Absolutely. I love to write since I got in to fountain pens. It forced me to change my grip for the better, motivated me to practice spencerian, and appreciate quality paper. Writing is now very personal and delightful. I take what I write more seriously and thoughtfully, which causes me to retain it far better.
I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situations. In college, I needed to be able to recall all of the information I had ingested: it was low-write, high-read. In the workplace, there's much more information, but I'm unlikely to need most of it: it's high-write, low-read. I need to be able to reference the information, but not necessarily recall it. Taking paper notes became too much of a burden and I moved to a wiki of markdown notes.
I also use Obsidian, and paired with a handwriting keyboard for Apple Pencil support (e.g. mazec; Apple's built-in scribble feature is too finnicky), it's been my Goldilocks note-taking method for the past few months.
not OP (and biased) but I'm building https://acreom.com to do this and to support my own dev workflow. Made it into a product after realising other devs like it too.
I don't host it, per-se: I use VimWiki, and occasionally Obsidian for the pretty graph. VimWiki even has a static site generator, but I use Pandoc for that. For search I use FZF and ripgrep.
Thats a great way to put it, "high-write, low-read". I take a lot of notes and screenshots on calls, I may never need to go back and look but when I do look its always there. I use Onenote and the search is excellent in conjunction to the structure and tags I have build up around it. What works great is I have setup autohotkey to take a screenshot in the same area as the previous screenshot and insert it on my onenote page in context by hitting the F12 key. For me being visual with my notes is better than writing them.
Ctrl+win+s screenshots to clipboard in Win10. Ctrl+shift+z screenshots to OneNote (though an update overwrote it at one point, not sure if it's fixed in general).
You can use OneNote settings to determine how that capture is used, eg placing in the current page (I have it set to make a new page, but I almost exclusively capture to clipboard).
this. I write when I'm reviewing training material from a paid course and going to be testing for a cert, but I rarely write as part of my day-to-day work.
I keep a text document for things like code snippets but I still find paper notes helpful when I have meetings or just to keep track of what I’m trying to do as I work.
At work we have a search field, sure, but I've never encountered a successful search in our Confluence. It's all browser bookmarks and "can someone tell me where x is?" in Teams channels.
Our Confluence guru still swears to God that Confluence used to have search problems, but now it's perfect. Fortunately, Atlassian has made us move with their stupid "you can't host on premises, would you like to pay tenfold" move.
It's come to the point almost the opposite is the case: I actively try not to remember most information but try to make sure it's registered somewhere as plain text so that I can find it easily should I need it. People are surprised I can answer them so quickly when they ask about some trifle from last year - but it's only because I managed to register it (e.g. by refusing to proceed on the basis of an oral request and asking them to write an email instead).
Moreover, I choose what to remember very carefully as it's something that also influences my personality.
I still do it and it has worked for me from being an individual contributor, to leading a team, to leading a part of the org that has a tree of ~50 people across multiple contexts.
The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to write down even if I never read them again, others I re-read, others are to-dos. No organization, just a flow of braindump, and lots of little drawings everywhere and arrows connecting things and so on. If you'd read it you'd not understand anything, both because the handwriting is atrocious and because there's practically no structure.
Likewise. Same reasons, same process, and I've found it just as helpful in middle management as I did when I was an individual contributor.
There's an additional benefit. This is the reason I started doing it in the first place: many years ago, as a junior engineer, I was obliged to spend long hours in daily meetings. I found that the only way I could avoid actually falling asleep was to take detailed, copious notes. It was only afterwards that I discovered I was retaining information better and forming a big-picture view of the work. Also, what took me another decade to discover, is that nice stationery -- which for me means a fountain pen and a good notebook -- can make this a positive pleasure.
> if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it.
I wonder that myself. Earlier in my career, when the internet wasn't so great, we had to rely on textual communication for everything. This left the ideal 'paper' trail to look back on for reference. Everything well communicated, everything perfectly retained. It was unbelievably efficient.
Now that the technology has improved, easily transmitting voice and even video, there is a curious push in that direction. Communication quality has declined dramatically as you now have to suffer through a bumbling stream of consciousness instead of words someone put effort into writing, which adds significantly more human time involvement to get a point across, and once spoken the information is automatically lost save even more human best effort to retain what can and never perfectly so.
I likely shiny newfangled tech as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place. Why we stopped using what worked best boggles the mind.
> if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it.
Because I can type something like 10x as fast as I can write by hand (I'm both extremely fast at typing and fairly slow at writing), but the recall benefit is not 10x.
I can recall anything I hear or see well enough that I'm not looking at double-digit multiples of effectiveness for any method over nothing, much less between methods.
The sheer volume of things I can take down typing with 9 fingers on a keyboard vs. writing with one pen outweighs any day-to-day advantage of how much better I would be able to recall the few things I would have the time to write down.
very true, in my experience it's been hard to keep up by hand and much faster to type, but like handwritten notes i rarely reference meeting or project notes so i put little effort into organization. i settled on using onenote and different tabs for different teams
Notes were a kind of write only memory for me - I rarely referred to them, preferring the textbook or other resources, but I still wrote them because it's supposed to help retention.
I'm the same way. I discovered that taking notes was a fairly effective way to make sure I actually thoroughly read the material and that I don't just lapse into skimming the book. Not sure how important doing them in handwriting was, but it felt more useful.
I came to the same conclusion, however, here’s how I handle that:
I carry around a folder with just a bunch of printer paper, and some index cards in it. I write my todo lists on an index card because it’s intentionally small so I can’t overload it, and it feels good to cross out the last thing and just throw it away.
I take notes through the day on the printer paper, and then I review them frequently and type up what I want to preserve in Notion (recently switched from WorkFlowy, as much as I love outlines, I need free form writing options too).
Anything I don’t type up, I just throw away.
Benefits:
Super cheap
Intentionally not opinionated, just pen and paper.
If I need to think about a hard problem, I can lay out all of my notes on a flat surface. I think spatially, this is so valuable and not possible with notebooks or even software (miro kinda)
I started this about a month ago and it’s going great so far. And this is coming from w notebook and note taking software snob.
Cheap filler note paper is a source of difficulty when writing(ball pens will skip, dark inks will bleed, scratchy pencils and nibs will tear). The index cards work, but I would also go for the slightly more expensive paper brands one can find on JetPens. If you're going for a stationary experience, investing a little more in it goes a long way.
I like use a 5.5 x 8.5 or 9 x 12 Strathmore 300 Sketch tablet for notes. They are sturdy and the paper is quite good. They are a pain if you want to scan/copy them as the paper is either smaller or larger than standard letter size.
Yes I also use sketch pads with no lines (The grey spiral-bound ones sold by WHSmith in the UK). I don't understand the attraction of lines given that software is hard to describe without diagrams.
And longevity. I have my note books from 20 years ago on the same shelf as my notebooks from last year. Apart from pictures (I had a digital camera in the mid nineties) The number of files that have survived the transition between a dozen computers is not that high.
I actually distinctly prefer not having lines on my paper, because my notes are typically big outlines and drawings and diagrams.
