Write for a happier, healthier, more memorable and better life

Study after study prove the endless benefits of handwriting. The following research shows handwriting makes you happier, increases your brain function, improves your memory, helps you write better content and even boosts your immune system. After reading this, you will without a doubt run to get that pen and paper and write away!

Writing makes you happier
Kent State University Professor Steve Toepfer asked his students to write letters of gratitude (for a gift, a passing smile, or anything) and found writing thank you notes significantly improved writers’ happiness and satisfaction and decreased depressive symptoms. Even better, the benefits of writing had a cumulative effect over time.

“As they wrote, up to three letters, results showed increasing benefits. The more letter writing people did, the more they improved significantly on happiness and life satisfaction. The new and potentially important finding is that depressive symptoms decreased. By writing these letters – 15 to 20 minutes each, once a week for three weeks to different people – well-being increased significantly. There is a cumulative effect, too. If you write over time, you’ll feel happier, you’ll feel more satisfied, and if you’re suffering from depressive symptoms, your symptoms will decrease.”

Another study found that people writing gratitude letters, “significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why expressers were grateful, overestimated how awkward recipients would feel, and underestimated how positive recipients would feel.”

Writing increases your brain function
French psychologist Stanislas Dehaene found writing stimulates your brain, “When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated.” When this neurological function is active, it makes learning easier.

A 2012 study determined that handwriting may facilitate reading acquisition in young children.  An Indiana University study showed that children who wrote by hand had much more "adult-like" neural activity than those who just looked at the letters.

Psychology Today reports that cursive writing trains the brain to learn “functional specialization” which is the capacity for optimal efficiency.

“In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates both sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during the learning of cursive writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice.”

Handwriting also increases brain power by training the brain “to use different parts of the brain for different functions, which helps with work efficiency.” Cursive writing integrates visual and tactile information and fine motor skills.

The Psychology Today article concludes, “The benefits to brain development are similar to what you get with learning to play a musical instrument. “ Holy cow!

Writing improves your memory
Research in Psychological Science found that students who used laptops to take notes versus pen and paper had a substantially worse understanding of class lectures (as measured by a standardized test) than those who took notes with pen and paper. Because we can type faster than we can write, if we type what we hear we spend less time processing what we’re hearing. If we hand write, we have to process and condense what we hear to write it down.

Writing helps you write better content
Other studies show that handwriting increases the content quality of what you write.

“There is a direct relationship between quality of handwriting and the quality of written text."

Writing boosts your immune system
This study might be the most amazing/hardest to believe and isn't specifically talking about handwriting but writing in general but an American Psychological Association study discovered that writing can not only help people learn from negative experiences, it can boost their immune system.

“New research suggests expressive writing may also offer physical benefits to people battling terminal or life-threatening diseases.”

I do wonder if there are some spurious variables at work here - perhaps because writing incorporates some factors of the Blue Zone longevity study. 

All in all, the findings are overwhelmingly positive. Writing makes our lives way better. But we knew that, duh!