I’m writing this article with a pen. And not just a regular pen. A quill pen.
It’s a goose feather I’ve carved with a straight razor into a sharp point and dipped in ink.
I’m doing this because I spent a year trying to live like the Founding Fathers. It was an attempt to learn whatever life wisdom I could from them — and one of my favorite parts of that year was writing with ye olde quill pen.
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There are downsides to writing with a quill.
My desk is so splattered with ink stains it looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
My wife hates the squeak, squeak, squeak sound of the quill as it moves across the page.
But there are also huge upsides.
Writing in longhand changed the way my brain worked. It’s a different experience than writing on my laptop.
When writing longhand, there are no dings or chimes or pop-up ads about baldness cures to distract me.
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Writing longhand allowed my mind to go into a state of flow.
It helped me to think more deeply and explore the nuances of a topic.
It lends itself to a slower, less impulsive style of writing.
The Founders hated what we now call “hot takes.”
They wanted cool reason to triumph over immediate emotional responses.
They didn’t tap out angry-face emojis on their phones and press send, then regret it seconds later.
They wrote letters. Then they sealed them with wax.
Then they brought them to the post office. The process provided a cooling-off period for their thoughts. It allowed them to have cold takes, not hot ones.
I’m not suggesting we all go back to quill pens and wax seals. But I do advocate for more writing and thinking offline.
A 21st-century pencil or pen can accomplish the same ends.
And it’s not just my preference. There’s some scientific evidence to support the idea that writing by hand benefits your thinking.
As one recent study said, “The precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning.”
In other words, if you take notes by hand, you are more likely to remember the information.
But even if you don’t write by hand, there are still ways to moderate your thinking. I recommend downloading software that cuts your computer off from the internet for an hour or two. (I use a program called Freedom when I write on my computer.)
Programs such as this give you time to process your thoughts, to digest them and come up with context. I believe that measured and moderated thinking is even more important during an election year such as this one — when passions run high.
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Often, I’ll write a response to an email or a social media post, but I’ll do it when my computer is offline. When my laptop is back online and I’m ready to send that email or post that note, I’ll re-read it. More often than not, I’ll revise my response.
I’ll tone down the anger or frustration, and use a style that’s more likely to lead to a productive solution.
I’m always grateful for that waiting period.
The Constitution was written offline, of course. And I’m thankful for that.
Imagine if Madison, Hamilton and the other delegates tried to write the Constitution on a Google doc?
Or worse, if they had done it by instant message?
I don’t think we’d have a Constitution.
I don’t think we’d have a country.
They would never have come to the compromises or invested thoughtfulness into the document that was needed.
Slowness is not a universally good thing.
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I wouldn’t want to return to horse-drawn ambulances or 300-baud modems.
But there are parts of modern life that would benefit from an enforced speed limit — and one of them is writing and thinking.
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“The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning” by A.J. Jacobs (2024) is published by Crown.
