Is the keyboard mightier than the pen?

Queens, New York

Subject: Is the keyboard mightier than the pen?

Dear Reader,

I haven’t touched by analog Zettelkasten in more than two weeks.

I am looking at it right now, two boxes stacked on the edge of my desk.

They are filled with hundreds of notecards.

—my repository of knowledge and insights sitting neglected, its potential untapped.

I can’t help but feel a sense of guilt for not having engaged with it for so long.

Guilty because over the past few days, I have engaged in the exact opposite of what I have been espousing:

I have been doing some of my knowledge development work in a digital note-taking app.

Now, wait! Don’t go!

Before you write me off and unsubscribe from my list, I must say that this observation has changed nothing about my overall analog knowledge development approach.

Well, nothing except a few things.

Chief among them the fact that I am no longer an analog fundamentalist.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, against my better judgement, I was scrolling mindlessly on Twitter, consuming the content that the algorithm thought I wanted to see. As a result, I was bombarded with a disturbingly large amount of posts on digital Zettelkasten implementations—and, well, I found myself attracted to what I was seeing. The tweets of colorful graphs, interlinked notes, and customized interfaces somehow re-awakened my desire to revisit my very first attempt at a Zettelkasten.

So I put my phone down and opened my Obsidian app.

My “zettels” were all there, untouched for more than two years.

I began shifting through them, reading what my younger self, then in college, was thinking and writing about.

And, let me tell you, I was astounded by the quality of my writing—struck by the apparent clarity of my thoughts, the aesthetically pleasing sentences I employed—amazed by the seemingly deep insights they held.

“Did I write this?” I asked myself.

Well, of course I did, but those words, that eloquent writing that, for some unknown reason I can no longer replicate, was written using a keyboard.

What’s the problem, you ask? Everyone writes using keyboards nowadays.

Well, after having sworn off digital tools for all my writing needs for more than two years, subtleties such as the difference between a keyboard and the pen become too irresistible to ignore because they hold some key insights into how our minds work when utilizing these different mediums.

Before I expand on these differences, I must admit that, on the surface, I was more intellectually productive when I was maintaining an online knowledge management system. I think that, during that time, my mind had become so inextricably connected to the keyboard. It was a connection far stronger than that of pen and paper, dare I admit, although this no longer holds true.

Writing on the keyboard, I had quickly come to realize, provided me with odd, fluid, uninterrupted creativity, one that, often, was unmatched by what pen and paper could provide. But, lately, a more careful examination of this phenomenon has shown me that the creative product that the seamless connection between mind and keyboard creates, although more stylistic and smooth, is of a shallower nature, intellectually.

Often times, I will write something that impresses me, something that I enjoy reading and which my readers find fascinating, but looking at it, on the screen, it does not feel mine. It’s as if the keyboard as a medium taps on a different, more subconscious area of my mind. I am sure creative writers appreciate this ability of the keyboard or the typewriter, but it becomes an obstacle when you try to articulate your thought logically and authentically.

This is the problem that I had encountered while maintaining a digital Zettelkasten, and which became more apparent when I re-visited it. Much of my writing was mindless writing—words of a reverie, deserving for a novel but not for a zettel.

In my coaching session with Scott Scheper, we discussed that the act of writing by hand slows you down and has a calming effect that cannot be achieved in the digital realm. In the digital, we move too fast. When you write an essay on your computer, typing away on the keyboard, you allow your mind to match the speed of your thoughts, and the quick, frictionless output allows the brain to suggest new words without putting the effort to think about them to the same extent as when using pen and paper. In other words, the mind-keyboard connection can bypass the logical censorship of the author. The connection gains a mind of its own.

Why go back to using pen and paper then if you have observed such a benefit from typing out your thoughts? Analog tools slow your mind down—they put a break on the constant rumbling nature of our distracted minds, allowing us to experience the stillness of the moment, of our thoughts, amidst the sea of information chaos (that sources externally as well as internally).

In my mind, the question remained, though: What if moving too fast was what triggered your creativity? My creativity? The only way to find out was to test. And test I did.

For a period of two weeks, I fired up my Obsidian and started doing my knowledge development and creative writing on the screen. But that experience ultimately re-affirmed the above observations, which Obama succinctly conveys in the introduction of his memoir: “Computers give even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and less baked thoughts the mask of tidiness.” That was the case in my test.

My conclusion? Embrace both mediums by tapping on their strengths: Use the keyboard to rapidly offload ideas and reach a creative flow¹; use pen and paper for knowledge development and non-fiction writing.

There, I had the perfect compromise.

But, why am I telling you this? Friction is a fundamental aspect of a knowledge development approach; however, like the typewriter, and now, the keyboard, one must not resist tapping into the transformative potential of a new medium. For me, that transformative potential is in the realm of creative writing², but everything else remains the duty of the pen. I encourage you to forgo your orthodox, uncompromising tendencies and explore how different processes can aid your writing process.

Lastly, a caveat. Perhaps this kind of thinking is a product of my ADHD mind, part my involuntary desire to seek novelty, an inability to settle on one thing for too long. And friction-less output, as far as creative writing is involved, opens a door to novelty. Perhaps, none of the above applies to you—being an exercise in futility. Also, it might be that your experience with these two writing mediums functions in reverse. But, from the perspective of an ADHD mind, the mind often needs to go faster than the brain’s censorship. It needs an escape velocity. And paper limits you in achieving that, even though you might find it desirable at times. Go fast enough, and you will uncover things you didn’t know you could think of.

What did people do before technology? They traveled and sought adventure; they hunted; they became soldiers, chainsmokers, sex-addicts. Now, many become keyboard addicts—chasing novelty from within.