Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper(productivegrowth.substack.com)
productivegrowth.substack.com
Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
https://productivegrowth.substack.com/p/why-im-a-sucker-for-pen-and-paper
151 comments
Spatiality, that's it. It really seems to make a tremendous difference for me to know where something is written down, and sometimes even remembering doing it. I always felt that doing it on a computer was indeed too abstract, losing that spatiality.
I also agree with the audiobook thing. For example, I recently thought back to a passage in an audiobook I enjoyed... and my mind instantly visualized how I was standing in front of the washing machine, doing laundry, while I listened to it.
A weird thing though is that some concepts and topics in my mind bring up images of locations that have nothing to do with the topic itself, and as far as I can tell don't match up in time. For example, one recent rather abstract concept is associated with the parking lot of my old school seen from a certain angle--many many years earlier.
I imagine that in those cases I might have been thinking about both the old school and the abstract concept at somewhat the same time, and they got associated from then on.
I also agree with the audiobook thing. For example, I recently thought back to a passage in an audiobook I enjoyed... and my mind instantly visualized how I was standing in front of the washing machine, doing laundry, while I listened to it.
A weird thing though is that some concepts and topics in my mind bring up images of locations that have nothing to do with the topic itself, and as far as I can tell don't match up in time. For example, one recent rather abstract concept is associated with the parking lot of my old school seen from a certain angle--many many years earlier.
I imagine that in those cases I might have been thinking about both the old school and the abstract concept at somewhat the same time, and they got associated from then on.
I wish I could find the reference, there's an old Roman (Greek? likely older?) rhetorical trick to public speaking.
The speech flows as you invite people to your home, and walk them through it. So, the front door is like the greeting, welcoming guests into your home. The picture in the front room is the first point, the couch is the next point. the dining room table is the next point. etc.
practice the speech by looking at each item you select, and mapping it to the point.
It's pretty amazing.
Everyone knows what their living space is like, and hopefully it's a safe comfortable space. Anyone can talk for a long time without notes. The memory of home is emotionally calming. Inviting listeners in gives a warmth that's hard to explain.
I mean, rehearsing helps a lot too, but mapping talking points to objects in the home is an amazing trick.
The speech flows as you invite people to your home, and walk them through it. So, the front door is like the greeting, welcoming guests into your home. The picture in the front room is the first point, the couch is the next point. the dining room table is the next point. etc.
practice the speech by looking at each item you select, and mapping it to the point.
It's pretty amazing.
Everyone knows what their living space is like, and hopefully it's a safe comfortable space. Anyone can talk for a long time without notes. The memory of home is emotionally calming. Inviting listeners in gives a warmth that's hard to explain.
I mean, rehearsing helps a lot too, but mapping talking points to objects in the home is an amazing trick.
Documented in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.ht...
Yates' book is a scholarly treatment of memory systems. She is an historian who waded into the subject matter, but isn't a mnemonic practitioner. For a practical treatment, see Memory Craft by the science writer and memory champion, Lynne Kelly.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/memory-craft-lynne-kelly/book/9...
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.ht...
Yates' book is a scholarly treatment of memory systems. She is an historian who waded into the subject matter, but isn't a mnemonic practitioner. For a practical treatment, see Memory Craft by the science writer and memory champion, Lynne Kelly.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/memory-craft-lynne-kelly/book/9...
I have heard the trick commonly referred to as 'memory palace' or 'method of loci'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
I understand this is the origin for: "In the first place".
A pretty cool technique, I just used this to coach my son for an english oral to great effect.
An interesting theory as to why spatiality helps so much is outlined in Jeff Hawkins' "1000 brain theory" (https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Brains-New-Theory-Intelligen...). His team's research hints that all neocortical processing happens with reference frames at the core.
I get that weird concept/location thing too, and I usually can't figure out the association.
For example, when I hear "Turbo Pascal" I immediately see the intersection of Lawrence Ave. East and Pharmacy Avenue in Toronto from the perspective of a person standing at the northwest corner of the intersection, looking south. I don't think I've ever been there on foot. It's a pretty unspectacular intersection. I'm quite sure I like Turbo Pascal significantly more than I like the intersection, and yet my brain has decided to link them.