I am planning on coming up with a few different paper templates that I can easily print when I need it (I have a cheap $100 brother laser b&w printer that works perfectly and cheaply for this purpose).
i found a little orange notebook for sale at an obscure place many years ago. honestly, it's changed my life.
well, at any rate, to make a short story long, since i like orange, have no concept of the value of a dollar, and, have every intention of perhaps someday using at least a few of the methodically-growing collection of various notepads i, for <insert totally legitimate and intentional reason here>, possess, i purchased this particular notepad.
to paint a better picture of that day, which occurred oh so long ago, i will provide only the important, totally accurate and truthful details.
the setting, if you will. mid-morning, early-fall. it's probably a Saturday. the temperature calls for a light-jacket as the over-cast sky emits it's mixture of sunshine amongst the calming grey-blue cover of moisture-laden clouds.
walking toward an outdoor vendor's booth as the vendor stands proudly behind his u-shaped arrangement of cloth-covered display tables. these tables contain an assortment of hand-drawn bookmarks and sketches, along with, let's say, some reading materials, like magazines and a few books, both the hard-backed and paper-backed variety. also present are different combinations of bound-together materials, which are probably notebooks or notepads. each one has a different size, shape, thickness, and design.
perusing through places like this, a crucial, well-practiced defense strategy is used.
keeping an over-all casual demeanor and adhering to a strict no-eye-contact rule, this unknown vendor's booth is approached while a series of covert glances toward the wares on display are quickly performed. initially, a not-my-tempo or no-way-jose kind of vibe was formed. in order to bide some time, most likely, a few easy-to-decipher, interest-grabbing ganders towards a direction away from this particular merchant occurred.
a decision still not made, the tried-and-true apathetic nod-of-head, where two-to-three down-up movements as you plan to callously stroll past this offending concessionaire, was kept in mind and ready to be performed.
however, between a fanned-out stack of various flower-print 9x11's and a neatly organized array of light to dark shaded faux-leather bound 5x8.5s, basically hiding in plain sight, an innocuous orange item is spotted. a feeling arises. it's obviously camouflaged, no doubt, at least to any passer by lacking dignity, style, or taste.
getting closer, the item comes into clear view. with a palette of orange, white, and brown, it forms a perfect rectangle, concisely contained within it's own precision cut, sharp, rigid edges.
it's immediately obvious that this pad's particular conglomeration of bound materials was, in fact, nothing of the ordinary variety.
picking up the item, an aptly heft weight matches it's precedent set by observing the sturdy outer covering.
flipping it over, a sense of superior craftsmanship is given off. flipping back over to open the front cover, a set of accurately aligned factory-creases are noticed. opening the pad, the ability to fold it's front cover backwards over it's self is realized. gripping the pad, the cover stays out of the way, neatly positioned behind the pad's heftier, solid cardboard, backside.
it's clear that writing and/or carrying while open is made comfortable and easy.
noticing the thick, special paper inside the pad, you get goosebumps.
the vendor then states that it's imported from France.
money is thrown at the vendor and the notepad, in all it's glory, has a new owner, as immediately, there is love for what is formally known as the "Rhodia No 12 Pad".
the vendor states he has more notepads with different styles and sizes. they all get purchased. they all get loved. over time, a special life-long bond with a brand is formed.
the end.
so, yeah, i mean, Rhodia pads are pretty cool. btw, i am just an idiot. i have no affiliation with Rho...
Rhodia notebooks are great. Also check out Rite in the Rain. As a lefty I don't care for spiral-bound anything, but I use a pocket-size Rite in the Rain in the gym to track my exercise goals & results.
Ah, I see. I love the template idea. I had to look this up just now, but do you mean copy paper? Apparently copy paper is typically a bit thinner and not as bright white. I think my problem may be that I was originally picturing high-end, color quality paper.
I like very lightly printed graph paper. Very pale blue at 5 lines per inch.
I can ignore the lines for free hand, but they provide nice guidance for more structured drawings.
That's actually the only real downside to this system currently, I'm just using a cheap flimsy folder that can't really be used to write on without being on a surface itself. I'd like something a bit more firm, but that isn't big and bulky. Still on the hunt.
Yes! these read/write, and reference/recall ratios are good measures of how we should do things. the article case is only valid for a certain range.
Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least)
1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them).
2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question.
a notebook is a great column oriented database for when you cannot bring technology with you. I don't think there is any useful scenario for one otherwise
I found just the opposite in college. For me it was high write, low read, concerning my own notes. The only value to taking notes for me was the active nature of writing helped pin the information in my head. Other than assignment and test dates, which were just bullet lists, I rarely looked back at my notes.
I think that was the sole value of doing homework assignments and term papers. Going through the act of working out a problem, or researching then writing about a topic, is what reinforced the learning for me.
Probably. It's not just the tactile impact of pen on paper, there is likely to also be a memory effect triggered by paging through a notebook to get to the latest blank page.
E-ink tablets, like a word processor, always starts with a blank page.
I've always suspected the metal editing down to important points is a major factor.
If I'm taking typed notes I can regurgitate almost exactly what was said at 100 wpm and feel like I'm taking "good" notes because I've included everything.
If I'm taking written notes I have to think about the material as I write it and distill it down to something I can write quickly enough.
Didn't have good tablet devices until after I was out of college, but from years of using them in other contexts I think they provide a similar effect to writing on paper, except the eraser works better and I can rearrange things after I've written them if I need more space in the middle of a page.
I know absolutely nothing about neuroscience. When I read a claim about handwriting notes having more brain activity than typing notes, it seems like additional.. overhead (pun).. to accomplish the same task: memorization. Less brain activity to accomplish the same task of memorization would imply efficiency, wouldn't it?
I think you're mixing efficiency with effectiveness. It may be more efficient to store your valuables in a breadbasket, but more effective to store them in a safety deposit box, if you measure effectiveness by "keeping everything in one place, free from the view of strangers". In this case, the extra effort aids (so it is claimed, I believe it but am no expert) on later retrieval, not in efficient intake.
> I have some vague typed notes, but I can’t recall the technical details I need to finish my work. No one is available to answer my question. It’s then that it hits me: I should have written down notes by hand during the meeting.
I've been done with handwriting ever since laptops became common. I can type much faster than I can write and also much more legibly for a given speed.
Of course, this is on a laptop with something resembling a real keyboard. I can see how handwritten notes are better than typing on a smartphone. Of course this is fixed with a Bluetooth keyboard, a good full-size one like an Apple one or Logitech.
Is it ridiculous to be typing on a big keyboard to smartphone that's probably about half the size of the keyboard? Sure, but no one has ever not wanted me to do this in a meeting.
The proportion of the population that is actually good at retaining information is too small to sample, but I'd bet that they don't take notes on average.
Retaining information shouldnt have anything to do with how you ingest it. You need to have a place to put it. This means working with that information. Relating it to other pieces of information, imagining examples in real time, or, more formally, writing the shortest program you can that outputs the thing (modulo the constraint that you write it out of other programs stored in your head).
