Benefits of Handwriting: How Handwriting Can Boost Your Productivity

In the world of laptops and mobile devices, it’s hard to imagine anyone using the good old handwriting technique. Most people consider it to be a charming skill, but the vast majority still finds it obsolete and impractical in the 21st century.

But there is a lot more to penmanship than just writing.

As a matter of fact, it turns out that handwriting can boost your productivity in a number of different ways, making this activity much more useful than sheer typing. Different studies prove the potential of cursive, but we will only point out a few examples:

• Handwriting creates a drain on mental resources needed for higher-level aspects of writing such as attention to content, elaboration of details, and organization of ideas.
• In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates sensation, movement control, and thinking.
• Handwriting is important for early recruitment in letter processing of brain regions known to underlie successful reading, so it may facilitate reading acquisition in young children.

Longhand writing is obviously beneficial, but how does it make people more productive? Keep reading to find out as we are about to show you seven benefits of handwriting.

Handwriting Helps You to Concentrate

This activity encourages you to concentrate on what you are supposed to do instead of procrastinating and focusing on the things around you. It successfully eliminates distractions and enables writers to delve deeper into the subject.

Now, the real question is this: how handwriting can boost someone’s concentration?

The answer is simple. Unlike typing, cursive writing is not an automated activity. When we type letters using digital devices, we basically repeat well-known moves and don’t think about it at all. On the other side, handwriting forces people to pay attention because they have to create each word single-handedly.

Every letter matters here, so you have to stay focused 100% of the time. A lot of individuals use anti-procrastination apps these days to ensure peace of mind and concentrate on their work, but handwriting might as well be much a simpler and cheaper solution.

Handwriting Makes Brainstorming Easier

Brainstorming is a mental activity that enables you to generate fresh ideas all by yourself in a relatively short time. However, the process is even faster and easier if you write down your random thoughts, suggestions, and concepts. It allows you to scrabble and note alternative proposals, no matter how strange or meaningless they might seem.

Once again, this is not something you can do by opening a Word document and typing in different ideas. It's because digital writing is too sterile and mechanic. Using your own hand to write can set you free from creative barriers and serve as a genuine idea generation booster.

Handwriting Improves Memory

Do you know that handwriting can improve your memory? It’s a well-known scientific fact and it reveals that cursive writing strengthens an individual’s potential to retain information and figure out fresh concepts.

Namely, studies show that typing and handwriting produce pretty much the same results when it comes to the sheer number of facts students are able to write down. But the big difference is that handwritten notes help students to truly understand the concepts and ideas. Once again, it happens because typing is automatic, while longhand writing demands much more effort and engagement from students.

See Also: 7 Tips on How to Improve a Child’s Working Memory

Handwriting Strengthens Creativity

Another benefit of handwriting is that it can strengthen your creativity. First of all, it encourages you to exercise and improve results over time. After all, we do understand that practice makes perfect. But this is not the only way handwriting enhances creative skills.

Various studies show that longhand writing actually boosts cognitive processes in the brain and forces people to make logical connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. This is exactly what happens to human beings when they want to perform any other type of intellectual activity. They have to establish relationships between different ideas and find a way to make them work together.

Handwriting Makes Mind Mapping Simpler

Mind mapping is a precious mental activity that helps to organize ideas, thoughts, and concepts into visually appealing diagrams. As such, mind mapping is perfect for complex projects demanding a lot of planning and analyses.

While you can find tons of mind mapping tools online, none of them can assist you in planning, scheduling, and organizing ideas as quickly and effectively as the plain “pen and paper” technique. Handwriting makes it easy to test a number of alternatives in no time, thus, helping you to prepare and launch professional projects very productively.

Handwriting Impacts Personal Motivation

Cursive writing creates a special feeling of engagement and involvement. Unlike alienated computer-based typing, handwriting brings the notion of something deeply personal and unique. This is exactly why people tend to approach it more carefully and studiously.

For instance, a handwritten to-do list feels like a promise that you give to yourself. It’s a big motive for most people to treat it with all due respect and try to fulfill every item on the list as planned. It is only one but very significant example of how longhand writing impacts self-motivation and persistence.

See Also: 3 Writing Techniques to Increase your Self-Esteem

Handwriting Slows Down Intellectual Aging

Handwriting does not only bring you short-term benefits. On the contrary, this type of activity also helps you to nurture your intellectual stamina. It can help you stay productive in the long run. It keeps you fresh and agile, so you can successfully cope with mental tasks even as you get older.

This is a long-term effect of cursive writing that most people neglect, but it is actually very important if you want to stay mentally competitive after decades of hard work. It makes you a better employee and slows down the intellectual aging process in general.

Conclusion

The power of handwriting is immense, but it is often neglected in the world dominated by mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. However, the fact remains that longhand writing is extremely beneficial and useful to individuals who are trying to boost personal productivity.

In this article, we explained seven ways how handwriting can impact your achievements and make you a more efficient person. Give it a chance and you will probably notice the same effects very soon!