For example, when I hear "Turbo Pascal" I immediately see the intersection of Lawrence Ave. East and Pharmacy Avenue in Toronto from the perspective of a person standing at the northwest corner of the intersection, looking south. I don't think I've ever been there on foot. It's a pretty unspectacular intersection. I'm quite sure I like Turbo Pascal significantly more than I like the intersection, and yet my brain has decided to link them.
Though I think it's an even more general mechanism of association. And places might also be easy to remember because they also contain many elements we can associate. You can call it the connectedness of a memory. You can also try to repeatedly explain to others something you want to remember or whatever.
Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our brains particularly well.
IIRC research in mice has even found grid neurons that are specifically firing for spatial locations, beyond just mere association.
You're probably on to something there. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution for finding food and avoiding predators. At best: a few thousand for managing linguistic skills. (or possibly hundreds of thousands, when it comes to our ancestor's pre-linguistic abilities).
The seemingly “disconnection” between the concept and spatial memory happens to me a lot either in day time or dream. Most of the scenes occurred in my childhood, and I feel my emotions, i.e. happiness, somber, anger, are associated with them, which pop up when those feelings struck.
I suspect that this effect has something to do with why I can search a book faster for some non-indexed thing I've previously read in it if it is a physical book than I can if it is an ebook.
The physical book is 3D. As I progress through the book the stack of pages on my left grows and the stack on my right shrinks, giving a sense of moving through something physical. And as I alternate pages I'm first looking to one side than the other.
And so when I'm later wanting to look up something, my memory of that thing has associated with it a memory of the feel of the book at that point and what side I was looking at, and that gives me a sense of where to start looking.
The physical book is 3D. As I progress through the book the stack of pages on my left grows and the stack on my right shrinks, giving a sense of moving through something physical. And as I alternate pages I'm first looking to one side than the other.
And so when I'm later wanting to look up something, my memory of that thing has associated with it a memory of the feel of the book at that point and what side I was looking at, and that gives me a sense of where to start looking.
I find I can sometimes remember whether the content I'm after was on the left or right page of the open book, which halves the area to scan, but has no impact on the number of page-turns needed.
i wonder how much of this could be fixed or improved on by changing how the UI works. like when reading a book and having the progress bar always visible and more prominent than usual? or having a visual que of the stack of pages on the left and right growing and shrinking.
that sort of thing goes against a lot of the ultra minimal design choices we use these days where everything had to be hidden, but maybe people in the future will be able to figure about better ways of dealing with this once the exact science is known
that sort of thing goes against a lot of the ultra minimal design choices we use these days where everything had to be hidden, but maybe people in the future will be able to figure about better ways of dealing with this once the exact science is known
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During the pandemic, I have been listening to audiobooks while I’m programming. I don’t really listen to the content, it just makes me feel less lonely.
But what I’ve found is that I end up associating code I’m writing to the audiobook I’m listening to at the time. Later on, when I work on that bit of code again, I replay the audiobook I was listening to when I wrote it, and it helps me remember how that code works.
But what I’ve found is that I end up associating code I’m writing to the audiobook I’m listening to at the time. Later on, when I work on that bit of code again, I replay the audiobook I was listening to when I wrote it, and it helps me remember how that code works.
Very interesting! In college, I strongly experienced the phenomena of taking a test and not being able to remember the exact content, but could accurately remember the layout of the page that the data was on.
I also got into the habit of creating 1 or 2 page cheat sheets for tests, whether I could use them in the test or not, and the spatial organization of the data seemed to correlate very directly with my ability to process and absorb the data.
I also got into the habit of creating 1 or 2 page cheat sheets for tests, whether I could use them in the test or not, and the spatial organization of the data seemed to correlate very directly with my ability to process and absorb the data.
I had a similar experience in high school with Spanish vocabulary tests. I could remember where the word was on the page, but not the translation.
At the time I perceived using the location as a crutch, so I made photocopies of the pages, cut them into the separate columns, then taped them together to make one very long and skinny list of words. I would then roll it up into a small scroll, little bigger than a tube of chapstick. Maybe the spatial location was a learning aid, and this actually made it harder to learn words, but it did make it much easier to discreetly study during other classes, so it was probably a net win overall.
At the time I perceived using the location as a crutch, so I made photocopies of the pages, cut them into the separate columns, then taped them together to make one very long and skinny list of words. I would then roll it up into a small scroll, little bigger than a tube of chapstick. Maybe the spatial location was a learning aid, and this actually made it harder to learn words, but it did make it much easier to discreetly study during other classes, so it was probably a net win overall.
