How Writing by Hand Helps You Become a Smarter Problem Solver

And Why a Journal Is a Handy Tool for Mapping Your Way to Inspired Answers

How we solve a problem says something about how well we recognize our brain’s capacity for creativity, and whether we are smart enough to harness it.

A problem, wise men and women say, can be an opportunity, a blessing in disguise, something you didn’t know you needed, because, why would we want a problem?

Maybe it’s not that we want it in the sense that we actively seek it and throw ourselves into problematic situations, but rather, that we don’t recoil from it and walk away, or sweep it under the rug. That maybe we even welcome it to some degree, because deep down inside, we need the challenge.

So how to deal with a problem? Better yet, how to turn a situation around and make it turn us into something more than what we were before?

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” Albert Einstein said. Writing about a given problem can offer that different perspective, that different line of thought that makes it possible to see a solution where we thought there was none. Well worth noting, though: if we caused the problem, we better cop to it first, get that facepalm moment out of the way, so we can move on to inspired problem solving.

True, some form of big, decisive action may make us feel productive, but not all problems require an immediate solution. A great many require us to sleep on them, or better yet, to sit down to write our way through them. Because rather than do all our thinking before we write, we can actually write in order to think. Which is a good idea when we’re engaged in some problem solving—especially if we write by hand and thus activate that wonderful hand-to-brain connection that gets our brain multitasking sans any form of electronic distraction.

Through three different studies, Princeton University researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer found that “students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand.” And in a replication and extension study by Morehead, Dunlosky, and Rawson, their participants’ performance on the conceptual questions “was significantly greater for those who took notes longhand than by laptop; that is, a longhand-superiority effect occurred for the encoding function of note-taking.”

We owe ourselves this one wise move of tackling conceptual, big-picture questions posed by a given problem using nothing but pen and paper. Sure, a blank sheet of paper may intimidate a lot of us. But on the flip side, a blank sheet of paper can be exhilarating. All that space . . . Haven’t we been actually looking for that very space all this time?

We don’t actually have to compose essays; rather, lists are useful in problem solving. Pros and cons; to-do lists; itemized, tabled, or diagrammed goals. Or we can draw or doodle as well as write. We’re free to do so. No one’s watching, no one’s going to withhold a Like.

The point is this: The clarity offered by words on paper, amplified by the absence of distraction, helps you to inventory your ideas, the things you know, even your beliefs, to see which ones need to be thrown out. As Visa founder Dee Hock said, “Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.” That creativity? We need it. Because we have to be creative to be great problem solvers.

Ready to tackle a problem, or challenge, with some new skills? As for how to get your hands on a journal to get started on writing in order to think, that’s not a problem.

Explore more of the benefits of writing by hand in our next article.