It Greets Thee Ere the Day Forgets Thy Head
The mind is comparatively silent fresh out of bed. Noise of the day is not there yet. This is the perfect moment to reach your subconscious — the realm, where creative ideas have a tendency to reside. When in this state of doodling, you have less self criticism and more doodling flow. You are not thinking too much. All you do is to make your hand move.
You Don Not Have to Have a Plan to Start
Doodling is not drawing. It does not depict. It does not need to appear anything. There is nothing wrong about the outcome. And that is some of the liberating thing about it, especially in the morning. This is different to writing or brainstorming when one has no actual pressure to come up with something useful. It is only to you.
It Develops Concentration Without Strain
A little doodling is a kind of warm-up. It makes your hands, eyes, and head wake up — without the hustle and the anticipations. The world is doing well to start the day present in a safe place. Most individuals say that they feel calm after the morning doodles and become more productive and centered to work with tasks during the day.
What You Want to Need to Begin (Very Little)
The exciting part is that you do not require some fancy tools, expensive notebooks, or artistic talent to start. This is the genius of a doodle habit, it does not require anything specific.
Simple Tools That Perform
-
Pen or pencil – Anything that you can write or draw with. A gel pen, a felt tip pen, even crayons are okay.
-
A scrap of paper to sketch on – A notebook, a loose piece of paper, the back of an envelope or even a sticky note. It is about gain of access not beauty.
This habit can be done better with easy to grab tools. Put a notebook on your kitchen table, or have a pen right beside your coffee machine.
What You Don’t Need
-
It does not require you to be good with art.
-
You do not have to come up with something benefitial.
-
You are not obliged to post your doodles to the internet.
-
You will not require a separate work area.
As a matter of fact, the less you put pressure on the result itself, the more simple the habit becomes.
What is the Way to Start a Pre-Breakfast Doodling Habit?
This ritual is not fixed. It is adaptable and suited to any lifestyle, as you are a person that gets up at five or someone at 8:30 drinking coffee before going to work. The most important part is to create room to it.
Be Selective of a Time Window You Can Adhere To
It is not a long one but a consistent one. It takes most persons 5 to 10 minutes to experience the shift. Take a time before breakfast hits you, after you brush your teeth, when your kettle is heating, or before other persons are up.
Even 2 minutes matters in case you have a busy morning.
Make Your Environment Quiet
Your creative window is before screens, before scrolling and before stimulation. Do not regularly check your phone. Become comfortable by sitting in a quiet place at window, bed edge or kitchen table instead. The surrounding does not need to be ideal. It simply must be quiet enough so that you can sit down and use a pen.
You do not want to solve problems and content. You are simply asking your brain to have a good time — and letting your hand find an occupation.
Optional: Set a Timer
Are you the type that prefers to have limits; in this case a timer will work. Turn one to 5 minutes. It does not require you to check the clock and does not make you think a lot. At the expiration of time you stop. Some days you will just want to continue with it; however, the trick is to arrive and not to do pages.
What Do You Doodle? (Anything)
The largest obstacle that the majority of the people find themselves in is they have no clue what to draw. The reply: anything. And even that is too open-ended so start with nothing.
Learn Basic Shapes
This is a simple way which is easy to start with. Cover the page with circles. Then squares. Then triangles. Experiment lines, straight, wavy, spiraling lines. Repeat them. Overlap them. The size game.
You are not creating something, you are opening your hand and brain.
What You See Doodle
Look around. Where is a cup? Your notebook? What you see on the outside? Sketch whatever you observe even when it is distorted or simplified. It is not about realism it is about engagement.
In other cases individuals can pull the steam in their tea, a blanket scallop, or breafakeak without any exaggeration. These drawings turn into some kind of memory — a method to mark the day.
Where You Invent Patterns or Motifs
Choose some form and repeat it as a pattern. Make it a border. Allow it to wander over the page like creepers. You can form anything abstract or even meditative. On some mornings, that could be all that you require to enter into more composed headspace.
Why Doodling is a Creativity Generator at the End of the Day
This is why this little routine is useful not only in the morning.
It Develops Psychological Elasticity
When you doodle you are not thinking in words or reasoning. You are laboring in shape, flow and form. This assists in building visual thinking that comes with it creative flexibility. You will find classes and connections and ways of thinking that seem less linear.
It makes our mind more flexible during the day, particularly when solving some problem, brainstorming, or working creatively.
It Enhances Generation of Ideas
Doodling is not physical only. It is reflective as well. Occasionally thoughts come out of the forms — a mood, or a metaphor, a pattern, you did not foresee. Such images are the ones that can lead to the development of ideas that would work out in the form of writing, project or even a plan much later.
Creative Ideas to Keep Your Morning Going with Doodling
Making a daily doodling habit simple is one of the simplest ways, and one element is eliminating the stress of having to decide what to draw. It is not necessary to have a new idea every day. You only want a door — that is to set your hand writing. Prompts are helpful in that respect.
They are not rules. They’re invitations.
Experiment and Turn Over These Open-Ended Thoughts
Shape-Based Prompts
-
Cover a sheet with the only figures: circles, squares, or triangles.
-
Begin by a little form and develop around it, in sheets.
-
An attempt could be made to doodle using straight lines only, no closed shapes.
Emotion-Based Prompts
-
What would you mark out in terms of shape to denote calm?
