Yes, this guy looks really creepy. But don’t judge him because he’s different. Perhaps we just don’t know beauty when we see it.

Notice the unmistakable look of utter serenity on his face. His left and right sides are brought together in perfect harmony, forming a new being that knows no limits, united with the oneness of the universe.

OK, that’s about all I can say with a straight face. Anyway…

After my initial post on mixed handedness got some attention, I began a deep exploration into the mysteries of handedness: left, right, and especially mixed. I wasn’t just looking for trivia; I wanted to know how we can use both sides of our brain and body to our best advantage.

Seven months later, that search now culminates with the release of my new ebook, which comes in two versions:

Ambidextrous: A Right-Hander’s Guide to Developing Two Dominant Hands
Ambisinistrous: A Left-Hander’s Guide to Developing Two Dominant Hands

The word “ambidextrous” sounds balanced but it’s actually a very biased term, being Latin for “right on both sides.” Its counterpart, “ambisinistrous,” is Latin for “left on both sides.”

I’m using these terms to refer to a right-hander or left-hander who has made their weak hand into a strong hand. These people are more formally called Penwald ambidextrous, and I’m now one of them.

Why two versions of the ebook? Because I’m so sick of books that explain how to do something right-handed, and expect left-handers to just reverse everything! They deserve something specifically for them.

Also because these are really two different audiences. For example, left-handers and right-handers learned to write differently and they have different motivations for writing with the other hand, so you can’t treat them exactly the same.

(To keep things simple, both versions are included together in one download for one price. Read the version for you, and ignore the other.)

After a lot of research and personal experimentation, I’ve learned that:

1. You can change your natural handedness. I learned to do many things with the other hand, and even went from -0.2 (mildly left-handed) to +0.2 (mildly right-handed) on the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (whose scale goes from -1.0 to +1.0).

2. There are cases where it’s very practical and beneficial to switch hands, but also cases where it’s not. That’s why I explain how to know when it’s worth it, and also how to practice efficiently and effectively.

3. Two hands are way better than one.

If you want to boost your physical prowess, balance your brain and body, and awaken your sleeping half, check out the right-handed sales page or the left-handed sales page. Any questions? Ask away.

Photo by striatic.

“What resemblance more perfect than that between the hands, and yet what a striking difference there is!”

- Michael Herz

The release of my new ebook on ambidexterity is just around the corner. More on that later, but I thought this would be a good time to answer some of the questions I’ve received about being ambidextrous or mixed-handed.

1. How many people are ambidextrous?

It depends on your definition. Almost nobody on earth can do everything equally well with either hand. But about 40% of right-handers and 75% of left-handers are considered mixed-handed, meaning that they prefer their non-dominant hand for at least one task on an official handedness test.

In between are an unknown number of people who might be called ambidextrous – those who get significant use out of both hands, even if they’re not perfectly equal.

2. What famous people are ambidextrous?

It’s hard enough just coming up with a reliable list of famous left-handers, because so many people circulate rumors without consulting a primary source.

And reliably determining what famous people are ambidextrous is a million times more difficult for the same reason, and also because we’ve always thought in terms of left and right while ignoring everything in between.

However, there are lots of people who were known to be at least very mixed-handed, and possibly ambidextrous. The list includes James Garfield, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Robert Baden-Powell, Plato, Hippocrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Nikola Tessla, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Not surprisingly, there are mixed-handed athletes from just about every sport, including LeBron James, Maria Sharapova, Mickey Mantle, Eli Manning, Pelé, and Gordie Howe.

3. Can you learn to be ambidextrous, or at least a little more ambidextrous than most people?

Yup! People who are born perfectly ambidextrous are extremely rare, and possibly nonexistent. But many people have learned to become ambidextrous or mixed-handed to boost athletic performance, improve left brain/right brain integration, do things more efficiently, reduce the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome, and more.

4. Instead of practicing with both hands, doesn’t it make more sense to get really good with one hand?

That’s like saying you shouldn’t learn a foreign language because it takes time away from perfecting your native language. But there’s a point of diminishing returns, where continuing to work on your native language gives little benefit, while learning a new language lets you make progress much faster.

5. But doesn’t it take twice as long to learn something with both hands?

No, because you’re not starting from scratch. Put it this way – if you’re right-handed, you can probably write in the sand just fine with your right foot. Even if you’ve never tried it before, your foot has learned by osmosis. To a lesser extent, your left hand has learned by osmosis as well.

