I practiced writing with my non-dominant hand for 100 hours
Part 3 — A few tips I found useful
The work itself is pretty straightforward: The idea is to write as you normally do, but to hold the pen or pencil with the hand you don’t usually use.
For those of you who decide to give it a go, here are a few tips that I found helpful.
- Set big and small goals — Set your main goal (for example, writing for 100 hours over the course of a year), but keep your goal for each session reasonable (no more than one hour of practice a day, for example). This will help you stick to it. Even if you feel like exceeding the time set for the session, I found it’s better to stop for the day. You will already be looking forward to the next time and this helps keep the momentum going.
- Set realistic goals — This one sounds obvious, I know, but we all find ourselves wanting to dive into something new, overestimating the time we actually have for it. When working on a new skill, slow and steady wins the race. It’s best to adjust your goal to your schedule so you can achieve it while enjoying the improvement along the way. On the other hand, avoid setting a goal that is too easy to achieve. And make sure you don’t shy away from the challenge. One hour of practice a month might not be the way to go about this. Set a goal that challenges you, so it will be worth the work. Only you know what that is.
- Once you set your goal, stick to it no matter what — Yes, we all live busy lives. There will undoubtedly be quite a few days when you just don’t feel like it, but you can’t find a better time in your schedule to practice. Put some music on if that helps. Change your writing tool, switch to a nicer workbook, whatever gets you going. If none of this helps and you still don’t feel like it, practice anyway. Even Olympic athletes want to stay under the blanket on some of those cold mornings instead of getting out there and doing the work. Don’t give up. Keep practicing. Remember your goal. More often than not, a few minutes into the session you won’t feel the same resistance and you start to enjoy it.
4. Trust the process — Try not to be too hard on yourself, especially on those “bad penmanship” days when you’re sure you’re not improving and never will. Think of yourself as the child you once were, learning to write. You got it in the end, didn’t you? Be as patient with yourself as you would be with a child learning to write.
5. Consider starting each practice session by writing the number of the session and the date. This way you can follow your
progress and improvement.
6. On the other hand, there’s no need to constantly compare what you did with previous results. You can go through your
practice notebook every once in a while if you feel like it, but it’s not necessary to give this too much weight. If you practice regularly, you’ll improve.
7. Mix it up from time to time — As time goes by, start mixing things up a little bit: Practice writing bigger or smaller letters, write a text using only capital letters or write in another language if you can. Changing your writing style or size will help improve your skills, and you’ll notice the difference. Also, it’s fun.
8. Finally, please, please avoid approaching this as if it were some sort of punishment — We’re not in school anymore, and there’s absolutely no need for you to write the same sentence over and over again for your skill to improve. Instead, take the opposite approach and choose texts you like. This is just as effective (if not more), and much more enjoyable, which
will help keep you motivated.
Copy poetry into your notebook, or pages from your favorite books. Write the lyrics to songs from your favorite albums
while you listen to them, or write down your thoughts and how your day has been.
I myself practiced by writing out quotes I like. Spending two hours a week with these words of wisdom and wit was a
treat in and of itself. My sessions were mostly a chance to relax and enjoy myself, and I believe a lot of this has to do with
choosing the right content to surround myself with.
What now?
I plan to keep practicing. I’m considering trying to sew with my left hand (now more coordinated, but still non-dominant).
As I approached my goal of 100 hours of writing practice, I started studying Sashiko (traditional Japanese folk hand stitching), and I might practice doing that with my non-dominant hand.
I haven’t set my goal yet, but I promise to devote a blog to an update one year from now. Maybe it will, at least in part, be about Sashiko, which I like more the more I read about it. I expect sewing with my left hand will result in poking the fingers of my right hand a few hundred times before I get it right, so we’ll see how it goes. There’s no question I’m glad I started practicing using my non-dominant hand for writing, not sewing.
More than anything else, I’m very happy I started my little project. To those of you who decide to go ahead and do it too, I wish you good luck and I hope you enjoy the process. I’m sure you will.
You are all welcome to visit MA.KE by Maya Keshet website at: https://www.mayakeshet.com
