#100DaysOfBulletJournalIdeas: 20 - How to Improve your Everyday Handwriting with your Bullet Journal
/Welcome to Day 20 of my #100DaysofBulletJournalIdeas Project!
Idea 20: Handwriting Practice
Handwriting Practice
If you're looking to improve your handwriting, there's no better way to do that than by actually writing by hand.
If you're a Bullet Journalist, or looking to start Bullet Journaling, then you've come to learn that you'll be creating your own Bullet Journal entirely yourself with every stroke of your pen. Study after study has shown that writing by hand leads to greater memory retention - this is one of the biggest draws to using a paper-based analog system.
I believe that writing by hand helps you appreciate the written word in a way that feels completely special and unique. It's a practice that is making its way back thanks to the popularity of the Bullet Journal, snail mail-lovers, stationery enthusiasts, and all other planners and notebook fans.
There's nothing quite like putting pen or pencil to paper. It's an experience that's been mimicked by technology time and again, and as excited as I am about seeing how the tech grows and develops over time, I still feel like there's nothing like the feeling of a notebook in your hands full of all the things you've written and drawn.
Writing out line by line, loop by loop, to form letters which, when laced together, become words and those words become sentences until all of a sudden you have page after page full of memories, tasks, notes, just...everything about everything you care to write down.
You are literally writing the story of your life with every word you write out. It's a truly special thing to create your own book this way, and that's one of the reasons the Bullet Journal is such a special thing to me. Ryder ended up finding a way to organize all the things he tossed into the notebook through the simple Indexing system and put together a key that helped create consistency throughout to make sense of what each line meant at a glance.
With this unique system, word after word, I've come to improve my own handwriting through simple practice.
To be honest, I have a very relaxed and forgiving view on handwriting. I also have a huge appreciation and admiration for each individual's handwriting because all of those loop-dee-loops you do are unique to you and are representative of the fact that you made those happen. You put pen to paper (or pencil) and made the effort to write something down and it's beautiful because it's yours. It's wonderful because no one else has the nuances of your handwriting that you do.
That's why I believe that the best way to improve your everyday handwriting is to first of all, simply appreciate your own handwriting and embrace it in all its glory. Secondly, to pick up little things here and there and over time make gradual adjustments to your handwriting. If you hate your T's and one day browse online and all of a sudden you find a T you really like, then try it out and see if you like it. I'm pretty sure you will end up blending it to making it something completely mashed up between what you saw and what you naturally created to make it something new that you don't hate. Something acceptable, that over time you refine into something you enjoy.
True story: I actually did hate my capital cursive T's for a while there until one day I was writing something and wrote out a T and I ended up really liking it and that's the kind of T that I enjoy doing now. Demonstration:
How to Improve your Everyday Handwriting with your Bullet Journal
1. Daily use
2. Taking notes
3. Journaling
4. Practice drills
Write out the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, and perhaps even some symbols to see what your current handwriting looks like. Write out practice drills by writing out the same letter over and over to practice getting the letter you want.
Something to note: Feel free to use multiple styles of a letter. I have different letters that I enjoy using depending on the occasion, which you can see below. Consistency is one thing if you're into that sort of thing, but I like to have fun with my letters and do whatever makes me happiest in the moment. Some want to perfect their handwriting to look completely consistent and neat, I just want to celebrate my own handwriting by tweaking it little by little over time. That's the kind of relaxed perspective I have because it's what helps me write. I think it's a pretty healthy and simple approach. By not worrying about every letter looking perfect, I can focus on the content of what I'm writing to help me write down what needs to get written down. This means that my Bullet Journal is actually pretty messy at times, that's part of the fun of it. :)
5. Conduct reviews (weekly/monthly/notebook)
6. Write out quotes
7. Write out song lyrics
8. Write down things you're grateful for
9. Write down words and their meanings
10. Write a list of things that make you smile
11. Do some prompts from the #RockYourHandwriting Challenge
I hope this article was helpful in your handwriting improvement endeavors! :)
Just remember: your handwriting is already pretty awesome because it's yours. If you want to improve it - use it!
