Mattia Penna

Hi, I'm Mattia Penna. I build software for a living, and I am ambidextrous: for more than ten years I have been training my non-dominant hand, and on Ambidestro.it I share what I have learned along the way.

From the Valle Cervo

I grew up in Oriomosso, in the Valle Cervo, a valley in the mountains of Piedmont in northern Italy. I was about ten when my grandfather Ferruccio handed me a golf club. I held it the wrong way round, and the balls started to fly.

If you ask me, you're ambidextrous.

The idea stuck with me. At sixteen, during a boring class, I tried writing with my other hand: the first lines were illegible, then, dictation after dictation, they improved. Today I use both hands for most everyday things, and often I do not even notice. The whole story is in how I discovered I was ambidextrous.

On the road

As a teenager I spent a semester in Brazil with AFS. At nineteen I left again, and for a few years I travelled and worked in Chile, Canada and Australia. Today I live in Valencia, Spain, where I founded Concierge, a digital guide for travellers.

I speak Italian, Spanish, English and Portuguese, which is part of why Ambidestro.it exists in three languages.

Code and hands

I am a full-stack developer, specialised in PHP, Laravel and Symfony, and I built this site myself.

From my work I bring one habit: try, measure, fix. That is why every article cites the research it relies on, and when a myth does not hold up, I say so. I am not a neuroscientist or a doctor: I am someone who has trained for years and reads the studies before writing about them.

The book

Over the years I received a lot of emails, almost always with the same questions: where do I start? How long does it take? So I put everything into a book, "How to Become Ambidextrous", with a test and progressive exercises for writing, drawing and coordination, in English, Italian and Spanish. How it came about is in a dream that became a book.

Where to start

If you are new here, I suggest starting with the ambidextrous test: eight questions to find out where you stand today. Then move on to the four-week plan, which walks you through the first steps with your non-dominant hand.

It does not take much time: ten minutes a day is enough to start, and consistency does the rest. Everything will feel clumsy at first, and that is normal; that is exactly where the learning happens.

If you are curious about what I do when I am not writing about hands, my work as a developer is at mattiapenna.dev. And if this blog is useful to you, the best gift you can give me is to share it with someone who fancies a challenge.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy training. With both hands.