Coloring is cool, again!

Seven-year-old selves rejoice

During the recent holiday gift-giving season I discovered what many of you might already know: coloring books are cool again. And the seven-year-old Tim Cynova with his truck and tractor coloring book is psyched. Where have you been all these years my waxy-smelling Crayola companions?

These new coloring books are categorized as “adult coloring books”, they’re made with higher-end materials than my books of old, the lines on the page are much closer together, and they often appear accompanied by words like “mindfulness”, “anti-stress”, and “art therapy”. That, and now that I’m on to them, these books are seemingly everywhere.

I first stumbled upon adult coloring books while picking up some stocking stuffers at the MAD Museum gift shop. There on the shelf was Emma Farrarons’s tiny The Mindfulness Coloring Book: Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People. A few feet later I saw Min Heo and Gloria Fowler’s New York Coloring Book. (Which, for the record, is different than the Secret New York: Color Your Way to Calm book.)

A subsequent search on Amazon lead me down a rabbit hole of adult coloring book options. Then I checked iTunes to see if there were apps for adult coloring. Bam!

No surprise, a handful of people saw this trend coming with enough time to develop a whole host of coloring book apps. There’s ColorMe, Colorfy, Enchanted Forest, and my personal favorite, Pigment. (When paired with my Jot and iPad the Pigment app provides a surprisingly realistic coloring experience. Most coloring apps do the fill work for you. With Pigment you still have a chance to end up with a hand cramp after a particularly intense coloring session.)

Adult coloring seems like a fun throwback and an enjoyable way to pass the time, but are there real benefits to breaking out the Crayolas?

With this question in mind, a couple of Google searches later, I was combing through a whole host of articles. Articles from The Atlantic and Medical Daily espousing the scientific benefits of coloring. And an interesting article written by art therapist Cathy Malchiodi in Psychology Today explaining exactly why adult coloring is not meditation or mindfulness.

I was particularly intrigued by the neuroscientists quoted in Medical Daily who studied the physiological effects on people when coloring:

The most amazing things occurred — we started seeing changes in heart rate, changes in brainwaves,” [neuropsychologist Dr. Stan Rodksi] told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, adding that part of this neurological response in “colorists” comes from the repetition and attention to patterns and detail associated with coloring.

Dr. Joel Pearson, a brain scientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia presented a different explanation for the therapeutic effect: Concentrating on coloring an image may facilitate the replacement of negative thoughts and images with pleasant ones.

“You have to look at the shape and size, you have to look at the edges, and you have to pick a color,” Pearson said. “It should occupy the same parts of the brain that stops any anxiety-related mental imagery happening as well. … Anything that helps you control your attention is going to help.”

What do I make of the adult coloring book trend and any potential benefits in the workplace? While I’m not a neuroscientist or an art therapist, here are a few things I know about the workplace:

• It can be a stressful place that from time to time feels like a pressure cooker. (I can just hear some of you saying, “If your ‘time-to-time’ means ‘always', than yes.”)
• What’s a typical day at the office look like? Arrive. Work hard, work hard, work hard until the point of exhaustion. Go home.
• We seldom take breaks except the one when we get up to grab our lunch from the Seamless delivery guy and then quickly return to our desk.

In this hectic environment, we rarely take a few minutes to clear our mind, relax, and reset even though being mindful has been shown to have positive benefits for our output. (Don’t take my word for it: article, article, article.) Inspiration, innovation, and experimentation often don’t coexist in a place where people are so stressed and overwhelmed that they can’t see straight. Coloring might not officially be mindfulness, meditation, or therapy, but if it can help us unplug for a bit, put us in a relaxing mindset that’s calming and even therapeutic than I’m game to give it a try in the office. Let’s throw this spaghetti against the wall in the spirit of experimentation and bettering the work environment.

A large part of my work is dedicated to providing our amazing people at Fractured Atlas with the things they need in order to do their best work. Sometimes that means buying someone a standing desk, or supplying people with laptops instead of desktops, or having 75lbs of coffee on-hand during the year. Other times it involves experimentation: circulating the board packet to all staff members in the spirit of trust and transparency so each person can see how her work fits into the larger picture, or providing people with unlimited vacation days so they don’t have to worry about day counts when trying to take a break to recharge, or sometimes it means buying a stack of coloring books and pencils to leave around the office.

Who knows where this coloring “beta test” will lead. Maybe to a handful of broken pencils and a few half-colored-in pages in a dusty stack of books. Maybe we’ll hang a few colorful pieces on the office refrigerator. Maybe a Coloring Club will be created to go along with our other clubs at Fractured Atlas. I’m not sure.

What I do know is that most of us pair our challenging work in the office with creative pursuits or other activities outside of the office to clear our head, recenter, and recharge. Sometimes though those activities start to lose out to other things during our increasingly hectic schedules. Sometimes we just need to change up the routine to keep things fresh and interesting so your brain can reset. If adult coloring in the office can help us pause and refresh, than by all means, take a break and pass me the Crayolas.