-
How can frustration be represented (in patterns)?
-
And where you put the pale and kindly marks, let your mood of the day put them — sharp, soft, scattered, tight.
Imagination-Based Prompts
-
Draw a landscape which is not true.
-
Make your breakfast a cartoonish place.
-
Make up a new alphabet in shapes and line.
Observation-Based Prompts
-
Use abstract lines to draw the weather when looking through the window.
-
Draw the shape of your cup or bend in your blanket.
-
Put into visual marks the sound of the morning (birds, a kettle, silence).
Such prompts will occupy your mind and you need not to overthink. They prompt you into flow.
The Ways to Make the Habit Stick
The only thing is that it is easy to start. It is more difficult to maintain it. However, such a habit does not need any willpower but just repetition and comfort are needed.
Combine It With a Current Morning Anchor
Any action can be habituated in the quickest possible manner by associating it with something you are already doing. Consider your present one:
-
Doodling is a good idea even when you are making tea or coffee (and waiting for them to brew) each morning.
-
Those who have time to journal or meditate should doodle two minutes first.
-
In case you wake up early, take some few minutes in the morning when nobody is about and sketch.
The idea is to connect — not to enforce.
Maintain Your Equipment Prepared and in Sight
Leave the notebook at the table open or a pen at your side of the mug. The less you need to prepare the more chances you will be able to do it. Put aside your phone, or at least leave it in a different room till after you have finished your doodle.
There are case where individuals even doodle when standing at the counter, on the reverse of a receipt, or at the side of a to-do list. It is irrelevant as to the format. The act does so.
Smaller So Small You Cannot Fail
If you want to fill up a page of a sketchbook every morning, you will burn out. Rather simply allow yourself to do the tiniest version:
-
One inch of doodles.
-
There was one kind of a line that was reoccurring five times.
-
Sixty seconds sketch and that is it.
That maintains a low barrier and a high reward. On the majority of days, you will repay doing more. You still came, but even then you did not show up.
The Science of Low-Stakes Drawing
You do not need to be a neuroscientist to realize that drawing feels good. But it aids to realize why.
It Stimulates the Default Mode Network
The default mode network is that part of your brain that starts working when you are daydreaming, imagining things, thinking, etc. This area is activated by doodling; the solution enables you to access memory, emotion and creativity effortlessly.
It is the same zone that turns on when walking, when having a shower or when thinking in silence. Drawing uses it by occupying your hands as your thoughts remain unfixed.
It Reduces Anxiety and Stress
Some articles indicate that mild creative activity, in particular, repetitive drawing, lowers cortisol and controls the mood. It does not matter whether you have the feeling of being stressed or not, doodling in the morning brings about a balance of frenzy.
That tranquility transports into the rest of the day. Even a five-minute mindful doodling is reported by people to bring better focus, reduce anxiety, and make them more patient.
It Facilitates Flow
Flow is that state of mind when you are in a deep concentrate in what you do more than losing track on time, doubting yourself and doing everything that does not relate to the activity you are doing. The doodling you can do in the morning takes only a few minutes but conditioning your brain to go into a similar level. One can get into flow more easily later on during work, art or creative thinking.
What About the Usage of Doodles Besides the Morning?
When you create the habit you may find you turn your doodles into something bigger: idea maps, mood trackers, design seeds. Exempt of any pressure, they can be:
A Visual Diary
You do not even have to write anything and the doodles will begin to display life inside you, your visual mood journal. You may be able to recall how some days you looked back on and could tell by how sharp your lines were or how your shapes filled a sheet.
Idea Starters
And at other mornings you may doodle something queer — a creature or a pattern or a thing you cannot make out. Afterwards, the marks may be taken as the foundation of illustrations, stories, business names, or design elements.
Design and Project Motivation
Your doodles can nourish your work in case you are a creator (designer, writer, marketer, artist). An early morning sketch can turn into a book layout, or a logo concept, a social media concept or a product design.
What even they might not? That’s fine. The end product is not the aim. It is the custom of turning up.
Remarkable Problems and the Way to Deal with Them
All people bump into resistance. That is one part of it. This is what to do in order to continue:
I Skipped a Day and Felt That Now I Have Broken the Streak
The habit is never streak related. It is all about returning. Skipping a day does not take away the practice, it is only a rhythm that is there. The sole object wanted is to come back, tenderly.
I Am Embarrassed. They Sort of Look Like Nothing
They should not. And that is what distinguishes this with art. Not a single drawing is meant to be shared. Think of them as stretches to the mind. Nobody criticizes the manner in which you stretch your legs prior to a walk — but doodles are equal to this.
I Am Clueless of What I Can Draw
When you get empty, go back to choices: lines, dots, shapes, repeats. Or choose a prompt in this guide earlier. You also may trace your hand, do modern day with your coffee steam, or place your eyes shut, and draw.
The bad days are included as well.
My Opinion | A Smoldering Flame That Grows A Little Every Day
A doodler doodler pre-breakfast doodler session will not transform your life in an overnight. It will alter the way you start your days. With time, this place becomes a safe one, a habit that teaches you that creativity does not require attention, skill and an artistic work. It only requires a little window and the desire to appear.
You will begin thinking differently. You will see a lot more. You will be more in the present. And maybe best of all, you will start trusting your thoughts once again — yes, you will start believing in them again — that is, because you are now giving them a chance to settle.
