> CD #113: Hands-on summer
A few months back, I read this article (gift link) about how doing intricate hands-on work could improve both our cognition and mood, but many of us have replaced that kind of beneficial hand work (handiwork?) with tapping and scrolling, which are much less sophisticated movements and don’t really seem to offer the same benefits.
In the digital age, we risk a flattening of our physical skills, as well as our experience of the world, for the sake of technological ease—not unlike that now infamous Apple ad where all the wonderfully complicated tools and instruments of human creativity are compressed into a simple-to-operate, ultra-thin device.
The science is not totally conclusive, but I believe I do feel a difference when I use my hands for physical outputs vs. digital ones. Although writing these dispatches by pressing a bunch of keys on a laptop can be fulfilling, it does not give me the same level of satisfaction as putting ink down on paper or playing the ukulele—or even other less creative hands-on tasks like sewing and mending. When I do something with my hands, when I manipulate real-life tools to achieve something tangible, it feels like I’ve really done something.
The article notes that, in addition to the mental health benefits, working with our hands might also engage our brains more fully:
In a small study of university students published in January, Norwegian researchers compared the neurological effects of writing by hand with typing on a keyboard. Handwriting was associated with “far more elaborate” brain activity than keyboard writing, the researchers found.
“With handwriting, you have to form these intricate letters by making finely controlled hand and finger movements,” said Audrey van der Meer, one of the authors of that study and a professor of psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Each letter is different, she explained, and requires a different hand action.
Dr. Van der Meer said that the act of forming a letter activates distinctive memories and brain pathways tied to what that letter represents (such as the sound it makes and the words that include it). “But when you type, every letter is produced by the same very simple finger movement, and as a result you use your whole brain much less than when writing by hand,” she added.
Dr. Van der Meer’s study is the latest in a series of research efforts in which she and her colleagues have found that writing and drawing seem to engage and exercise the brain more than typing on a keyboard. “Skills involving fine motor control of the hands are excellent training and superstimulation for the brain,” she said. “The brain is like a muscle, and if we continue to take away these complex movements from our daily lives — especially fine motor movements — I think that muscle will weaken.” While more research is needed, Dr. Van der Meer posits that understimulation of the brain could ultimately lead to deficits in attention, memory formation and problem solving.
Whether future research determines that working with my hands is better for my brain or not, I already have enough lived experience to know that I am happier when I’m doing less scrolling and tapping. So I’m declaring the next two months my hands-on summer, where I will try to use my hands in more interesting ways on a daily basis: to build, to craft, to draw, to play, to shape, to fold, to archive, to fix, to mend, to garden, to carry, and to soothe. Maybe I’ll even clean the shower grout, lol.
I am taking a summer break from Closet Dispatch and will meet you back here in the fall, before the launch of All Our Ordinary Stories on Sept. 24. (Eep! Preorder now!) Publishers Weekly recently noted its “gentle curiosity, wry humor, and moments of aching regret,” which is as much a description of my person as it is my book. I can’t believe they picked up what I was putting down.
I hope you all have a restful summer season. Remember: we were made for more than just mashing at buttons. Use those hands!
:) Teresa
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