Here is the full transcript of Katie McCleary’s talk titled “The Benefits of Writing By Hand” at TEDxEustis conference.
In this talk, Katie McCleary emphasizes the profound impact of handwriting on cognitive processes and personal expression. She recounts her 25 years of experience encouraging diverse groups, from students to CEOs, to engage in creative writing. McCleary details her unique method, involving prompts from an orange suitcase, to stimulate natural, thoughtful writing.
She argues that handwriting aids in filtering and deepening critical thinking, contrasting it with the superficiality of digital typing. The talk includes a case study of ‘Derek,’ a businessman who discovers deep personal insights and emotional connections through handwriting. McCleary asserts that writing by hand improves academic performance, critical thinking, and social-emotional skills.
She concludes by urging the audience to embrace handwriting as a tool for better self-understanding, focus, and leadership.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Handwriting
I want to share with you a simple practice that can improve the quality of your thinking and help you focus on what really matters in a noisy world and a noisy mind. For the past 25 years, I have written with thousands of people, from elementary kids to students of all ages, to foster youth, to people in prison, to senators, CEOs, women escaping violence, veterans suffering from PTSD. I have written with electricians, biologists, truckers, people in the circus, NBA basketball players, and with everyday people just like yourself. Now, the process is creative.
I hand out composition notebooks and pens, and I bring out a prompt from my orange suitcase. Things like seashells and sand, spices to smell and taste, coast cards from foreign countries, and mundane objects like this one, a simple red kitchen spatula. Then I ask you to write whatever bubbles up. I want you to speak to the page in your natural mother tongue, and I want you to not overthink what you’re going to write about.
I ask you to let go of the feeling of being judged by red pens, the grammar police, or the gatekeepers, you know, the internal and external ones in your life. I set a timer, I repeat the instructions again, let go, try slow, be present, and just write whatever bubbles up. There is great power in gathering people to write and share stories, and there are a lot of TEDx speeches about this, right? Journaling to understand the self, finding our voice, being brave to share who we are, and truly becoming the authors of our own lives.
The Essence of Handwriting
I could decoupage this entire stage with gobs of printed research about the positive impacts that expressive writing can have on your life outcomes, yet there is one element that fuels all of this transformative magic that we underestimate. Is the magic in the method or the orange suitcase? Maybe. Is the magic in the gathering of the people in the group? Maybe. Is the magic in your facilitator? No. Like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”, the magic is inside you and quite literally in your hands.
I want you to brace yourself, guys. The magic is handwriting. It’s not typing or texting or screens or keyboards, talking into a device for transcription. It is no-tech. Now, I know that every generation bemoans the next generation for the choice of their communication tools, and this is not going to be a speech about spanking you about screen time or forcing us to go to the good old days or even creating a bunch of fear about how most kids can’t read or write cursive anymore. Yet we are losing something really precious when we default to write digitally versus pen and paper, from a cognitive perspective, that is.
So when you write by hand, you are accessing a different cognitive process than if you type or text. And the act of writing itself, it is super complicated brain work. You are intersecting different neurosensory experiences along with your fine motor skills. But wait, when I’m texting or typing, aren’t I using my hands, too? So what is the difference, you might be asking? Well, screens, keyboards, technology, devices, those were instruments that were built for speed, efficiency, and conformity.
Handwriting’s Unique Impact
Handwriting, it is none of those things. Handwriting is slow. Handwriting is messy. And your unique handwriting is as one of a kind as your DNA and your fingerprints. I mean, think about it. When you write by hand, you are directing unconsciously a movement that is precisely your own. You create a font of your own on that page. And it is beautiful, even when your hand shakes, even when you don’t like it.
Also, think about the power of your signature. You sign your name in ink as an ethical commitment and promise to uphold your end of a bargain. In this way, your handwriting, it is sacred, it is a part of you, it is meaningful.
Now I want you to meet Derek. Derek is a man in his late 40s, and he’s part of a mastermind group for small business owners. Derek’s a busy guy, and he already takes time out of his really hectic schedule to strategize with his peers about things like KPIs and Q4 finances and management issues, you know, all that like super fun stuff in life.
Well, Derek, he is serious business. I show up one day with my orange suitcase, and I’m going to give him and the fellow masterminds an experience about how they can leverage the power of their conscious and unconscious minds in order to be more intentional and impactful leaders. Derek grumbles loudly, passive-aggressively. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what creative writing has anything to do with my business or leadership.” I meet a lot of Dereks in my line of work, and that’s okay. I get it.
They don’t have time for this kind of nonsense. “Derek, that’s a great question. Would you mind if I just had seven minutes of your time, and then I promise you that when we debrief the activity, we will explore this connection together, and you will have your answer?” “Sure,” he says, smug, suspicious.
I smile because what Derek doesn’t know is that I, too, am serious business as an experienced entrepreneur and executive. So I’m repeating the instructions, right? Let go. Be present.
The Power of Intention in Handwriting
Pick an object. Don’t overthink it. See what bubbles up. He’s over at the orange suitcase, and he picks the red kitchen spatula. He returns to his seat. He shoves aside the notebook and pens, and he pulls up his phone, and he assumes the thumb text position. That’s when I add, “Oh, one more thing. Today, we’re going to write by hand.”
Derek, totally flustered because I’m the worst, I’m forcing him to write for seven minutes by his hand about a kitchen spatula, and he can’t use his phone, which now has probably zillions of messages on it that are screaming for his attention, and he was hoping for a distraction.
