Why Writing By Hand Reveals What You Really Think (The Neuroscience of Thinking on Paper)

Have you ever started writing something simple- a journal entry, a text, an email and surprised yourself with what came out? That's not random. It's neuroscience.

In this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins breaks down why writing by hand activates language, memory, attention, and executive functioning all at once and why that matters more now than ever, in a world where we're consuming more information than any generation in history while spending less time actually thinking.

Julie shares the four thinking questions she turns to before every hard conversation, big decision, or emotional reaction: What do I know? What am I assuming? What am I afraid of? What's the next honest action? Plus seven simple writing practices, from morning pages to decision journaling, you can start using today to get out of your head and onto the page.

If you stay until the end, you'll hear the one sentence that sums up the whole episode: writing doesn't just record your thoughts, it reveals them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The neuroscience behind why handwriting engages the brain differently than typing
• Why consuming more content is making it harder to actually think
• The 4 thinking questions to ask before a hard conversation or big decision
• 7 types of writing practices and when to use each one
• Why you don't fully know what you think until you see it on paper

Mentioned in this episode: Research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on handwriting and brain activity; a reflection from philosopher Mortimer Adler on thinking and expression.

We're consuming more information than any generation in history, yet thinking less. In this episode, Julie breaks down the neuroscience of writing by hand, the 4 questions to ask when you're stuck, and why writing doesn't just record your thoughts; it reveals them.

Key Takeaways 

• Handwriting recruits language, memory, attention, and executive function simultaneously, while typing relies on repetitive motion the brain treats as background noise.
• Thinking isn't scrolling, listening, or consuming. Thinking requires wrestling with an idea.
• The 4 thinking questions: What do I know? What am I assuming? What am I afraid of? What's the next honest action?
• Different forms of writing serve different purposes: morning pages, gratitude journaling, brain dumps, lists, unsent letters, decision journals, and vision writing.
• You don't know what you think until you see it outside of you.

Brave Move for today:

Next time you feel stuck, before a hard conversation, before a big decision, before you react, pull out a notebook and write the four questions. No phone. No scrolling. Sit with each one until something honest shows up on the page.