> Retaining information shouldnt have anything to do with how you ingest it.
It must. The ingestion method, and particularly how long the info sits in our consciousness, will govern the depth of indexing operations possible.
Something you’ve seen many times is typically easier to remember than something you’ve only seen once. This is obvious, but under your model it makes no sense.
Even if this is true (which for some reason I doubt, probably bias), my handwriting is so atrocious and inefficient I doubt I would ever act on this knowledge.
I recently interviewed[0] a professional writer who transitioned away from a purely digital workflow (e.g. "getting things done", "mind mapping") to one that incorporates good old paper and pen with flashcards: a hybrid approach. I myself tried (many times) to go either fully digital, or fully analog, only to find myself in the same position over and over again of combining the best of both worlds.
Too long ago that I can up with actual citations I read about studies that said a better way to "retain" information, in the context of college reading material, is recitation. With recitation they meant verbally explaining the content from memory.
One of the problems with most such studies is that they don't compare techniques with each other.
Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning
As someone who's taken notes with my laptop for my bachelor and master degree, these studies seem to miss a lot of the learning process.
For starters, it's not just "take notes" and leave it at that. Those notes are reviewed, modified, reorganized, corrected, and studied. It's so much easier to just carry a laptop with several files instead of a variety of notebooks. So much easier to search in files, to rewrite/reorganize... And, for a lot of people like me who have bad handwriting (that gets worse with fatigue), they're also so much easier to read. It's also far easier to take collaborative notes.
In other words, the relation effort-results can be far higher with laptops than with writing.
I’ve always wondered the same thing. Does the handwriting benefit apply only for the first pass at taking the note, or does it hold up after all the other steps that you mentioned?
The remark from Alan Perlis feels pretty accurate to me: You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
I can read a book on a subject, and understand it to a degree. If I write down what I learned in my own words, then I must come to grips with the fact that I didn't understand everything; writing it down forces me to come to a better, more organized understanding. Teaching it to someone else means I must be able to explain for someone who does not necessarily have my own background, and who may stop me to ask questions. Programming the knowledge to a computer means that I must account for all questions; the knowledge must be completely and precisely defined.
I reckon very little knowledge has yet been adequately programmed into a computer, but many people stop at the first step, and never write or teach.
One thing I can agree with OP, Weinberg and what’s-his-name’s Hallmarks of Cancer series of papers are emblematic of everything that’s wrong with biology research and why we haven’t made much actionable progress in recent decades in biology: these reviews invented out of thin air dogmatic rules about cancer as if what they know about it is what’s important (in their first review, the immune system is not even mentioned) and the entire field embraces it as the Bible or something. Then when they update it, they pat themselves in the back acting as if it’s all progress now that they have a better model! By the time the second review came out it became damn clear that the role of the immune system in cancer is probably one of the most important aspects we should focus on, but they didn’t want to look like idiots so they still underplayed it’s importance.
I 100% agree with this. If I want to fully commit to learning something, physically writing it down with my hand makes it stick better, for reasons that I don't really understand.
I actually started to think about it as a kind of cheat code. Like, how, in a video game you can type in a cheat code and you get special powers. That's how big of a difference it made for me.
My strategy looks like this:
* If there's a good book, buy the book. Like when I wanted to learn C, I picked up K&R's C. A physical copy isn't required and can even get in the way, but can be useful if the Kindle version looks bad. If there isn't a good book, open up the official documentation on a web browser. Third-party tutorials tend to suck, IMO; official documentation is much better.
* Sit down at a desk with my laptop, book, and my notebook. Start at the beginning of the book/documentation. Read every line. If there's a word that doesn't make sense, look up the word. Talk to myself, out loud: Summarize and re-phrase what I'm reading.
* Write down a summary of the large important details of what I'm reading, in snippets of prose, on paper with a pen. It's important to not use the same words that the author(s) used. And of course, be much pithier than the author. As Kevin from the office taught us, why use lot word when small word do trick?
* The act of summarizing and re-phrasing, first verbally and then manually, seems to really do the trick in terms of making my brain remember things.
* If there's anything that can be tested with code, test it. If you're learning C or Lua or whatever, you obviously want to set up a little environment and test everything you're reading. This is harder for something like system design, though.
* Repeat every day until the book or documentation is consumed, or I feel I've had enough to accomplish whatever goals I had. Repetition every day seems to be important.
* Talk to other people about what I'm learning. One time I even reached out to the author of the book: I thought I found a mistake in his book; I was wrong! But talking with co-workers, or even salespeople if learning something like Snowflake can be helpful, or my partner. Anyone who will listen.
I will admit to not using the notebook strategy in recent years. I'll use a Google doc or sheet instead. But I think the notebook strategy is better! Especially when I was starting out, and the concepts of programming were new and strange.
I believe it's just the amount of time it takes to physically write a sentence with pen and paper, compared to spoken word or even typing which can be pretty fast in comparison. Your brain is mulling the words over several times over as you write it. That leaves more of an imprint as you are literally thinking about it more as your hand slowly writes each word out. I can type pretty fast, but I don't remember what I type nearly as well as what I physically write out. I just think it's the speed difference and how much time you toil with the specific thought.
I don't know! I think you might be right, but my intuition tells me it's a little more than that. Other ideas:
* Is it a mind-body connection thing? Writing seems to involve a lot more fine motor control and muscle engagement than typing.
* Like other people my age, I didn't grow up typing; I started learning when I was around 10 years old. I learned to write much earlier than that. Could it be that neural connections tied to writing are somehow more effectively hooked up to learning new things?
* Is it a hand dominance thing? I write with one hand, but type with both.
* Is it that writing engages a different kind of language processing than typing? To me, the "voice" I use typing feels very similar to how I speak. Whereas when I'm physically writing, the "voice" I use feels very different. It's as if there's a different language center being worked.
My experience is that mind mapping on an iPad is the best way to retain information, because there is a spatial component that doesn’t exist in any other documentation format (and it is searchable; you can also use handwriting in the mind map).
My brain takes advantage of the spatial component for sure.
The other reason I have heard is that since it's slower to write by hand you are forced to summarize it, which means you need to understand. You can't mindlessly type anymore.
I'm gonna take a guess here - writing by hand is slow enough that your brain has to summarize what is being verbally spoken in order to capture it all. In order to summarize accurately, you need to have some understanding of what is being said, being able to pick out the key points.
I write down all my notes - in fact, got a reMarkable to replace all my paper notebooks - but seems to be the best way for me to retain information. Even though I tend not to reference my notes later.
This might be a bit weird for me but I really hate context switching when I am trying to learn. Writing breaks the flow of what I am trying to concentrate on and I can no longer actually learn, and I would rather not do it unless I am forced to.
FOr me, if I write it down I will remember it and do not need to refer to my notes. But if I don't write it down I am likely to forget. So I did some testing and found that it isn't only the act of writing that helps me, it is quickly looking at what I have written. I think, for me, writing in my own words, and then reinforcing by going over what I have written, is the secret to remembering things.
As far as handwriting versus keyboarding, I find them to be equal in my case.
