Overcoming doodling

I have a problem. I doodle. A lot. On everything.

Doodling has been a habit my entire life. As a kid, I liked to draw – I spent entire recesses filling notebooks with drawings of horses. Those concentrated drawing efforts eventually waned into a sort of passive, cartoonish doodling. In high school and college, I tended to doodle in the margins of notebooks and worksheets. This was never a problem. It was just a thing my hands did while my brain focused on the subject at hand.

I have come to understand that I am a kinesthetic learner – I learn by doing. Visual learning is also easy for me, but auditory learning is almost impossible. The tactile occupation of doodling helps me better focus on listening. It gives my hands and eyes something to do without taking brain power from what I'm hearing.

Unfortunately, this long-established auditory coping mechanism has followed me into my professional life. In meetings, usually with more than three participants, I have this uncontrollable habit of doodling. I say uncontrollable because I've been trying to control it. I'm tired of seeing cartoons on every piece of paper. It is just not professional. I know this.

I also know that the very act of doodling makes me look disengaged, and I was given some very helpful feedback that this habit could be undermining me professionally. Although those who know me know that doodling is not a sign of absenteeism, others cannot be expected to know that. They, understandably, react to me as if I'm checked out.

I became vaguely aware of this in college when I noticed that professors tended to dislike me at first and only respected me after I'd turned in the first assignment (i.e., when they realized I was actually a good student). It didn't matter much then, as long as my work was solid. Now, though, it matters.

Oh, and I have another unpleasant component to my listening skills: when I'm not doodling (and even sometimes when I am), my eyes can kind of gloss over/lose focus, like I'm lost in a whole other world (see illustration). Fun, eh?

Bottom line: I need to find a way to make my body language communicate that I actually am engaged during meetings. And I could use some tips for how to make that happen.

Obviously, I need to work on eye contact. Figuring out where to look during large-group meetings is daunting, but I'm told this gets easier with practice.

My primary concern, however, is how to quit doodling, ideally without disrupting my ability to listen. Ideas on the table:

• Take copious notes. This is an idea from a coworker. It would give me a physical occupation and a record of what happened during the meeting. Potential problems include slow handwriting, a listening barrier in the lag between hearing words and getting them on paper, and a decreased value of notes in general, as I currently tend to write only things that I'd like to follow up on later. So far, this is the strongest contender.
  
• Become a fiddler – pens, trinkets, etc. This would give me a physical occupation that requires little to no mental capacity. Potential problem is that it's really, really annoying. Is that better or worse?
  
• Quit cold turkey. This could possibly work for me because I respond well to absolutes. Potential problem would be a decreased ability to listen.
  

I'd love to hear from anyone else who has overcome doodling. What has worked for you? What hasn't?

What coping tips do folks have for the auditorily challenged? How do the kinesthetic/visual (and introverted) types get through meetings?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.