Sharpen Your Pencil
Time for some existential drafting?
It feels like everyone is returning to analog.
In last week’s Matter of Opinion podcast from The New York Times, opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen described her recent interest in pencils. She’s shifted from digital tools to more analog media—paper journals and books, print magazines and handwritten notes.1
Polgreen’s pencils are part of a larger trend. During the uncertainties of the pandemic, many began journaling, finding solace through writing routines. Writing in a journal helps manage stress in the same way as exercise. And while it’s probably true that bullet journaling is just market productivity disguised as self-care, there can’t be much harm in self-reflection through handwriting.
I’m part of the trend, spending more time writing, brainstorming, and reading on paper. I like the openness of a blank page, that sparkle of dopamine from the possibilities of turning a new leaf. Mistakes, misdirections, ideas that go nowhere—totally fine. It’s just a piece of paper!
Before I was seduced in my twenties by the slick interfaces of task management apps, I did note taking by hand. Well into high school, I’d handwrite essays before typing them up. Committing something to print felt too final until it had been drafted, reviewed, and edited by hand.
I shared the worry of the great comedian Mel Brooks, who expressed his anxiety around typed writing in a recent Atlantic interview:
“It seemed to me that anytime it was typed, it was finished… Because I couldn’t type, I would write in longhand. And then some secretary would type, and I’d say, ‘Whoa, looks good.’ The look of it was good. That’s why type is dangerous.”
For Brooks, typed writing conveys completion. Printed ink or digital type is far more precise than our manual scribbles, lending content credibility and finality. But when a particular textual approach appears final, it inclines us to stop exploration.
By jumping to polished forms, we risk skipping needed exploration.
I work for a design organization and one of our most frequent mistakes is rushing to visually represent the feature or function we’re trying to build.
The haste is understandable; markets encourage fast-moving mediocrity for the sake of quarterly earnings reports. Since we work on digital products, it’s easy to quickly mock up an interface. And thus we show progress, however superficial it might be, of a design concept moving forward.
This neglects deeply considering the concepts we’re trying to communicate. In her thoughtful Design by Definition, Elizabeth McGuane observes that as teams build digital products, they “dwell on the details of an interface, rather than on what the whole actually communicates.” The challenge is the group may be confused or misaligned about the core concepts beneath the design’s surface, resulting in a garbled customer experience.
Moreover, by laying out a solution we start heading down a specific path. If we’re not ready, we’re closing off other, potentially better avenues for exploration. That’s why type is dangerous.
Expanding this outwards, we can realize that “type” is a way of finalizing decisions. Here we might find some insight for our active lives.
By making decisions we open up some possibilities and shut down others. Choosing to train for this trail ultra means you can’t do that road marathon. Spend the summer hiking the Appalachian Trail and you won’t get time in the bike saddle. Choices mean sacrificing some options for others.
How we decide to spend our time sets us on determined paths that will condition future decisions. The challenge is that as humans, time is our most finite resource.
Right now, my wife and I are in a transitional state with our two-month-old daughter. We’re figuring out new routines, new ordering of our lives, trying to plan within the interstices of care, chores, and work. As a goal-oriented person, the flux is unsettling. Without objectives to work toward, I get listless. I worry I’m just marking time, listlessly pacing through the days.
But really, we’re just in a pencil phase.
We’re in sketching mode: brainstorming, exploring, and assessing what comes next. Far better to re-conceptualize moments of flux as periods of existential drafting—scribblings and sketches for the future. Not having big goals can be good because goals mean heading in a set direction. And we’re not ready for that yet.
I have some ideas for running adventures, but need time to assess their feasibility and value. We’re drafting out possibilities, weighing what we value to determine where we want to go.
Maybe you’re in a similar place, unsure of what’s next. It’s scary, but also exciting because it means possibilities lie before you.
You’re in your pencil phase, a blank canvas ready for noodles and scribbles, not yet ready for type. But eventually you will be. You’ll put down your pencil, launch yourself forward, and the world will be better for it.
Thanks for reading.
Weekly run
Breakfast Club meets every Thursday for an 8-mile run:
When and Where: 6:30am at Lake Temescal in Oakland, CA
Pace: ~7:00 to 7:40 pace with some hills
For updates, email Katie Klymko at katieklymko at gmail.com to join Breakfast Club’s WhatsApp chat. More info
For more local events, join our Strava club, East Bay Strava Runners
Tweets of the week
Parting thought
“Gentlemen, we have got to have a plan. We must have a plan even if it is wrong.”
- Quenton Cassidy, in Once a Runner
That’s it for this week! Follow me on Notes, Strava, and what’s left of Twitter.
“Hot-Cold” segment starts at 32:30.
I also see a rush towards the digital and the final designs instead of exploring ideas and avenues through pencil sketches and visual communication. Running with the first idea may work occasionally but what if it’s the tenth or eleventh idea that is the the right solution. Sketches indicate a start and exploration phase where as wireframes and prototypes indicate decision already made which make it much harder to change direction. ✊🏽
Ah yes, I have found The Club of Breakfast.