Derek says, ‘Well, you’re not going to be able to read my handwriting because my hand shakes.’ “That’s okay, Derek. I understand. I’m not going to read your handwriting today because what you write today is for you and you alone. So you said I could have seven minutes, right? We have a deal?” “Fine.” And so we begin, and the room goes quiet except for the soft sound of scribbles on paper. You see, and this is what I tell Derek and the mastermind group, when you write by hand, you are integrating your whole self into the experience, your brain, your mind, your body.
It is similar to how a symphony conductor pulls music out of an orchestra. Research shows that when you write by hand, you synthesize your thoughts better, and you’re able to make deeper, more quality connections between your outside world and your inside world. Let’s talk about this outside world, shall we? Every single second of the day, there are 11 million bits of information coming at you, and your mind and your brain can only process 40 to 50 bits of those 11 million bits of that information.
So, I want you to think about the fast-paced, crazy world that we live in. There is too much that vies for our attention, and so we are losing our focus because what matters? What matters? Which message, which person, which goal, which idea, which story, and which item on your never-ending to-do list actually matters for you to show up and do and be your best? Because there’s so much coming at you, and there is so much also that is swelling inside of you.
So let’s talk about what’s happening inside your brain. Your mind manufactures 6,200 thought worms a day. That is four thought worms a second, and yeah, that’s the technical term. Researchers have coined a thought worm. You do not have a simple, singular thought. You have one thought that has a bunch of associations surrounding that thought, and one association leads to another association, which leads to another association, which leads to another thought worm.
Let’s talk about the red spatula. At face value, it is a kitchen tool. However, it means something to you.
The Transformative Power of Handwriting
We are meaning-making machines. So, you look at that spatula, and you think, “Oh, my God, I love baking,” and the red reminds you of love, and that reminds you of these amazing heart-shaped cookies that you got to eat one year, and that reminds you of Valentine’s Day, and that one time and down the thought wormhole you go. When you write by hand, you are disrupting the thought worm explosion in your head. You are unconsciously sifting through all those associations to really focus in on what matters to you.
When you put pen to page, you are basically engaging in a filtration process that is natural and slow and deepens you into critical thinking. It is sifting out all of the junk and the noise, and it’s delivering you all the good stuff that will stick with you better if it’s written on the page than if you had put it into a device.
Environmental researchers have found time and time again that students of all ages learn and comprehend better when they take notes by hand rather than plugging them into a device. When you text or type or digitally write, you are engaging in muscle memory based off how you’ve memorized the keys on a keyboard to try to start transcribing.
You try to capture all the thought worms, all the information coming at you, and eventually, you can’t capture it all, and that device begins to whisper to you, “Hey, maybe we should multitask. Maybe we could check social media for a minute. Maybe we should send another message. Maybe we should get another thing done on our to-do list,” and oh, now you are not even paying attention anymore.
Balancing Digital and Handwriting in Education
Handwriting helps you focus. So, our educational system, it teaches typing because we have to prepare students for a digital world, and that is a great thing. However, we also need to teach critical thinking skills, and we need stuff to stick. We need them to make connections because that’s how they’re going to solve our future problems.
Guess what? We can have both. Devices are great things, but let’s not forget the power of writing by hand first. In 2010, I founded a literacy nonprofit called 916 Inc., and it places this method of writing, which is from the Amherst Writers & Artists Method, at the heart of our methodology for change. It’s been vetted by Oxford University. We use outside research evaluation tools, and when our kids pick up the pen, they write to prompts in a safe environment. Ninety-two percent of them completely improve their academic performance. Seventy-seven percent of them improve their academic behaviors, and 83 percent of them improve their social-emotional skills.
Derek’s Transformation Through Writing
And what about Derek? What did Derek improve? So, Derek was brave enough to share what he wrote with myself and the fellow masterminds, and what he wrote was a story in seven minutes about his mother hunched over a stove, stirring a pot of soup with a red kitchen spatula. He cried about halfway through. Derek’s a stoic, serious guy, and I got him. It’s my secret power. “Derek, tell me, what connection did you make between your leadership, how you want to show up in the world, and the story that you wrote?”
First, Derek apologized for his resistance, and then he said, “You know, I try to be of value. I try to be of value to my family, my community, my staff, my clients. It’s all I ever wanted to do. I want to be humble. I want to be useful.”
And remembering my mom in this way has really made me think about how I’m showing up every day. A lot more would unfold for Derek as he and I would become friends. Derek had an emotional, resonant experience when he handwrote. He deeply connected back to his past in this story.
He reaffirmed some associations he may have forgotten, and he made a new connection between his leadership and his backstory. And this propels him to move forward in the world in a different way. And along with it, he now is anchored by a symbol, which is very meaningful. Again, we are meaning makers.
The Symbolism and Daily Practice of Handwriting
This symbol to be humble, to be useful, to be of service. Derek now writes every day in the morning, seven minutes. It helps anchor him. And he would tell you that before his writing practice, he was a boiled frog. He didn’t know how stressed out, distracted, snarky, impatient he had become in his busy, hectic life.
His busy, hectic life, it doesn’t change because of this writing practice, but it allows him to show up better, to know what matters. He’s kinder, he’s a better listener, and he’s frankly a better leader.
So, I ask you, actually I don’t ask you, I implore you, that if you feel like a boiled frog in the pressure cooker of life, it’s pretty simple. Pick up the pen, let go, try slow, be present, and see what bubbles up. Thank you.