I'm in the same boat. In university, folks would ask how much I study to get good grades (20 years ago). I would write my notes and review them once or twice. When looking at the written word, I recall where I was sitting, what was going on in the environment, and often a lot (a lot a lot) of context that I would have otherwise forgotten had I not reviewed the note once or twice.
However, for myself, the keyboard creates some disconnect when reviewing notes. It's got to be hand written and, like mentioned, I usually only need to review it once or twice over the span of a week or two and then I'll retain the info. Lots of scaffolded and reinforced-by-association information.
> But if I don't write it down I am likely to forget.
Anecdotally, I have probably 4-5 full note books of scribbles and sketches as part of my project. It's not meant to look good or be finished thoughts, and I rarely look at old notes. So for me, the primary purpose is enriching the thinking process, so it's closer to the next step – prototyping. This lets me weed out flawed ideas earlier, so when I actually build something, I have higher confidence it'll work well.
I'm actually the opposite, I discovered very early in my college experience that taking notes just hindered my ability to retain the information (I guess because the process of writing and structuring my writing took attention away from listening.) So my undergraduate and masters was all done without notes at all.
I just want to add a gigantic caveat: NOT FOR EVERYBODY.
I know a lot of people who insist writing by hand helps them. But I also know it's TERRIBLE for me personally.
The article claims:
> Writing by hand on paper creates a tactile, personalized experience... The complex experience of hand writing on paper contains a multitude of variable elements: the creativity of an individual’s written representation of language, the texture of the paper itself, the fine motor skills needed to translate thoughts into written language, the engagement of the physical senses... All of these complexities create a stronger memory of the information that is taken in during the note taking.
Well, no. For me, all of that is a bunch of irrelevant noise. I hate writing, it's so much slower and more awkward than typing (for me), I'm constantly concerning myself with whether I can keep up, whether I should start the next word on the same line or next line, whether it's clear enough for me to read later or if I should repeat the word, whether I need to slow down to be more legible but if that means I won't be able to keep up, whether I need to click the pencil again...
Writing requires me to use a significant amount of my brain for it, and this is taking away from my actual concentration on the content I'm trying to learn. It's not creating "stronger memories" for me, it's creating irrelevant distraction. (Whereas typing for me is effortless muscle memory that takes almost zero effort, so I can direct most of my concentration to the material itself.)
Again, I don't question that it helps some people. But presenting it as universal is just flat-out wrong.
I can sympathize with this quite a bit. My own note-taking in college was pretty bad and at the time I would have cited speed as part of it.
What I've learned since then is to introduce a buffer between the consumption of the material and the making of the note. Instead of trying to keep up, I'm trying to fill the buffer to the point where I can summarize and re-state the material in my own words and write that down.
I slip into old habits sometimes, but for me the recap-then-write approach has been helpful and I suspect it's part of the value so many see to handwritten notes. You can't take a transcription (I could probably transcribe a lot of meetings or lectures on a keyboard) so you have to condense and the condensation, as much as anything, is probably what matters.
But the issue is when the explanation doesn’t stop. I was great at condensing in college, but while trying to formulate my own words, the prof was already explaining the next topic which I would then miss entirely. This was extra-apparent for formula-heavy courses.
So I basically reverted to lossy transcription of what the professor said, which sucked. And I was bad at retaining lectures.
I actually lost the ability to write after a small stroke. Comes out as nonsense. Can still type at 80wpm just fine.
Apparently different parts of the brain.
How interesting! Have you done any experiments to try to identify the “line” between the two skills? For example, can you write individual letters in isolation? Like a single letter “T” by itself?
And can you still draw shapes? (Like a circle? Which is basically an “O”.) If so can you draw a series of shapes? A circle, a square, and a triangle? Have you tried writing words with your non-dominant hand? It won’t look very nice but I wonder if the jumble impacts both sides or just the side that “knows” how to write?
I can write for about 10-30 seconds. Then characters turn to scribbles. If I’m insanely slow and careful I can last a minute or so. It has improved in the last few years.
I was a minor artist before. I could still draw mostly fine even at my worst.
Work stuff was weird. If A bug report came in I could find the root issue faster then most anyone. But I could no longer solve the problem. Even if was totally trivial.
Got by mostly by helping other people find out what was wrong with code.
Thankfully I’m getting close to my old ability to write code.
I mostly agree, learning efficiency is not directly tied to the method, but how the brain processes it over time and may even require multiple methods to sufficiently learn something. I wouldn't be surprised if emotions or feeling frustrated while trying to learn hampers it as well.
As a person with ADHD, that slower, deliberate nature goes against everything my brain wants. Even when learning from video, certain speakers seem too slow, and my brain prefers speedy information intake otherwise it wanders off to another universe.
I think my brain has a pretty wide bus, but no guarantees it has the next gen processor, and definitely no ECC memory, information gets corrupted and lost all the time. That's ADHD.
On a related note: many autistic people suffer from forms of dyspraxia that make writing by hand physically unpleasant in addition to the ouput being hard to read.
Personally I like using pen and paper for dumb sketching because it helps me persist mental models in case I get distracted. But I find it really tedious for anything that requires any serious amount of information density or permanence. I've always avoided taking notes in classes because writing by hand felt tedious and slow, and typing created too many distractions if it was socially acceptable (or even allowed) at all.
I still flinch whenever someone asks me to take notes because even the process of transforming live conversations into serial form requires so much processing I can't fully pay attention to what's actually being said and risk losing track.
The research cited does not make any statements about improved recall of facts based on note taking (handwritten vs typed). I have found EEG studies [0] that do not actually measure a learning outcome, studies on letter recognition [1], and calendar apps vs physical calendar [2].
Citing studies which do not prove the thesis is actually worse than citing nothing at all. The fact that there is not a cited study showing clear memorization outcomes of typing vs handwriting, I would actually conclude the opposite of what the article is trying to say.
More generally I think the idea that "The article does at least attempt to cite some research" is very problematic if the cited papers don't actually show what the article is stating.
This is why open book examinations are a thing. Memorization is rather redundant IMO. Being able to use the concepts to solve the problems is an important skill.
You need to memorise enough of the topic to know what to look up in a book.
You need to memorise enough of the topic that you can draw relationships between disparate elements.
Having content in your memory means you have the ability to potentially pull it up quicker, or to pull it up in a situation (such as a team meeting) where you don't have access to the book.
If you rely only on what's previously written, foregoing memorisation, you are limited to the relationships that other people have written down.
I know for me personally; I always absorb more information when I am just listening and not writing.
When I'm writing whatever the teacher is saying, I can't understand it at the same speed. So I just write without actually comprehending the sentences.
But my listening was always so good that I rarely took notes throughout all my school years. I would just stare at the teacher and listen without writing anything.
I was always told in school that I needed to take notes. So I did. And then I had no idea what was going on because all of my energy went into taking notes.
Eventually I gave up. It's amazing how much you can learn when you simply listen. I wish I would have realized that sooner.
Yeah, I guess this comes down to how your brain works best, because it's the complete opposite for me -- just listening would result in almost no understanding or retention.