This is a journal I love to use

Transcript

0:01

Have you ever sat down to write something simple, maybe a text, an email, a journal entry, and somewhere in the middle of it, you surprise yourself? You didn't know you felt that way until you saw it in your own handwriting. Not a coincidence. That's neuroscience, friend, and by the end of this episode, you're going to understand exactly why that happens, and I'm going to hand you four questions that will change how you make decisions, navigate hard conversations, and get unstuck for the rest of your life. So stick with me because your brave move this week might be the simplest, most powerful habit you'll ever build. So let's get to the neuroscience. Let's start with that because this actually works. I know you love understanding the why behind the what, right? When you write by hand or even when you intentionally write instead of just thinking, you recruit multiple parts of your brain at once. You engage language, memory, attention, executive functioning all at the same time, and I've talked about this before. Instead of your thoughts bouncing around in your brain unattended, looping on repeat, writing gives those thoughts somewhere to land. Remember that research I mentioned before from the Norwegian University of Science, um, and they found that handwriting activates widespread brain networks associated with learning and memory and networks that typing simply doesn't light up in the same way in your brain, and that's because typing in the same repetitive motion over and over, your brain treats it like background noise. But writing, every letter is different. Every word requires a small, deliberate, active construction, and your brain can't go on autopilot. It has to actually show up to remember how to, form the letters. Now, here's the trap we are all in. We think,, I don't need to talk about that. Here's the part that I don't think that we don't talk about enough. We are consuming more information than any generation in human history. We are spending less time actually thinking, and I want to be really clear about something, because I think we confuse these all the time. Thinking is not scrolling. Thinking isn't listening to another podcast, although I love that you're listening to this one. Thinking isn't buying another course. Thinking requires wrestling with an idea. It requires sitting with something uncomfortable long enough to actually work it out, instead of outsourcing that discomfort to your phone, to your feed, or someone else's voice in your ear. We've gotten so good at consuming other people's thinking that we've forgotten how to produce our own. And that gap, that's what can creates confusion in our life, and that's where we stay stuck, and that's where the same problem keep showing up in our life, wearing different outfits. Honestly, I know that it happens in my life all the time. So here's what I want you to actually pay attention to. Slow down with me, because this is the centerpiece of today's episode. Whenever I feel stuck, whenever I have a hard conversation, before making a big decision, before reacting emotionally, and that is so easy to do for me sometimes, I write these four questions every time: What do I know? What am I assuming? What am I afraid of? And what's the next honest action? So what do I know? This separates facts from emotions, not what you're afraid might be true, not what your anxiety is telling you, but what you actually verifiably know. I have a friend, my friend Corinne Craftry often says, "If Judge Judy would say it's true because it's a fact, then it's a fact. It's not an opinion." Now, what am I assuming? The second question. This is something that's humbling at times for me, because our assumptions are often the source of our suffering. We react to the story we made up in our brain and not to actually what's happening. Remember what it's, they say about assuming? Um, assuming makes an ass out of you and me. And the other question, third question, what am I afraid of? Name it out loud on paper, Because fear is usually the one that's driving the story, even when it's dressed up as logic, just being practical. I remember before I left my job, obviously I was laid off, you know that, but I had been thinking of leaving. And I remember I sat down and I wrote down, what if I start a business? What if I finally take the leap? What... And then I started to write down what it, what would happen. And I came up, like, what next? Okay, well, what if I leave my job and I'm not successful? What if people think I'm crazy? What if people... And I kept going the what if, what if, what if, what if. And I went down so deep that the biggest fear I had was that I was gonna launch a business, people would hate me, think I'm dumb, we would not make any money, Dan would lose his job, and then we would be homeless because we would lose our house. I've never been homeless, but isn't it interesting where your brain is going? And I didn't know that that's exactly what I was thinking until I actually processed it, and I had to name it out loud. Now, the fourth question: What's the next honest action? Not the whole plan, not the five-year vision, just the next right step, and we talked about it earlier this week. What is the next right step? Four questions in one page., Almost every time, by the time I finish writing these answers, when I get to the fourth question, I already know what to do. That's the power of getting it out of your head and onto paper I've mentioned also journaling before, my friend, and I know that this is something that you probably have heard, not only in this podcast, but others. But I wanna make these real and usable for you, because different writing serves different purposes. And once you know which tool fits the moment, you'll never wonder, "What should I even write about?" Now, morning pages. Morning pages is an empty mental clutter before your day fills back up. And the way that that works, is you grab a piece of paper when you first wake up, and you start writing, writing, writing, writing. This is from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way book, by the way. And you just brain dump whatever's in your brain. You don't have to curate yourself or make sure that you're spelling everything right, or you don't even have to read everything that you wrote, but you just dump that mental clutter. Another thing that you can do is you can do a gratitude journal. Retrain your attention towards actually working. Focus on the positive. Our brain is always gonna go to the negative, so find the gratitude in everything. In the podcast, Casa de Confidence, my other show, I talk about, this concept with so many of my guests. But I tell you that those people that have the best outlook and have turned lemonade from the lemons that life has hand them is because they're doing a gratitude journal. Get also a brain dump, and this is not necessarily your morning pages, but get everything you're feeling overwhelmed by on paper. And again, no structure, no editing, but then you can actually go back and look at it and circle what are the facts that you wrote down? And you will find that a lot of times in these brain dumps, a lot of the stuff that we're writing down has nothing to do with truth. It's just our assumptions. The other thing that you can do is you can create a list. Reduce your cognitive load by getting it out of your memory, and close that tab in your brain. I use something in my... It's a Google extension, it's a Chrome extension, and it's called Momentum. So when I open a browser, it goes immediately to Momentum, and it shows me, a very pretty picture every day. But ultimately, I also put down all the things that I need to do, and I keep my list ongoing on there. And that's super helpful, because sometimes I sit down at the desk and I'm about to do something. I review my calendar for the day. But I may have a lot of things going on in the background, and before I can jump into something and focus, I need to just get that other stuff and reduce that mental load by putting it into a list Also, the other thing that's a great way of writing is letters you never send. Process your emotions safely without consequence. Do you know how many letters I've written to people that I've never sent? A lot, but it has helped me to just clear out the junk. Now, another thing you can do too is a decision journal. Track your reasoning over time so you make better choices, and learn from the ones that you didn't track And last and not least is vision writing. Clarify where you're actually going instead of reacting to whatever's loudest today. You don't need a fancy system. You don't need the right tool for every moment you're in. If you have heard me talk about this before, I think writing for me has been the companion in my life, and I don't do it perfectly. Yes, I've been writing a journal since, personal diary, since I was 14. But there's areas in my life in which I haven't been documented things, and those are the areas in which I have really struggled because I am not really processing what's in my brain. I'm not really processing what really is happening, or I haven't been focusing on the positive, on the gratitude. Writing is such a gift to us that we take it for granted. Now, of course, you're not always gonna have paper with you, so if you need to just dump stuff, you can do it on your phone. Or even better, talk it out loud. Record a voice note to yourself, and then you'll hear yourself and you're like, "Oh, I didn't think I was saying that or thinking that," but yeah, you will. Now, here's the real takeaway. Underneath all these lessons about everything that I just shared, writing doesn't just record your thoughts. Writing reveals your thoughts. Sit there for a second. You don't fully know what you think until you see it outside of you on paper. Your half-framed feelings become full sentences. Your scatter worries become the list you can actually take action on. Your vagueness,, unease becomes very clear, and the fears that you can't name, you finally can face. There's a guy called Mortimer Adler, and he once said that the person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. That is. That's the whole episode in one sentence. You're not writing to remember. You're writing to find out. So here's your brave move, my friend. The next time you feel stuck before a hard conversation, before a big decision, before you react, pull out a notebook and ask the four questions: What do I know? What am I assuming? What am I afraid of? And what's the next honest action? Don't scroll on your phone. Don't skip ahead to an answer. Sit with the questions until something honest shows up And remember, my friend, you don't need more information. You have more enough of that already. Especially if you're a woman in midlife, you've had some life, and you have experience and wisdom. What you need is the space to hear your own thinking, and that space is somewhere you have to go find. It's a notebook. It's the pen. It is the four honest question way, because the quality of your thinking shapes the quality of your life. And that pen in your hand, it might be the most powerful tool you own. Until tomorrow, my friend, I'm so grateful that you're here, and if this episode resonated with you, send it to someone because I am sure it will resonate with someone in your circle as well. I'm so grateful for you and grateful that you're in this journey with me. And don't forget, go confidently in the direction of your dreams.