Poieno: Reclaiming Your Hands and Identity in the Digital Age Through Creative Making

The Poienomics movement challenges the current trend towards a digital world and aims to help people regain access to their own physical faculties as true creators through making things rather than being solely consumers of digital content. The Poienomics philosophy sees the human hand as an evolved tool for building, creating and crafting, and recognizes that by stopping the use of our hands for this purpose, we experience neurological, psychological, and spiritual effects such as anxiety, depression, and a sense of not having meaning in our lives. Many Poienomics practitioners dedicate time specifically to creating things with their hands through activities such as cooking, woodworking, pottery, gardening, knitting and other crafts that require the physical manipulation of raw materials, and have found that simply creating something using their own hands can ground them and provide them with a level of satisfaction and identity that cannot be found through solely digital means. The Poienomics movement seeks to answer the question: What effects will the cessation of our evolutionary usage of our hands have on our well-being, and can reconnecting our hands to the creative process improve our quality of life?

The Neuroscience of Making Things: Why It Matters

Our ability to create with our hands is rooted in our neurological (brain) system; there are more neurons in the part of the brain that controls how we move our hands (motor cortex) than in the parts of the brain that control all other body movement. The amount of neurological space allocated to the hands reflects the importance of the hands for all human evolution and survival.

Whenever we use our hands to make something—for example, when we knead bread, sculpt clay, or carve wood—we access vast amounts of neural pathways that combine sensory feedback to provide information about how the material is behaving, how we are controlling our bodies through the movement of our hands, and how we are creatively problem-solving. This whole-brain experience will differ completely from most other activities that involve engaging our hands via the use of a computer screen or cell phone. When we make something using our hands and we are working with an object, the brain engages as a whole, and creates an environment that is conducive to creating and constructing something of value.

Research shows hand-based making activities provide measurable improvements in well-being (i.e., decreased cortisol levels, increased serotonin and dopamine levels) and improved focus, mental presence, feelings of competence, and self-agency. Therefore, the physiological benefits of engaging our hands in the way they were created by evolution are not merely subjective experiences; they are real and measurable.

How Digital Displacement Affects Us

Handwork has practically been removed from modern life. We do not spend much time in our daily lives preparing food (from scratch), sewing, growing food, or maintaining our homes as our forebears did. Instead, we buy these things from service providers or manufacturers. Therefore, the primary use of our hands is to press buttons, swipe screens and occasionally type, which is a very limited range of what our hands are capable of doing compared to what our ancestors did with their hands.
The lack of handwork in our daily lives can actually harm our overall well-being. Our hands developed to be able to make many complex movements, but if we restrict our hands to doing only repetitive and limited types of movement (like typing and scrolling), then we will have a psychological deficit (like a lack of nutrition) and will not reach our full potential of overall well-being.

Making Is a Way of Understanding Who You Are

We gain some understanding of how we form our identity through the things we create. Throughout history, people have defined themselves based on what they did—farmers, bakers, carpenters, and weavers are examples. These occupations were also how people identified themselves, as they were rooted in the physical products of their labor. By contrast, the nature of modern-day work does not support creating physical items; therefore, people create more abstract identities based on their actual jobs (e.g., “I work in marketing,” “I do data analysis”). The abstract identities created in this way lack the strong emotional attachment associated with physical creation.

Poienos (people who work with their hands) tend to find that when they work with their hands again, they gain a clearer understanding of their identity than they are able to gain through working exclusively on a computer. Statements like “I am someone who bakes bread,” “I am a gardener,” “I am a woodworker,” represent a different type of identity than purely abstract professional identities. Those statements connect people with a clear visual representation of the products of their work, which adds a different dimension to their identity.

The Therapeutic Benefits of Repetitive Hand Work

Some activities which require “poiesis” include repetitive hand movements, e.g. kneading dough, sanding wood, knitting. Like other forms of meditation, these activities allow for a deep sense of stillness and tranquility while the brain is free from distracting thoughts. Many practitioners have described the experience of entering a state of “flow” where time ceases to exist, allowing for a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings.

The therapeutic aspect of occupational therapy is the use of hand-crafts during the process of rehabilitation. A combination of concentration, physical activity, and seeing an end product as a result of the process fulfills several components of wellness at the same time; therefore, “poiesis” takes this type of therapeutic approach and applies it to day-to-day life, showing that using your hands for work regularly is a means of preventing psychological stress.

Poieno for Mental Health, Including Anxiety and Depression

There is a specific poieno value that arises within the scope of anxiety and depression, the two conditions that plague people within modern life. Anxiety occurs when an individual has an excessive concern for future events (as in concerns regarding the possibilities of “what could happen”), while depression occurs when an individual has an excessive concern for past events (as in concerns regarding the possibilities of “what has happened”). The act of focusing on hands-on work grounds the individual within the present moment (creating with clay, chopping vegetables), therefore disrupting both future & past focused thinking as required by anxiety & depression, respectively.
Through your engagement with hands-on work, you can create tangible representations of both your competence and your capacity to take action (“I can do this!”) which creates conflict with the “I can’t do anything right” thinking promoted by depression.

Begin small in order to begin your poieno practice. You do not need to make significant lifestyle changes or purchase expensive equipment in order to commence your poieno practice. You only need to look at your daily life and find activities that you do currently and will continue to do but now do so in a different way (example, cooking a meal from scratch rather than heating already made food) will create the opportunity for a poieno practice, working on one simple craft daily (20 minutes) will allow for continued growth in poieno practice, taking care of your possessions through repair versus replacement will provide opportunity for further poieno practice, AND growing herbs in your kitchen will allow for additional poieno practice.
The focus is developing a daily rhythm of handwork, rather than mastering the activity. While a person may only engage the craft for a short time, these few minutes allow for both neurological and psychological benefits that compound over time.

