A simple calligraphy pen introduced friction, boundaries, and intention into my thinking.
This note explores how small physical tools can subtly change the pace, texture, and quality of our work — not through optimisation, but through boundaries, surface and friction.
Editor’s Note: This note sits within Cultivated’s ongoing exploration of attention, friction, and the relationship between tools and human behaviour. Small physical artefacts often reveal larger patterns about how ideas move into value.
The Cheap Pen That Changed How I Think
Sometimes a small change in tools alters far more than the tool itself. This note is not about stationery. Although you know I like stationery.
It is about friction, boundaries, and why the objects we work with subtly shape how we think, decide, and show up each day.
Cultivated Notes are short visual companions to the work. Some are reflective, others are practical. You can watch the note below, or read on to explore this idea.
The Edge of the Page
Digital tools offer infinite editorial space. Infinite tabs. Infinite notes. Infinite drafts. Infinite space. Few boundaries.
And yet, infinity can be overwhelming and paralysing. We tend to want to avoid it, or fill it.
A simple calligraphy pen, used with paper — inexpensive, imperfect, occasionally inconvenient — introduced something rare: edges and welcome friction.
Distance from screens. Space for sketching and pondering. A sense, and feeling, that thoughts are being shaped and played with, not merely captured.
Friction, when chosen deliberately, can be clarifying and helpful rather than obstructive and frustrating.
Tools Shape Behaviour
We often search for better systems, faster software, quicker capture systems or larger, endless, canvases.
Occasionally, the opposite is what we need, the opposite is what changes us.
A tool with limits. Constraints that breed creativity. A container with smaller edges. A pace that resists haste.
Not as nostalgia — but as intention, as a way to change, as a way to slow down.
This is not an argument for pens over keyboards, or analogue over digital. It is a reminder that the tools we choose influence the tempo, depth, richness and texture of our thinking.
Sometimes the smallest adjustments — a different pen, a different surface, a different boundary — quietly alter how we approach our work and our lives.
The object is not so important. The change in behaviour it invites is.