But, if I just took even crappy notes, I would remember and understand MUCH better. I rarely looked at the notes afterwards, just the act of writing it down was critical for me.
----
Edit: sometimes, the topic wasn't a great fit for notes, so I would doodle instead. Same benefits. The brain is weird.
I find it odd that we were always encouraged to take notes, but never once taught how to do it. Most people tried to furiously write what was being said verbatim, which is definitely not ideal. A simple introduction to note taking would have helped so many people.
More to your point, that's definitely a strategy that works for some people. When I had two weeks of jury duty, everybody was pretty consistently scribbling notes on the various complexities of the case except one woman, who was staring off into space and looked like she wasn't paying any attention. I figured she'd be a dud, but when it came to deliberations, she was probably the sharpest one in the room.
I end up changing things up a lot. It partly depends on my purpose for taking notes. If I want to capture more or less verbatim quotes for an article without going back to a recording, I generally type. It's also much easier to share notes in that form.
But if I mostly want to capture highlights, especially if I'm also doing something like taking pics of slides, I generally prefer writing. There are also settings where having a laptop between yourself and the person you're speaking with feels off-putting whereas taking some handwritten notes seems fine.
Perhaps an even bigger caveat is that you have prescribed this to note taking from a live discussion.
That isn't what you've said, but you imply that repeatedly.
And by the distinct set of circumstances (recording verbatim) in which writing is vastly inferior to typing, your position is noteworthy. I would argue that a microphone is even still vastly superior & can provide text output. However, whether or not you retain (this is about memory) all that information is another question all together.
If you take your typed notes and then read through them while writing out key elements, you're retention and memory will likely be greatly improved.
Aside, based on your complaints and the fact you said pencil, I'm guessing that your skill with a pen is poor. Writing in general takes practice to master, it is not simply literacy.
Edit:
>Although typing notes can be useful and even faster for some note-takers, ultimately it does not have the cognitive, tactile, memory, or visual cognitive effects that people can get when they write by hand. Typing notes can be good, but it won’t make it easier to remember what was said later on.
Agreed. IMO, the real crux is whether you have the inclination to write down what you're taking notes on verbatim. In fact, I think it comes down to one of the following:
1. If you have an inclination to write things down verbatim, which tool/method is slow enough to force you to paraphrase?
2. If you don't have such an inclination and already tend to paraphrase, which has the least cognitive load in using? Not which engages the most senses or motor skills.
Once you develop a habit of putting what you're taking notes on into your own words, you can move from 1 to 2. However, I think most people have the inclination of 1 and tend to fall back to it when they move to 2.
Because I'm one of those people, handwriting was the best method for me for a long time, until I started my master's program where all the professors have either put out a list of learning objectives at the beginning of the course or at beginning of each lecture/unit. Now, I type my notes. I form those learning objectives as questions and try to answer them as I take notes. Outside of classes, I list the objectives of the meeting/research as questions, adding new questions as they come up, and trying to answer them.
This method has been more effective than anything else I've done and typing is really the only way to do it fast enough for me.
It maybe if you grew up writing with pencil or typing.
For me writing is huge help in retaining information. I also know people who swear by typing but they all are younger who grew up with computers.
Also the handwritten notes don’t need to write everything in alphabets. The biggest advantage of writing is freeform. I could draw a diagram or other doodles. My old notes of drawings of the classroom, random objects, etc. I think those doodles helped me retain some information.
I recently learned of Dysgraphia from an interview with Eric Weinstein. For some, writing notes on paper actively destroys recall. Western education pretty much forces students to take notes by hand, which is understandably a nightmare for those afflicted. I wish I could find the specific clip I'm thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia.
> For me, all of that is a bunch of irrelevant noise.
I share that exact same experience you describe.
For me, learning is all about making connections between the new material and material I already know.
If I kept notes I would have to do three things at once: (1) Follow the material, (2) try to question the material and search my brain for material I already know to make connections with, and (3) take notes, and there's just not enough cognitive capacity to do all three.
Taking notes means turning off the making-connections piece, and that's the most valuable piece to me, and I believe that this is not just a subjective experience, but something that would affect other people too: Focussing on note-taking instead of connections, creates a qualitatively different learning outcome, namely one that leans more towards superficial rote reproduction and less towards real understanding.
In school, when the teacher said something that was unclear or that flat out made no sense, I'd frequently be the one to ask for clarification. Then 20 other heads would pop up from their note-taking and notice that they didn't understand it either, but somehow they didn't notice, and I did. ...they would have happily reproduced the material that made no sense given the right prompt in an exam situation, but that didn't change anything about the fact that they didn't understand it.
What's more: I couldn't engage in that style of learning even if I wanted to. Like: If I tried to turn off the part of my brain that searches for meaning, e.g. when something simply has no meaning, like an exact date of an event in history that I need to know for an exam, then I still wouldn't remember the damned date, plus I wouldn't remember any of the broad themes either. The only thing that would happen would be that my brain would be bored and would wander off thinking about something else that's more interesting.
The problem with this view is that it only looks at "writing" when processing information. What about search, classification, reorganization, sharing? I have a OneNote notebook with some notes for important meetings: I don't know how would I search for certain things if I only had a paper notebook. In university I took notes in LaTeX and spend significant time rewriting as I studied and understood things better: again, it'd be a giant mess doing that in writing.
Also, you need to have good handwriting. Some people don't. In my case, my handwriting goes from bad to worse the more time I spend writing, to the point it becomes unintelligible. Seems more productive to invest the time it'd take me to improve that in other aspects of note-taking.
I used to be overflowing in paper, but last year I started using an iPad with a pencil exclusively, and it’s been quite amazing for both my retention of records, and my ability to organize information. I would write things down on paper, rather than just opening a word document, and typing it out, because I would lose the word documents in the mess of word documents. Same thing with the paper. With the iPad, and Note Shelf, I can keep this stuff much more organized and retain it better.
Starting a daily journal/planner for my work/personal stuff was one of the best things I've done. I always sketched in lose notebooks, papers, postits but moving to a dedicated and specialized book was a game changer. I started with a Hobonichi Techo Planner and it is just amazing. It's a piece of technology.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 444 ms ] threadTWSBI is my favorite so far.
While the arguments of the article sound convincing enough, I found that the effort one spends on the notes is far more important than the medium.
In LaTeX my mode of operation shifts from informal and short to very academic as I transform the notes into documents.
[https://zim-wiki.org/]
Ctrl+win+s screenshots to clipboard in Win10. Ctrl+shift+z screenshots to OneNote (though an update overwrote it at one point, not sure if it's fixed in general).
You can use OneNote settings to determine how that capture is used, eg placing in the current page (I have it set to make a new page, but I almost exclusively capture to clipboard).
At work we have a search field, sure, but I've never encountered a successful search in our Confluence. It's all browser bookmarks and "can someone tell me where x is?" in Teams channels.
Our Confluence guru still swears to God that Confluence used to have search problems, but now it's perfect. Fortunately, Atlassian has made us move with their stupid "you can't host on premises, would you like to pay tenfold" move.
