Denken mit der Hand

This week, I went to Paper-Papier in the Byward Market to stock up on 2025 planners. I keep a spiral-bound, desk-sized planner in the living room beside my TV-watching, talking-on-the-telephone, using-my-laptop spot on the sofa. I keep a mini-planner in an outer pocket of my handbag and it goes just about everywhere with me. Both are week-at-a-glance type, with each week taking up a double page of the planner. At the front and back of these planners are various pages with plenty of useful and interesting information, plus space for writing down plans, projects and random notes.

So anyway for 2025, my desk-sized planner is a Letts, very similar to the one I'm using now for 2024. But for my pocket-or-purse-sized planner, I decided to try a Leuchtturm version that caught my eye.

I've never really embraced the idea of using online calendars to mark down my appointments, although I was required to do that at the office, in the years before I retired (in 2009). And in fact for just about anything else I have to or choose to do, I always find that writing something longhand reinforces things in my mind far better than inputting it into a computer - and I can organize and massage and reflect upon my thoughts more effectively too. And that seems to be the overriding philosophy of the folks that designed these Leuchtturm writing products too:

https://www.leuchtturm1917.com/wnt-all/

Yes, I really do, to a great extent, think with my hands. And feel with my hands too. Of course that applies in the literal physical sense, if I'm groping in the dark for a light-switch, for example. But it's also true in the emotional sense as well. It's so much easier to express on paper why I'm sad or angry or looking forward to something if I can cross stuff out with big blue or black lines or erase it and rephrase things without worrying about whether I've got the latest version of Word or Pages and whether I should install updates now and whether I know that this week I spent 30% more time on this device than last week. Just SPARE ME ALL THE NOISE ALREADY!!!

Here's the English-language version of how the Leuchtturm people explain the notion of thinking with your hand:

Writing by hand is thinking on paper. Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Memories become stories.Ideas are transformed into projects. Notes inspire insight. We write and understand, learn, see and think - with the hand.

And for those of you who read German, here's the original:

Schreiben mit der Hand ist Denken auf Papier. Aus Gedanken werden Worte, Sätze, Bilder. Erinnerungen werden zu Geschichten, Ideen verwandeln sich in Projekte. Aus Notizen entsteht Durchblick. Wir schreiben und verstehen, vertiefen, sehen, denken - mit der Hand.

I particularly like the word "vertiefen" in the German original, conveying the notion of depth of understanding and perception far better than the word "learn" in the English translation.

The company name Leuchtturm (lighthouse or literally, light-tower) is illuminating (both literally and metaphorically) too. I don't think there are too many manned (personed?) lighthouses left these days but to me it's a wonderful image - a beacon of light in an increasingly impersonal world?

Anyway, we'll see how it goes as I move into 2025!