Typewriting vs. Handwriting

My story on the issues of thinking fast & slow.

For as long as I remember, perhaps around my pre-teen years, my handwriting went from legible to illegible. From orderly to chicken-scratch. And my teachers did not discourage this. Nor did I know why my handwriting sucked. I did not truly care, albeit I did envy the girls whom wrote nicely.

Aside from the solid argument that girls were taught to be perfect, boys were taught to be brave — in which I agree with and defend as a good observation and course correction. There is a strong argument that my handwriting has taught me about myself and my thinking.

Onset of the technological era and the age of typing on keyboards overriding the writing by pen/pencil/calligraphy, etc. Our emphasis and usefulness of writing by hand has declined. And no one particularly cares to listen to those linguistics and literature folks whom still push for handwriting to be a thing.

Children growing into cellphones definitely do not see the necessity of writing by hand and thus, the results of their writing is likely to show decline in the years to come (particularly with an Ontarian government in austerity over our public education system, might I note that government is run by private school privileged individuals)

And as such, we find ourselves typing fast, writing sloppy, and not giving a crap about it. Our vocabulary declines with the lack of in-person face conversations of intellectual, and the decline of reading — which I will touch on too.

So why does my handwriting suck?

It’s obvious, if one stopped to think about it. Emphasis on ‘stopping to think about it’. Our minds are constantly preoccupied by notifications from our mobile phone, charging it, glued to its news feeds and social media feeds.

And really, it’s obvious if you compare the arguments in the Daniel Kaheman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Our slow thinking has seen little usage. In the personal life, in our interpersonal life, and consequentially in our workplaces. People are reacting, acting without thinking, and arguing with calm reflection and awareness of self and thought itself.

Truth be told, our technological age does not foster slow thinking, but fast reacting. Our reactions far outweigh and far out-effect our outcomes. We’re encouraged to react because it has an instantaneous effect on our surroundings. So we just react.

And we think it’s making impact because our social media DRIVES this reaction into reality so quickly that we justify it as ‘effective impact/work done’ on our world and thus form a vicious cycle of let’s keep reacting.

In the end, if we stop to look at our elder scholars and aged thinkers, wisdom has reached out to us, in its slow meddling, well thought out manner, to remind us, we are thinking too fast and speed damages efficiency, because we’re not all that smart — despite what we think we are. Our smarts does not translate to wisdom, until you’ve thoroughly evaluated a case or situation or concept to its extent. With the power of information comes the responsibility of responding deliberately, purposely, with measure. Our instinctual thinkers, our perceptives and our judgers, all ought to stop and listen to the thoughtfuls, the meticulous evaluators. They are the ones whom simply do not operate fast. And they’re not dumb, they’re just more calculating than you, dummy.

And so, if the rant has not revealed to you my confessions, than I shall do so now. I write sloppy because I think VERY fast, I’m an extremely good reactor, my intuition is off the charts, beyond my own understanding. I have a good ‘feeling’ over things, but need to slow down in order to detect the points that make up my ‘feeling’. And so, I find when I write slower, when I slow down my thought process, when I let myself type, write, think slower, get myself off the treadmill that social media, technology, and life has been accelerating all of us on, I get more insightful, more encompassing argument for why I write sloppy.

Because I do not wait for my pen to catch up. And as such, my hand cramps from trying to keep up. Timed exams in highschool for essays, tells you, tells me, just why we cramp. We’re racing. We’re encouraged to sprint full out on points, or we can’t keep up.

I type extremely fast. And when you’re reacting, it’s a better note taker. But when you’re thinking thoroughly, writing has its merits too. It all depends on which brain you want to turn on. Your fast thinking or your slow thinking.

Life is a marathon. You can’t win racing. I guess you can race in intervals, but even that is tactical and requires stop and start. And such, when I want to get my point across, I learn to slow down. I learn Obama’s pause, my slowdown in writing, is all contributing to finding not just the right words, but the right thought across, delivered concretely, without failure, without misterpretation, with measured reveal — only what you want to say, and not more. With purpose, without bias when needed, and with bias when wanted.

So next time you sloppy writers are cramping from writing and can’t even retrace what you wrote down in meeting notes, realize you don’t need to race. Slow down, listen, compile the information, note take with purpose, concisely. And you will not be misread.

Thank you.