Jokes on us, we're moving to Sharepoint…
Moreover, I choose what to remember very carefully as it's something that also influences my personality.
The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to write down even if I never read them again, others I re-read, others are to-dos. No organization, just a flow of braindump, and lots of little drawings everywhere and arrows connecting things and so on. If you'd read it you'd not understand anything, both because the handwriting is atrocious and because there's practically no structure.
There's an additional benefit. This is the reason I started doing it in the first place: many years ago, as a junior engineer, I was obliged to spend long hours in daily meetings. I found that the only way I could avoid actually falling asleep was to take detailed, copious notes. It was only afterwards that I discovered I was retaining information better and forming a big-picture view of the work. Also, what took me another decade to discover, is that nice stationery -- which for me means a fountain pen and a good notebook -- can make this a positive pleasure.
I wonder that myself. Earlier in my career, when the internet wasn't so great, we had to rely on textual communication for everything. This left the ideal 'paper' trail to look back on for reference. Everything well communicated, everything perfectly retained. It was unbelievably efficient.
Now that the technology has improved, easily transmitting voice and even video, there is a curious push in that direction. Communication quality has declined dramatically as you now have to suffer through a bumbling stream of consciousness instead of words someone put effort into writing, which adds significantly more human time involvement to get a point across, and once spoken the information is automatically lost save even more human best effort to retain what can and never perfectly so.
I likely shiny newfangled tech as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place. Why we stopped using what worked best boggles the mind.
Because I can type something like 10x as fast as I can write by hand (I'm both extremely fast at typing and fairly slow at writing), but the recall benefit is not 10x.
I can recall anything I hear or see well enough that I'm not looking at double-digit multiples of effectiveness for any method over nothing, much less between methods.
The sheer volume of things I can take down typing with 9 fingers on a keyboard vs. writing with one pen outweighs any day-to-day advantage of how much better I would be able to recall the few things I would have the time to write down.
I carry around a folder with just a bunch of printer paper, and some index cards in it. I write my todo lists on an index card because it’s intentionally small so I can’t overload it, and it feels good to cross out the last thing and just throw it away.
I take notes through the day on the printer paper, and then I review them frequently and type up what I want to preserve in Notion (recently switched from WorkFlowy, as much as I love outlines, I need free form writing options too).
Anything I don’t type up, I just throw away.
Benefits:
Super cheap
Intentionally not opinionated, just pen and paper.
If I need to think about a hard problem, I can lay out all of my notes on a flat surface. I think spatially, this is so valuable and not possible with notebooks or even software (miro kinda)
I started this about a month ago and it’s going great so far. And this is coming from w notebook and note taking software snob.
https://www.strathmoreartist.com/draw-sketch/id-300-series-s...
I am planning on coming up with a few different paper templates that I can easily print when I need it (I have a cheap $100 brother laser b&w printer that works perfectly and cheaply for this purpose).
i found a little orange notebook for sale at an obscure place many years ago. honestly, it's changed my life.
well, at any rate, to make a short story long, since i like orange, have no concept of the value of a dollar, and, have every intention of perhaps someday using at least a few of the methodically-growing collection of various notepads i, for <insert totally legitimate and intentional reason here>, possess, i purchased this particular notepad.
to paint a better picture of that day, which occurred oh so long ago, i will provide only the important, totally accurate and truthful details.
the setting, if you will. mid-morning, early-fall. it's probably a Saturday. the temperature calls for a light-jacket as the over-cast sky emits it's mixture of sunshine amongst the calming grey-blue cover of moisture-laden clouds.
walking toward an outdoor vendor's booth as the vendor stands proudly behind his u-shaped arrangement of cloth-covered display tables. these tables contain an assortment of hand-drawn bookmarks and sketches, along with, let's say, some reading materials, like magazines and a few books, both the hard-backed and paper-backed variety. also present are different combinations of bound-together materials, which are probably notebooks or notepads. each one has a different size, shape, thickness, and design.
perusing through places like this, a crucial, well-practiced defense strategy is used.
keeping an over-all casual demeanor and adhering to a strict no-eye-contact rule, this unknown vendor's booth is approached while a series of covert glances toward the wares on display are quickly performed. initially, a not-my-tempo or no-way-jose kind of vibe was formed. in order to bide some time, most likely, a few easy-to-decipher, interest-grabbing ganders towards a direction away from this particular merchant occurred.
a decision still not made, the tried-and-true apathetic nod-of-head, where two-to-three down-up movements as you plan to callously stroll past this offending concessionaire, was kept in mind and ready to be performed.
however, between a fanned-out stack of various flower-print 9x11's and a neatly organized array of light to dark shaded faux-leather bound 5x8.5s, basically hiding in plain sight, an innocuous orange item is spotted. a feeling arises. it's obviously camouflaged, no doubt, at least to any passer by lacking dignity, style, or taste.
getting closer, the item comes into clear view. with a palette of orange, white, and brown, it forms a perfect rectangle, concisely contained within it's own precision cut, sharp, rigid edges.
it's immediately obvious that this pad's particular conglomeration of bound materials was, in fact, nothing of the ordinary variety.
picking up the item, an aptly heft weight matches it's precedent set by observing the sturdy outer covering.
flipping it over, a sense of superior craftsmanship is given off. flipping back over to open the front cover, a set of accurately aligned factory-creases are noticed. opening the pad, the ability to fold it's front cover backwards over it's self is realized. gripping the pad, the cover stays out of the way, neatly positioned behind the pad's heftier, solid cardboard, backside.
it's clear that writing and/or carrying while open is made comfortable and easy.
noticing the thick, special paper inside the pad, you get goosebumps.
the vendor then states that it's imported from France.
money is thrown at the vendor and the notepad, in all it's glory, has a new owner, as immediately, there is love for what is formally known as the "Rhodia No 12 Pad".
the vendor states he has more notepads with different styles and sizes. they all get purchased. they all get loved. over time, a special life-long bond with a brand is formed.
the end.
so, yeah, i mean, Rhodia pads are pretty cool. btw, i am just an idiot. i have no affiliation with Rho...
I might try this out.
Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least)
1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them).
2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question.
[1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x
I think that was the sole value of doing homework assignments and term papers. Going through the act of working out a problem, or researching then writing about a topic, is what reinforced the learning for me.
E-ink tablets, like a word processor, always starts with a blank page.
If I'm taking typed notes I can regurgitate almost exactly what was said at 100 wpm and feel like I'm taking "good" notes because I've included everything.
If I'm taking written notes I have to think about the material as I write it and distill it down to something I can write quickly enough.
Didn't have good tablet devices until after I was out of college, but from years of using them in other contexts I think they provide a similar effect to writing on paper, except the eraser works better and I can rearrange things after I've written them if I need more space in the middle of a page.
He also liked to put questions about minute details, sometimes even the footnotes.
End result: I still did not remember the stuff, but I got good at making summarizing notes quickly...
I've been done with handwriting ever since laptops became common. I can type much faster than I can write and also much more legibly for a given speed.
