Don’t lose that low-tech creativity!

I have a confession to make.

I still write letters occasionally. The old-fashioned kind. The kind you create by scrawling words on paper with a fountain pen. The kind you crease, fold, slip into an envelope, slap a stamp on, and drop in a mailbox. The kind nobody writes any more. I’ve also been known to doodle and draw.

No, I am not a Luddite. In fact, I’m somewhat of a geek. I enjoy technology and wouldn’t want to live without it. My smartphone is an extension of myself. I would be lost without it (or at the very least, a lot less efficient and productive). But there’s something about working with low-tech media that keeps my right brain active and infuses my life, even my digital life, with creativity.

Maybe it’s the feel of the writing (or drawing) instrument in my hand. Perhaps a pen gliding over paper provides a satisfaction than can’t be experienced when tapping keys or clicking a mouse. Or is it a sense of freedom that I feel—the sensation that my hand can carry out my brain’s wishes immediately, unshackled from computer hardware? I’m not sure how to explain it. I just know that I need to maintain that low-tech connection—in the same way I need to keep real books alongside the Kindle. There’s something about the heft of a bound volume, the texture of the cover, the sound of real pages turning, that immerses me more fully in the story.

Skills like penmanship, pottery-making, drawing, and painting get us down into the trenches of the creative process. They require something besides digital ones and zeros. They require flesh-and-blood digits—fingers that feel, grasp, curl, knead, and shape. I would argue that maintaining such a low-tech connection actually causes us to live more effectively in a high-tech world.

In a commencement address to Standford graduates in 2005, Steve Jobs related how a calligraphy class he once attended provided the inspiration for the beautiful fonts used on the first Macintosh computer. And throughout his amazing career at Apple, Jobs maintained that symbiosis between artistic beauty and technological functionality.

Carmine Gallo, in his book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, reveals the ironic truth that Jobs, an icon of the digital world, planned his famous product presentations with pen and paper. Says Gallo, “Steve Jobs has built a reputation in the digital world of bits and bytes, but he creates stories in the very old-world tradition of pen and paper” (p. 3). Gallo goes on to explain that Jobs would storyboard the “plot” of his presentations before ever picking up a “camera” (i.e., the presentation software). Sketching out ideas with pen and paper first has a way of bringing clarity and creativity to the final digital presentation.

And who would think that screenwriting has anything to do with business management? Yet businesspeople of all stripes are paying hundreds of dollars to attend screenwriting workshops by Robert McKee, the author of Story. The art of telling a compelling story in a creative way apparently has its applications in the business world. Think about how such a skill could benefit business: pitching prospective clients, reporting the quarterly numbers, writing up performance reviews, planning and presenting company-wide town halls, advertising and marketing.

I was talking with a co-worker one day about how much I enjoyed writing with fountain pens, and I was lamenting the loss of penmanship as a taught skill. He responded, “You know, computers are never going away. If my kid has to choose between a class on penmanship and one on computers, I know which way I’m going to direct him: computers.”

I understand what he was getting at: If you’re going to survive in the computer age, you have to learn to use computers; stick to pen and paper alone, and you’ll be left in the dust. But why should we have to choose between excellent penmanship and computers—especially when Jobs and others have proven than one can enhance, even inspire, the other?

I’m not saying we should sell our laptops and use the money to buy stationery; I correspond more by email and texting than any other methods. But I still use pen and paper occasionally for notes and letters. And when I’m planning presentations and speeches, I often start by sketching out a graphic or two, connecting thoughts and ideas with lines and arrows, etc. That low-tech approach helps me see where I’m going, helps me experience the journey more fully. And more often than not, it provides the raw material for my digital workshop (i.e., the keyboard and screen).

So, don’t throw away that pen, stationery, and sketch pad just yet. If you haven’t used them in a while, pull them off the shelf, blow off the dust, and try your hand at some old-fashioned writing or drawing next time you’re planning an article, speech, presentation, or project. And let low-tech take your work to new heights.