Photo: Geber86/Istock.com.

Forget about taking notes during meetings; try drawing instead. According to a study from the University of Waterloo in Canada, they've found that between drawing and writing, the former is a more effective way to remember information.

For the study, researchers presented student participants with a list of simple words like “apple” and they were given 40 seconds to either draw or write it out repeatedly. Afterwards, students were asked to freely recall as many words as possible from the list in 60 seconds.

The result? Participants were able to recall twice as many words when they drew them compared to when they wrote them out.

“We discovered a significant recall advantage for words that were drawn as compared to those that were written,” said study lead author Jeffrey Wammes. “We labelled this benefit 'the drawing effect' which refers to this distinct advantage of drawing words relative to writing them out."

There's also good news for those who are artistically disadvantaged; the quality of the drawings makes no difference. 

The findings were published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.