Episode 005

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Plan for Wonder; I’m Crystal, the talking head, founder, and creator of myLife Planners. The Canadian version is found at mylifeplanners.ca.

Apparently, National Handwriting Day came and went on January 23. I consider this a wonderful topic to dig into, or maybe we can ‘doodle’ together.

I googled details about the day and came across a few sites that suggested using this day as inspiration to re-explore the purity and power of handwriting.

Now I do want to acknowledge it is not my intention to be ableist. I understand many wonderful people for whom access to handwriting isn’t an option. But for those of us who do, we can benefit from this tactile skill.

• When you write notes by hand, notice how you are more selective about what you write down, focusing on the most important concepts and organizing your notes more effectively. Studies show that students who write notes by hand tend to remember and understand concepts better than students who type notes.

• You engage your motor skills as well as various parts of your brain and memory. So, if you don’t already, consider starting a hobby that involves handwriting to keep your mind sharp.

• Notice how stepping away from the computer and writing by hand reduces the opportunity for distractions by social media, email, or the internet.

• The mere act of writing by hand can have a calming, therapeutic effect. When you write down down your thoughts and feelings can calm your mind and help reduce anxiety and stress. Handwriting forces our brain to slow down to the pace of our pen, letting us take more time with our thoughts and reduce anxiety and overthinking.

• Studies have shown that those who write down their goals, especially by hand, are more likely to achieve them. Writing things down can help you clarify your goals and hold yourself accountable.

• And something I personally experience is how words printed on paper simply hold more weight. There is something ephemeral about digital communication - it’s just ideas floating around. But when I get a letter or read a physical book, the message now has weight physically and feels more important.

Some suggestions to re-explore pen to paper can be by simply starting a journal, writing a letter to a friend and dropping it in the mailbox, leaving a note for someone to brighten their day, imagine leaving a small note for your server the next time you go out that you leave with a tip. And my favourite is writing down all the responsibilities and to-do’s down in a list.

When I reached out to a customer to see how their new myWeek was working for them, I was blown away by her response, “I’m too scared to write in it!”

Now that is NOT what I want anyone to feel when they pick up a myLife tool. There is no wrong way to use them; if it’s messy, who cares? I know when I mess up I simply rip out the pages and start fresh, the advantage of the undated systems and the wire-o coil binding.

When opening up a brand new notebook, journal, or day planner, many people feel anxious about messing up the new pages with their own scrawl. In fact, I am going to assume many people feel less than enthused about the quality of their handwriting. The effects of perfectionism always deter any progress.

And the joy of writing anything down on the page is to give your ideas life. If the scribbles are legible to you - then that is enough. You are writing for your own benefit, not for someone to judge you.

And if you want better handwriting, then the only way to do that is to PRACTICE!

I consider myself from one of the luckier generations, a proud GEN-Xer here, who actually had handwriting as part of my grade school education. I’m not saying my handwriting script is any good. In fact, it evolved into a blend of script with basic print. Recently, while I have been creating visuals showing the myLife tools being used, I altered my type to a more printed style that eliminates any descenders in the type, a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters.

I envy those with precision in their writing, but if I held out for that in my scribble, none of my ideas would ever come to fruition.

One of the reason’s I like to describe the myLife tools as “worksheets for your life”, is to help hesitant scribers to own the space. The intention of a worksheet is meant to be a work in progress and imperfect. It’s a space to test out ideas and see how they play on the page versus floating ideas in your mind.

I also get questioned on why the print is such light grey. I’m a designer, and there is always a reason for choices when we create. This one is so what is written down is what stands out. The structure isn’t the focus, it’s what you write in it that matters.

It all ties into the vision for myLife tools to be simply your tool to create. It will never tell you what to do. Your choices of what to write down, what to do with that, and how that plays out in your day are all yours, my friend.

Thank you so much for being here.

The space you take up in the world matters, not just to me, but even more importantly, if you need reminding, you matter the most in your own life.