The Social Component: Poieno Communities

While hand work is performed primarily alone, poieno has a social aspect, with the most significant benefit occurring in community settings. Maker spaces serve this function by providing shared workshop and tooling environments to provide access to expensive equipment, but also allow individuals to establish meaningful social interactions around their creation. Social gatherings of crafters such as knitting circles, cooking clubs, and woodworking collectives create a bond between individuals, allowing them to create and develop their skills while also forming relationships. Skill-sharing networks enable individuals in a community to teach one another and work together to preserve traditional knowledge through shared experiences, while also building their relationships with those around them.

Through their social practices, individuals will create a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves. In addition to producing something, they are also contributing to the continuity of tradition, community, and the transmission of knowledge and thus becoming part of the larger human experience.

Making vs. Buying: Poieno and Consumption

By emphasizing making instead of buying, Poieno is a challenge to an existing consumption culture. Why bake a loaf of bread when you can buy it pre-made? Why buy a piece of furniture when you could make it? The change from someone who thinks of themselves as a consumer to someone who thinks of themselves as a producer greatly impacts how people view their belongings. The things that they make hold more emotional connection and therefore typically hold more value than things that are purchased, even if they are made of lower quality materials.
While making is not primarily about saving money, it does provide satisfaction due to the psychological benefits of creating versus just acquiring an item. Many people find commercial products less appealing after they have had an opportunity to experience the satisfaction of creating something. Even the imperfections found in homemade items often provide more joy than a perfect item from the store.

Does Digital Making Count as Making?

A current debate regarding Poieno is whether or not creating digital items such as software, digital art and music should be treated as legitimate hand-made work or are they in a separate category. Those who disagree with this notion argue that there is no physical connection to the item created, therefore there’s no tactile feedback, permanent physical results or multi-sensory connection to the item created. Those who support the idea that digital creation is legitimate hand-made work believe that the development of craft skills and artistic engagement are primary and the medium does not matter. Digital making is therefore just as legitimate and can provide the same creative satisfaction as traditional craft.

A practical approach to Poieno likely involves both digital and physical creation. Digital creation offers certain benefits and physical creation offers other benefits. Achieving a well-rounded existence requires both forms of creation as they meet different needs and offer different rewards. Grounded in a time value framework of economics, Poieno challenges traditional thinking regarding purely economic efficiency. Creating something yourself takes more time than purchasing it; for example, baking a loaf of bread can take several hours, while purchasing it at a store may take only minutes. Purely economic logic supports the idea that purchasing would maximise efficiency because less time would need to be spent. Poieno, however, transforms the way the process of creation, rather than the end product created, is valued. Time spent in the act of creating something is seen as something beneficial (because it will promote wellness, build skills and create meaning) rather than as wasted time due to inefficiency. By changing how we view these processes of creation, Poieno frees us from feeling as though we always have to optimise for the best timing and efficiency and allows us to equally validate other engaging activities that promote psychological and spiritual well-being, even when they may appear to be economically inefficient.

The Poieno Challenge: Reclaim Your Hands

You could try an experiment for a week, and each day undertake a task, either cooking, drawing, gardening, building, repairing, or crafting, which may take 30 minutes or longer to accomplish, using the hands. Observing your feelings during, before, and after the hand-use process, you may find that it leads to considerable improvements in mood, energy levels, and overall well-being, potentially indicating that hand-usage fulfills some unmet needs.

You may want to consider expanding your hand usage to become a more regular aspect of your life, but you should not think of doing so as a chore or obligation, but instead as a way to create and further enhance your own well-being. Your goal in doing so is not to become a full-time craftsperson, but simply to reintegrate hand activities into your life so that the pressures of contemporary technology can be counteracted.

FAQs

Q: What if I am not a natural artist or crafty person? Can I still do poieno?

A: Yes! In fact, poieno is more focused on doing, rather than becoming a master. Neurological and mental health benefits will still be achieved with clumsy attempts. If you are new to poieno, you may want to start with practical making, such as cooking, rather than artistic crafts.

Q: Will I need to spend a lot of money on tools and supplies?

A: Most poieno practices do not require a lot of financial investment. For example, when cooking or gardening, you can use the kitchen items you already own and start gardening with containers or seeds that you already have. Start with a few simple items.

Q: Since I have a busy schedule, how do I find time?

A: A lot of people spend a lot of time in front of screens. You can replace some of that with an hour or more every day doing handwork. Even if you just do handwork for 30 minutes per day, you will see a lot of benefits.

Q : Participating in hand work is beneficial for my mental health?

A: Supportive research and anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a high probability of success, but It will not replace professional treatment, if required. However, for many, it is seen as a useful supportive practice.

Q : What happens if I start a hand project, but never finish?

A: The process of creating in poieno is more important than actually completing the project. This is true for an unfinished hand-work project as well. Nevertheless, if you choose to do realistic projects, you will have a greater chance of feeling satisfied with the work.

Legal Disclaimer

This article is intended to discuss poieno as a lifestyle practice, not as medical or mental health advice. Even though hand work can have positive well-being effects on many, it will not provide an adequate treatment for any diagnosed mental health condition and should be either used in conjunction with, or not in place of, professional mental health treatment. Everyone has different experiences, and what works for one person might not work for another. Anyone with mental health issues is encouraged to seek advice from professionals trained to assist individuals with those illnesses. The information provided here is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only.