Pencils immediately take me back to grade school. You needed two sharpened No. 2 pencils to take standardized tests. I'm not sure how many times I heard, “Be sure to fill in the bubble that corresponds to the correct answer darkly and completely.”

Everything was written with pencils because everything was about learning. It was about thinking of an answer and then rethinking, erasing, and updating the page with a better answer.

It was about trying to draw a horse. The first attempt didn’t look anything like a horse. It was the erasing and redrawing efforts that started to uncover the horse-like resemblance.

As adults pencils are rarely used. Why is that?

Imagine if our emails or texts or rough drafts at work were in pencil. Would that send a different message? Would it signal that this is a starting point and let’s build on this together; or that I’m open to adjusting this based on what we discuss? Or perhaps it’d suggest that I’m open to being wrong and I need your help and let’s improve this together. Pencil invites improvement.

What about using pencil — literally and figuratively — to plan your future?

Write your goals and your destination in pen and then use pencil to map out your strategy. The power is in putting your end game in permanent ink and then being flexible — often more flexible than you ever thought possible — to make the dream come true starting today.

A 12-pack of pencils costs $2.39. And erasers — a 3 pack of the big ones — are $1.49. Ready to invest five bucks to sketch your next chapter?

I just did.