Of course, this is on a laptop with something resembling a real keyboard. I can see how handwritten notes are better than typing on a smartphone. Of course this is fixed with a Bluetooth keyboard, a good full-size one like an Apple one or Logitech.
Is it ridiculous to be typing on a big keyboard to smartphone that's probably about half the size of the keyboard? Sure, but no one has ever not wanted me to do this in a meeting.
Retaining information shouldnt have anything to do with how you ingest it. You need to have a place to put it. This means working with that information. Relating it to other pieces of information, imagining examples in real time, or, more formally, writing the shortest program you can that outputs the thing (modulo the constraint that you write it out of other programs stored in your head).
It must. The ingestion method, and particularly how long the info sits in our consciousness, will govern the depth of indexing operations possible.
Something you’ve seen many times is typically easier to remember than something you’ve only seen once. This is obvious, but under your model it makes no sense.
[0] - https://digitalorganizationdad.substack.com/p/the-tools-of-e...
Too long ago that I can up with actual citations I read about studies that said a better way to "retain" information, in the context of college reading material, is recitation. With recitation they meant verbally explaining the content from memory.
One of the problems with most such studies is that they don't compare techniques with each other.
Abstract:
Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning
For starters, it's not just "take notes" and leave it at that. Those notes are reviewed, modified, reorganized, corrected, and studied. It's so much easier to just carry a laptop with several files instead of a variety of notebooks. So much easier to search in files, to rewrite/reorganize... And, for a lot of people like me who have bad handwriting (that gets worse with fatigue), they're also so much easier to read. It's also far easier to take collaborative notes.
In other words, the relation effort-results can be far higher with laptops than with writing.
I can read a book on a subject, and understand it to a degree. If I write down what I learned in my own words, then I must come to grips with the fact that I didn't understand everything; writing it down forces me to come to a better, more organized understanding. Teaching it to someone else means I must be able to explain for someone who does not necessarily have my own background, and who may stop me to ask questions. Programming the knowledge to a computer means that I must account for all questions; the knowledge must be completely and precisely defined.
I reckon very little knowledge has yet been adequately programmed into a computer, but many people stop at the first step, and never write or teach.
I actually started to think about it as a kind of cheat code. Like, how, in a video game you can type in a cheat code and you get special powers. That's how big of a difference it made for me.
My strategy looks like this:
* If there's a good book, buy the book. Like when I wanted to learn C, I picked up K&R's C. A physical copy isn't required and can even get in the way, but can be useful if the Kindle version looks bad. If there isn't a good book, open up the official documentation on a web browser. Third-party tutorials tend to suck, IMO; official documentation is much better.
* Sit down at a desk with my laptop, book, and my notebook. Start at the beginning of the book/documentation. Read every line. If there's a word that doesn't make sense, look up the word. Talk to myself, out loud: Summarize and re-phrase what I'm reading.
* Write down a summary of the large important details of what I'm reading, in snippets of prose, on paper with a pen. It's important to not use the same words that the author(s) used. And of course, be much pithier than the author. As Kevin from the office taught us, why use lot word when small word do trick?
* The act of summarizing and re-phrasing, first verbally and then manually, seems to really do the trick in terms of making my brain remember things.
* If there's anything that can be tested with code, test it. If you're learning C or Lua or whatever, you obviously want to set up a little environment and test everything you're reading. This is harder for something like system design, though.
* Repeat every day until the book or documentation is consumed, or I feel I've had enough to accomplish whatever goals I had. Repetition every day seems to be important.
* Talk to other people about what I'm learning. One time I even reached out to the author of the book: I thought I found a mistake in his book; I was wrong! But talking with co-workers, or even salespeople if learning something like Snowflake can be helpful, or my partner. Anyone who will listen.
I will admit to not using the notebook strategy in recent years. I'll use a Google doc or sheet instead. But I think the notebook strategy is better! Especially when I was starting out, and the concepts of programming were new and strange.
I believe it's just the amount of time it takes to physically write a sentence with pen and paper, compared to spoken word or even typing which can be pretty fast in comparison. Your brain is mulling the words over several times over as you write it. That leaves more of an imprint as you are literally thinking about it more as your hand slowly writes each word out. I can type pretty fast, but I don't remember what I type nearly as well as what I physically write out. I just think it's the speed difference and how much time you toil with the specific thought.
* Is it a mind-body connection thing? Writing seems to involve a lot more fine motor control and muscle engagement than typing.
* Like other people my age, I didn't grow up typing; I started learning when I was around 10 years old. I learned to write much earlier than that. Could it be that neural connections tied to writing are somehow more effectively hooked up to learning new things?
* Is it a hand dominance thing? I write with one hand, but type with both.
* Is it that writing engages a different kind of language processing than typing? To me, the "voice" I use typing feels very similar to how I speak. Whereas when I'm physically writing, the "voice" I use feels very different. It's as if there's a different language center being worked.
My brain takes advantage of the spatial component for sure.
I write down all my notes - in fact, got a reMarkable to replace all my paper notebooks - but seems to be the best way for me to retain information. Even though I tend not to reference my notes later.
As far as handwriting versus keyboarding, I find them to be equal in my case.
However, for myself, the keyboard creates some disconnect when reviewing notes. It's got to be hand written and, like mentioned, I usually only need to review it once or twice over the span of a week or two and then I'll retain the info. Lots of scaffolded and reinforced-by-association information.
Anecdotally, I have probably 4-5 full note books of scribbles and sketches as part of my project. It's not meant to look good or be finished thoughts, and I rarely look at old notes. So for me, the primary purpose is enriching the thinking process, so it's closer to the next step – prototyping. This lets me weed out flawed ideas earlier, so when I actually build something, I have higher confidence it'll work well.
I know a lot of people who insist writing by hand helps them. But I also know it's TERRIBLE for me personally.
The article claims:
> Writing by hand on paper creates a tactile, personalized experience... The complex experience of hand writing on paper contains a multitude of variable elements: the creativity of an individual’s written representation of language, the texture of the paper itself, the fine motor skills needed to translate thoughts into written language, the engagement of the physical senses... All of these complexities create a stronger memory of the information that is taken in during the note taking.
Well, no. For me, all of that is a bunch of irrelevant noise. I hate writing, it's so much slower and more awkward than typing (for me), I'm constantly concerning myself with whether I can keep up, whether I should start the next word on the same line or next line, whether it's clear enough for me to read later or if I should repeat the word, whether I need to slow down to be more legible but if that means I won't be able to keep up, whether I need to click the pencil again...
Writing requires me to use a significant amount of my brain for it, and this is taking away from my actual concentration on the content I'm trying to learn. It's not creating "stronger memories" for me, it's creating irrelevant distraction. (Whereas typing for me is effortless muscle memory that takes almost zero effort, so I can direct most of my concentration to the material itself.)
Again, I don't question that it helps some people. But presenting it as universal is just flat-out wrong.
What I've learned since then is to introduce a buffer between the consumption of the material and the making of the note. Instead of trying to keep up, I'm trying to fill the buffer to the point where I can summarize and re-state the material in my own words and write that down.
