I used to have decent handwriting. Somewhere between boarding school cursive and my first startup, I lost it.
Honestly, I didn’t notice until someone handed me a pen at a signing, and I was mildly embarrassed by what appeared on the page.
That sent me down a rabbit hole.
Turns out handwriting is not just a motor skill. It’s a record. Indiana University researchers showed that when we write by hand, our brains engage in ways typing simply cannot replicate. Memory. Language. Learning. All lit up simultaneously.
My handwriting had drifted into something efficient but soulless. Optimized for speed. Not for thought.
There’s a graphology argument that your script reveals your psychology. The slant, the pressure, the size. I’m skeptical of the more dramatic claims. But I do think there’s something to the idea that the way we do one small thing reflects the way we do many things.
I’ve started writing more by hand again. Journaling. Client notes. Ideas that need space to breathe before they hit a screen.
It’s slower. I slowed down. It is never about getting everything down. That’s the point. It was about what matters. Digesting thought and intentionally capturing it.
There si he tenmptation to type. Even faster, why not use voice-to-speech? Yet how much means anything?
Here’s what I find quietly fascinating: you can change your handwriting at any age. It takes intention and repetition. Which, now that I think about it, is exactly how character is formed.
Your handwriting became what it is. Does it describe what you hope it does about you?
