Do It Yourself: Ambidexterity - Part I

I don't believe that I was born truly ambidextrous. There was never a time when my left hand was more dominant than my right. But still, I've been mildly surprised by how quickly I've been able to train my non-dominant hand when necessary. Even if I'm not naturally ambidextrous, I think both-handed activities like playing guitar, typing (at past 100 wpm), and Ultimate Frisbee (though the left-handed hammer took a lot of work) have to indicate at least some potential aptitude for using my left hand..

So in the end, it may be only learned ambidexterity, but even at that, I'm more than willing to put in a little effort to achieve that goal... which is really how this particular DIY project got started. (I suppose this post could also be categorized more specifically under "Body Hacks," but I'm sticking it under the DIY heading for now)


As of September 19th, I started practicing writing with my left hand. Whenever I found myself with a free moment, I wrote the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" with my right hand as a point of comparison, then again with my left. The sentence is specific in that it contains every letter of the alphabet, thereby giving my left hand the full range of letters to practice on.

I set my rules to be open ended. I'm going to try and write the sentence at least once every day, but there is no upper limit to how many times I can practice it. From the rate of improvement I saw in just the first ten attempts, I'm hoping that my handwriting will indistinguishable between hands within a month or so. Stay tuned for an update in a week or so!

Random side note: Incidentally, one of the best parts of writing with both hands seems to be when I need to take notes on paper while working on a Wacom Tablet at work. Anyone who uses this setup (forgoing a mouse completely) will tell you that holding an ink pen and a Wacom pen in one hand and switching back and forth isn't the most fun thing to do (they seriously need to invent a Wacom pen that has an ink pen inside it and accessible via clicker). But I was having a blast taking notes with my left while using the Wacom pen in my right. Honestly, some of my co-workers thought I was insane. The ones who know me better, though, weren't really all that surprised.