6. Are there advantages to being mixed-handed, other than the physical ones?

Yes, though we’re not entirely sure what they are yet. They may include the ability to read people better, see both sides of an issue, and recall details of an event and their context.

For a long time, scientists thought that left-handers and right-handers had certain psychological differences, but the findings weren’t always consistent. For example, they say that lefties are more creative and emotional, but there are plenty of counterexamples to that.

Only recently have they discovered that the important differences are not between left-handers and right-handers, but between strong-handers and mixed-handers.

7. If left-handers are more likely to be mixed-handed than right-handers are, then why are most switch hitters in baseball right-handed?

Because (1) most baseball players overall are right-handed, and (2) since left-handers have a big advantage when batting, they have less of an incentive to switch.

8. What is the biggest myth about handedness?

That left-handers are right-brained and creative, while right-handers are left-brained and analytical.

It’s true that each side of the body is mostly controlled by the opposite side of the brain, but motor control is just one of the many things our brain does. People of either handedness can be either left-brained or right-brained.

9. What is the weirdest fact you know about handedness?

The hand clasping thing. Clasp your hands, and see which thumb is on top. It’s almost a sure thing you always do it the same way (and it’s not correlated with handedness).

About 60% of people in England put their left thumb on top. Now, the weird thing is that this percentage drops steadily as you go east across Europe and Asia, reaching a low of 30% in the Solomon Islands. If anyone has a theory about how this evolved, I’d love to hear it.

10. When right-handers see somebody writing with their left hand, why do they so often say “Oh my God, you’re left-handed?”

I’m not sure. There are 700 million of us, you know.

For more mixed-handed goodness, check out my ebooks Ambidextrous (for right-handers) and Ambisinistrous (for left-handers).

My post on mixed handedness generated a lot of interest, and I said I’d return to that topic after I had learned more about it. It turns out there was far too much information to put into a post, or even a series of posts. So I’ll be releasing it as an ebook in the near future.

One thing that surprised me was how astonishingly hard it is to get reliable information on whether certain famous people are left-handed, right-handed, or mixed-handed.

What often happens is someone hears that so-and-so is left-handed, so he puts that in a book without checking for any evidence, and before too long it ends up on a million web pages. It’s kind of annoying when you’re just trying to find the truth.

Here we see 6 famous people who regularly appear on lists of southpaws, despite the notable distinction of not being left-handed. (Thanks to Chris McManus for bringing these people to my attention in his book Right Hand, Left Hand.)

Billy the Kid

First on the list is Henry McCarty, AKA Henry Antrim, AKA William H. Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid. He’s been the most famous southpaw outlaw since Paul Newman played him in the 1958 western “The Left Handed Gun.”

It’s actually understandable that we always thought he was left-handed. After all, we only had one photograph of him, and it showed him with a pistol on his left hip, steadying a rifle with his right hand.

The problem is that we only had blurry copies of the original photo. After discovering the original more than 100 years after his death, we found that it was made using a technique that reversed the image.

Furthermore, the original was clear enough that we could see that the buttons were on the wrong side of his vest, and his belt buckle was backwards. The corrected version appears above, showing Billy’s pistol on his right hip.

Pablo Picasso

We only had one picture of Billy the Kid, but we don’t have that problem with Picasso. Actually, we have thousands of pictures of Picasso, and plenty of videos as well. The only problem is, he isn’t using his left hand in any of them.

Albert Einstein

You’ve probably seen this picture before, with Einstein writing on the chalkboard right-handed. He may very well have been mixed-handed, but he sure wasn’t left-handed.

James Michener

Pulitzer Prize winner James Michener was once nominated by Southpaws International as one of their southpaws of the year. He wrote to them to say that the only thing he used his left hand for was occasionally scratching his right elbow.

Bob Dylan

If Bob Dylan were completely left-handed, you’d think it would be easy to find a picture of him playing a guitar that way.

However, he may have been mixed-handed. In David Hepworth’s 1986 interview with Bob Dylan, Hepworth noted that Dylan autographed his album with his left hand.

Benjamin Franklin

The confusion here comes from Benjamin Franklin’s essay a petition of the left hand. It’s written from the point of view of a left hand, complaining about how he’s treated differently from the right hand. But is that enough to mean that Ben was left-handed?

The portrait above was painted by Mason Chamberlin, from life (i.e., in person) in 1762. Ben Franklin is shown holding a quill pen in his right hand. I have to think that the artist wouldn’t go to the trouble of reversing the image since the model was right in front of him, and Ben would surely have noticed had he done so.