I slip into old habits sometimes, but for me the recap-then-write approach has been helpful and I suspect it's part of the value so many see to handwritten notes. You can't take a transcription (I could probably transcribe a lot of meetings or lectures on a keyboard) so you have to condense and the condensation, as much as anything, is probably what matters.
So I basically reverted to lossy transcription of what the professor said, which sucked. And I was bad at retaining lectures.
I was a minor artist before. I could still draw mostly fine even at my worst.
Work stuff was weird. If A bug report came in I could find the root issue faster then most anyone. But I could no longer solve the problem. Even if was totally trivial.
Got by mostly by helping other people find out what was wrong with code.
Thankfully I’m getting close to my old ability to write code.
Brains are weird
I think my brain has a pretty wide bus, but no guarantees it has the next gen processor, and definitely no ECC memory, information gets corrupted and lost all the time. That's ADHD.
Personally I like using pen and paper for dumb sketching because it helps me persist mental models in case I get distracted. But I find it really tedious for anything that requires any serious amount of information density or permanence. I've always avoided taking notes in classes because writing by hand felt tedious and slow, and typing created too many distractions if it was socially acceptable (or even allowed) at all.
I still flinch whenever someone asks me to take notes because even the process of transforming live conversations into serial form requires so much processing I can't fully pay attention to what's actually being said and risk losing track.
Citing studies which do not prove the thesis is actually worse than citing nothing at all. The fact that there is not a cited study showing clear memorization outcomes of typing vs handwriting, I would actually conclude the opposite of what the article is trying to say.
More generally I think the idea that "The article does at least attempt to cite some research" is very problematic if the cited papers don't actually show what the article is stating.
[0]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...
[2]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210319080820.h...
Are your feelings backed by data?
You need to memorise enough of the topic that you can draw relationships between disparate elements.
Having content in your memory means you have the ability to potentially pull it up quicker, or to pull it up in a situation (such as a team meeting) where you don't have access to the book.
If you rely only on what's previously written, foregoing memorisation, you are limited to the relationships that other people have written down.
I know for me personally; I always absorb more information when I am just listening and not writing.
When I'm writing whatever the teacher is saying, I can't understand it at the same speed. So I just write without actually comprehending the sentences.
But my listening was always so good that I rarely took notes throughout all my school years. I would just stare at the teacher and listen without writing anything.
Eventually I gave up. It's amazing how much you can learn when you simply listen. I wish I would have realized that sooner.
But, if I just took even crappy notes, I would remember and understand MUCH better. I rarely looked at the notes afterwards, just the act of writing it down was critical for me.
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Edit: sometimes, the topic wasn't a great fit for notes, so I would doodle instead. Same benefits. The brain is weird.
More to your point, that's definitely a strategy that works for some people. When I had two weeks of jury duty, everybody was pretty consistently scribbling notes on the various complexities of the case except one woman, who was staring off into space and looked like she wasn't paying any attention. I figured she'd be a dud, but when it came to deliberations, she was probably the sharpest one in the room.
You just have to find what works for you.
Perhaps there were attempts to teach how to do it but it was lost amid all the note taking?
But if I mostly want to capture highlights, especially if I'm also doing something like taking pics of slides, I generally prefer writing. There are also settings where having a laptop between yourself and the person you're speaking with feels off-putting whereas taking some handwritten notes seems fine.
That isn't what you've said, but you imply that repeatedly.
And by the distinct set of circumstances (recording verbatim) in which writing is vastly inferior to typing, your position is noteworthy. I would argue that a microphone is even still vastly superior & can provide text output. However, whether or not you retain (this is about memory) all that information is another question all together.
If you take your typed notes and then read through them while writing out key elements, you're retention and memory will likely be greatly improved.
Aside, based on your complaints and the fact you said pencil, I'm guessing that your skill with a pen is poor. Writing in general takes practice to master, it is not simply literacy.
Edit: >Although typing notes can be useful and even faster for some note-takers, ultimately it does not have the cognitive, tactile, memory, or visual cognitive effects that people can get when they write by hand. Typing notes can be good, but it won’t make it easier to remember what was said later on.
Directly from the text.
The point of Writing is to engage the Intellect deliberately as an aid to understanding and memorization.
1. If you have an inclination to write things down verbatim, which tool/method is slow enough to force you to paraphrase?
2. If you don't have such an inclination and already tend to paraphrase, which has the least cognitive load in using? Not which engages the most senses or motor skills.
Once you develop a habit of putting what you're taking notes on into your own words, you can move from 1 to 2. However, I think most people have the inclination of 1 and tend to fall back to it when they move to 2.
Because I'm one of those people, handwriting was the best method for me for a long time, until I started my master's program where all the professors have either put out a list of learning objectives at the beginning of the course or at beginning of each lecture/unit. Now, I type my notes. I form those learning objectives as questions and try to answer them as I take notes. Outside of classes, I list the objectives of the meeting/research as questions, adding new questions as they come up, and trying to answer them.
This method has been more effective than anything else I've done and typing is really the only way to do it fast enough for me.
For me writing is huge help in retaining information. I also know people who swear by typing but they all are younger who grew up with computers.
Also the handwritten notes don’t need to write everything in alphabets. The biggest advantage of writing is freeform. I could draw a diagram or other doodles. My old notes of drawings of the classroom, random objects, etc. I think those doodles helped me retain some information.
I share that exact same experience you describe.
For me, learning is all about making connections between the new material and material I already know.
If I kept notes I would have to do three things at once: (1) Follow the material, (2) try to question the material and search my brain for material I already know to make connections with, and (3) take notes, and there's just not enough cognitive capacity to do all three.
Taking notes means turning off the making-connections piece, and that's the most valuable piece to me, and I believe that this is not just a subjective experience, but something that would affect other people too: Focussing on note-taking instead of connections, creates a qualitatively different learning outcome, namely one that leans more towards superficial rote reproduction and less towards real understanding.
In school, when the teacher said something that was unclear or that flat out made no sense, I'd frequently be the one to ask for clarification. Then 20 other heads would pop up from their note-taking and notice that they didn't understand it either, but somehow they didn't notice, and I did. ...they would have happily reproduced the material that made no sense given the right prompt in an exam situation, but that didn't change anything about the fact that they didn't understand it.
What's more: I couldn't engage in that style of learning even if I wanted to. Like: If I tried to turn off the part of my brain that searches for meaning, e.g. when something simply has no meaning, like an exact date of an event in history that I need to know for an exam, then I still wouldn't remember the damned date, plus I wouldn't remember any of the broad themes either. The only thing that would happen would be that my brain would be bored and would wander off thinking about something else that's more interesting.
Also, you need to have good handwriting. Some people don't. In my case, my handwriting goes from bad to worse the more time I spend writing, to the point it becomes unintelligible. Seems more productive to invest the time it'd take me to improve that in other aspects of note-taking.
Just think, you probably want: - Switch between drawing amd writing in a split of second;
- Have a large enough space amd can write in very small font;
- Can move it around not caring whether part of elbow blocks something