Darren Smithson

Modern systems don’t always need your agreement. They just need you: busy distracted reacting emotionally engaged Because constant reaction leaves very little room for reflection. And without reflection… everything starts feeling “normal.” #darreninform #ConspiracyBook

This week's blog is up at darreninform.com/post/strategy-… and is a summary of chapter 5 of my book 'You 2.0: Build Yourself Better'. #darreninform #strategy #thinkworksblog #blog

This week's Take A Bite Tuesday exercise is up at revolutionradio.app.clientclub.net/communities/gr… and is from You 2.0's chapter 20: Flex That Decision Making Muscle. #darreninform #TakeABiteTuesday #decisionmaking

@ihtesham2005 This is exactly why I use a hardbound journal and pen for everything- notes, ideas, plans... so much better than any screen app.

A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper. Her name is Audrey van der Meer. She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth. The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time. Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen. Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task. When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once. The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected. When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely. Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG. Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events. The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem. Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next. Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve. Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews. Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad. Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page. A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched. The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall. The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down. The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page. That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it. Two studies. Two countries. Same answer. Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast. Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth. You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick. The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew. Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

Now up at darreninform.com/thinkworkspodc… and in your podcast platforms throughout this morning, this week's podcast, discussing 'quiet systems', those structures that work on bad days. Join in the discussion at revolutionradio.app.clientclub.net/communities/gr… #darreninform #thinkworks #podcast #QuietSystems

Tomorrow's ThinkWORKS episode discusses 'quiet systems' and why they are so important in supporting you on the bad days! Episode lands 8am in darreninform.com/thinkworkspodc… and throughout the morning in your usual podcast platforms. #darreninform #thinkworks #QuietSystems

Modern life rewards reaction. But reaction isn’t the same as thought. The people who stay calm, pause properly, and think clearly before responding are becoming increasingly rare. And increasingly valuable. #RealityCheck #ThinkWORKS #You2point0

#darreninform #conspiracybook

Why don’t people notice the systems shaping them? Because the systems feel like normal. Repeat something often enough… & it stops being questioned. Add daily life pressures— and there’s no space to step back. Awareness doesn’t come from effort. It comes from distance.

This week's blog is up at darreninform.com/post/quiet-sys… and ties into next Monday's ThinkWORKS episode on why having quiet systems that support you is vitally important. #darreninform #thinkworksblog #blog #QuietSystems

This week's Take A Bite Tuesday exercise is up at revolutionradio.app.clientclub.net/communities/gr… and is from Chapter 19 of 'You 2.0: Build Yourself Better', namely 'Be A Marketing Magician'. I already provided my answer. What will yours be? #darreninform #TakeABiteTuesday #you2point0

This week's ThinkWORKS is up at darreninform.com/thinkworkspodc… (and other podcast platforms) and is all about the legend of Atlantis. Join in the discussion at revolutionradio.app.clientclub.net/communities/gr… #darreninform #thinkworks #podcast #atlantis

.... and throughout the day in your favourite podcast platforms. #darreninform #thinkworks #atlantis

Almost everyone has heard of 'Atlantis' but how many fully understand the real story? Join us as we discuss where the legend came from, what it all means, and what, if any, lesson Atlantis teaches us today. Episode lands from 8am at darreninform.com/thinkworkspodc… ...

Not everything needs fixing. That sounds obvious—but it isn’t how most people operate. We: • overanalyse • over-adjust • overcomplicate Instead… Do less. Focus properly. Let things play out. Simple isn’t easy. But it works. #darreninform #RealityCheck

The Loop Most people think they’re informed. What they actually are… is updated. New outrage. New narrative. New thing to care about. Every few days. Same emotional cycle. Different packaging. You’re not learning. You’re looping. #darreninform #conspiracybook

This week's BLOG is up at darreninform.com/post/if-you-re… and it ties into Monday's ThinkWORKS podcast episode. #darreninform #thinkworksblog #RealityCheck

This week's ThinkWORKS is up at darreninform.com/thinkworkspodc… and looks at the trick in the human psyche that means we either fall back, or use it to move forward. Join in the discussion at revolutionradio.app.clientclub.net/communities/gr… #darreninform #thinkworks #Podcast

A conversation this week: Someone said: “I know what I need to do… I’m just not doing it.” That’s more common than people admit. It’s: hesitation doubt internal friction That gap—between knowing and doing—is where most people live. And it’s exactly where the real work starts.

What happens when you start noticing the systems shaping you? You don’t suddenly “break free.” You pause more. You notice: when you’re reacting what you’re assuming what you’ve absorbed That pause creates space. And that space creates choice. #darreninform #conspiracybook