At any rate, there are many possibilities between completely left-handed and completely right-handed. Take this handedness test to see where you fall on that continuum.

Do you know any other right-handed “southpaws?”

For more handedness myth-busting, check out my ebooks Ambidextrous (for right-handers) and Ambisinistrous (for left-handers).

Two hands can be better than one. A well-coordinated effort of both hands makes it possible to count to 255 on your fingers (FF in hexadecimal). But mixed handedness may have consequences. Photo by Hexadecimal Time.

I always thought I was left handed. Oh sure, I do some things with my right hand, but we go by the hand you write with, right?

Actually, handedness is not a binary choice, but a continuum from purely left handed to purely right handed. Researchers say that people often aren’t aware that they’re officially mixed handed.

In a common measure of handedness called the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, people are asked to perform 10 specific tasks. Doing even one of them with the other hand makes you mixed handed. I do 6 with my left, and 4 with my right, putting me towards the neutral end of the “mixed left hander” category.

There are different versions of this test floating around. One of them lets you specify different levels of hand preference, and gives you a numerical score from -1.0 for a pure left hander to +1.0 for a pure right hander, with 0.0 indicating that neither hand is preferred overall. I got -0.2, or just left of neutral.

I made this Handedness test into a web application, to spare people from the math. Give it a go. I’ll create a page listing the scores people report, so leave a comment with your score and I’ll link to you (links will be no-follow, the name you use can include branding words but must start with your real name, and your URL should point to actual content rather than an ad).

When I found out that using my right hand for so many tasks wasn’t typical for a left hander, I thought about what I do with each hand, to see if there was a pattern. There wasn’t a clear pattern, but I noticed some interesting combinations:

Left handers are much more likely to be mixed handed than right handers are. For one thing, lefties are forced to adapt to a right handed world. Lefties also tend to have more symmetrical brains, resulting in natural mixed handedness. There are both pros and cons to mixed handedness, and I’ll write about this later, after I learn more about it.

It’s hard to distinguish between natural and learned mixed handedness. Why do I use scissors with my right hand? Is it because that’s my natural preference, or because my preschool teachers told me to? I don’t remember.

I also don’t remember the first time I used a mouse. Did I use my right hand because it was natural, or because it’s what everyone else was doing?

I’m also not sure how they decide what’s left and right handed for some things. I’m looking at a Washington Post article that shows two examples of left handed former presidents (it was written when mixed lefty Barack Obama was running against strong lefty John McCain). There’s a picture of George H.W. Bush gesturing with his left hand. OK, that’s a clear sign of left handedness. But then there’s a picture of Bill Clinton holding a microphone in his right hand and pointing with his left. That doesn’t exactly scream “Lefty!”

How do we know that pointing is more important than holding a microphone? If he gives a speech knowing that he’s not going to point, does he hold the microphone in his left hand? If you drive with just your left hand on the steering wheel, is that because you’re left handed, or because you’re keeping your dominant right hand free for more important things, like your Big Gulp in the cup holder? If you play golf the “right handed way,” are you really right handed, or could you just want your dominant left arm in front?

Anyway, back to this Handedness test. Go ahead and take it before reading these questions, so I don’t bias you.

- Writing and drawing are listed separately. Does anyone use different hands for them?

- When do you use a knife without a fork? What do you think they’re going for here? I thought about baking a loaf of bread and then slicing it. But might someone use the other hand in a knife fight?

- In the first version I saw, the broom task was listed as “using a broom (upper hand is dominant) or brushing one’s hair.” That seems a bit strange. Does anyone use different hands for these?

- Also, the jar task was listed as “opening a box or a jar lid.” Does anyone use different hands for these?

- It says you’re mixed handed if you do even one task with the other hand. The exception is a left hander using scissors with their right hand, because scissors are often designed for right handers. First, is that true? Do any left handers here use right handed scissors for ergonomic reasons? Second, if scissors aren’t a reliable indicator, then why are they on the test?

I’m curious to hear who uses what hand for what. Leave your score below if you want to, and share any interesting handedness stories you might have. The test gives the breakdown between the different types (left and right, strong and mixed) in the U.S. population. I wonder if there will be a similar breakdown among my readers.

For way, way more mixed-handed goodness, check out my ebooks Ambidextrous (for right-handers) and Ambisinistrous (for left-handers).