Focusing via Pen & Paper

In less than a century, I wonder if we’ve developed technology to the point where QWERTY keyboards feel more familiar to our touch than putting pen to paper. With the newest iPads becoming closer to what laptops can do, we’ve improved on the clay tablets that ancients like the Greeks used.

If human progress were to be measured by doing more and doing it faster, then the iPad would be indicative of that vs. the good ol’ clay tablet. I would rather have the iPad for sure.

Progress, or appearance of at least, seems to have been made on the realm of focusing as well. Some would say the use of various drugs, project apps, task software, etc… are all progress in the area of focusing and the related activity of deciding what to focus on.

But I wonder if the simplest solution had always been the pen and paper.

There are all kinds of papers publishing why writing something down leads to greater insight and retention than typing things down. Something related to motor patterns programming the subconscious…or something near it.

I believe it to be true because it’s worked better for me and I imagine this is true for many. To invert it, I haven’t met anyone who said typing helped them learn, retain, and think better than writing.

Some authors still like to write their first draft with a pen and paper. I know I went through multiple back and forths between typing my daily journals until I finally went back to paper.

But there is something about actually putting thoughts down onto a blank canvas. Maybe it’s how the mind looks at the whole page. Something that doesn’t have to start on the left-hand side like a word document, a page that can have lines and arrows and writing everywhere.

I first thought it might be because writing with a pen and paper felt more natural. But maybe it’s more about feeling connected with the mind. This is because when I type out a paragraph of thoughts….I don’t remember what I even said and I have to review it. But when I do the same in my notebook, I don’t have to. This is why I forgive myself even if my penmanship is awful because I still remember much of what I wrote in my journal….and it’s the same as being encrypted with my awful handwriting.

This connectedness may come from the unique motor pattern. See, when we type the word “platypus”, it’s just 8 clicks. They might come from different fingers but it’s the same 8 clicking motions. But when we have to write it out, each action has to purposely create each letter with our hand. The hand goes up, down, and in a loop to write the word out and I think this creates the unique connection with my mind.

Making pros and cons list comes top of mind when I think about the effectiveness of pen to paper. I’d make it often for decisions whether it’s career, vacation, where to live, even what to eat on a Saturday night. Over time, it became clear that it was never a game of which side had the most points.

It was always about which of the dozens of points on either side mattered the most. Usually, that single point was all that mattered and it always felt easier writing it out in a notebook.

Whether it’s brainstorming on a whiteboard with a marker or doing the fear setting exercise favoured by the stoics, writing things out seems to take on its own journey in our mind….as if writing is a way of our mind’s subconscious processing things.

I read that Churchill coped with his worries and anxieties by writing down all the things on his mind. He realized that most were small, immaterial, and not anything worth worrying about but that it revealed one or two things he should probably focus his efforts on.

Flushing thoughts out seems vital to figuring out what’s important and it seems a simple process of sitting down without distractions to work it out with a pen and paper is the obvious tried and true way of identifying what the important things are. This and time. They seem to be the antidote the figuring out what one should focus on.