Really interesting to hear others had this experience as well. During tests, I would routinely see an image of sorts of the page in my head, with the words or equations I needed blurred out.
Now that I think about, no clue why I assumed that was unique to me.
Now that I think about, no clue why I assumed that was unique to me.
Yeah - I do this too, and I also find that for learning new programming tasks, if I make my own cheat-sheet, I remember the content well enough that I don't actually need to use it that much. But when it comes to using someone else's cheat-sheet, I have a hard time remembering and I have to constantly refer back.
Yes! Same thing for me. I’m a bit dyslexic so reading things never goes well. But I could always remember where on the page the equations were in the textbooks. So during a test, I’d picture the equations and where they were and the write them down so that I could use them.
Thanks! Interesting observation about the layout!
Indeed, I also feel my most effective notes are the ones where I get a little creative with the layout, placing things out thoughtfully.
(Also, going back and filling in with a lot of balloons with thoughts afterwards etc, to make each page a little customized).
Indeed, I also feel my most effective notes are the ones where I get a little creative with the layout, placing things out thoughtfully.
(Also, going back and filling in with a lot of balloons with thoughts afterwards etc, to make each page a little customized).
I read the game of thrones novels ages ago in pulp paperback and tried to read the fifth one as an ebook and I simply could not keep track of the various character story lines, names, etc. that I had no problem with while reading the physical books.
I'm very sure that just remembering how much of the book was in my left hand and how much in the right was extremely valuable in helping me remember - basically having an additional dimension recorded in my memory made it much easier.
I'm very sure that just remembering how much of the book was in my left hand and how much in the right was extremely valuable in helping me remember - basically having an additional dimension recorded in my memory made it much easier.
> I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my running route in a nearby forest that I was listening to a particular passage in the book - and vice versa
I've experienced the same thing. I sometimes relisten to podcasts and specific lines in the podcast bring back the place where I was physically when I heard the line for the first time. Like "Oh I was walking down this part of that street around 7pm 2 years ago when I heard this for the first time". I don't think that I have experienced it in reverse though.
I've experienced the same thing. I sometimes relisten to podcasts and specific lines in the podcast bring back the place where I was physically when I heard the line for the first time. Like "Oh I was walking down this part of that street around 7pm 2 years ago when I heard this for the first time". I don't think that I have experienced it in reverse though.
That's pretty cool actually, I don't visualize things much and I've only experienced it in the reverse direction, and another commenter above mentioned something similar. Do you feel you are more likely to visualize or internally verbalize things (or perhaps both are relatively balanced)?
I can't visualise at all and I don't know if that's aphantasia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) or that I perceive things in the same way as most people but we use different words to describe what is happening.
I have aphantasia (i.e. no visual imagination). It hadn't occurred to me that people could use theirs to help them memorize things...
I have very little visual imagination and have experienced the audiobook/running thing a lot, but only in one direction. Running by the same place will often make me think of something I heard there, but thinking about something I heard doesn't bring back the place.
I think I have aphantasia to some degree and have experienced what the OP is mentioning. Also handwriting is a good aid for me to remember things, particularly if it is written by hand. I don't need to review the notes but the act of putting it down sticks a bit better. I will also have to add that my memory is better at concepts and abstract things but not so good at details.
The handwriting thing makes sense, since I don't think aphantasia necessarily affects motor memory. Drawing/writing by hand could actually be more important for people with aphantasia in that case, since it could provide a motor memory that directly corresponds to something visual.
Also I think at the core of the "visualizing things in different parts of space" memory trick is just making good associations. If you're much better at verbal/internal monologue type of thinking you could still do something pretty similar, by mapping the things to memorize into a story.
Granted certain things are easier to map to a visual space than to language, but that's true in the other direction too. Anecdotally it takes a lot of effort for me to visualize things and I barely do it naturally, but I seem to have a much stronger internal monologue and a better memory for things people say than most of my friends. I wouldn't be surprised if poor visualizing abilities during development could strengthen verbal reasoning a bit like how blind people have other senses heightened.
I really hope research into aphantasia will become more commonplace, but a lot of it is speculation for now unfortunately.
Also I think at the core of the "visualizing things in different parts of space" memory trick is just making good associations. If you're much better at verbal/internal monologue type of thinking you could still do something pretty similar, by mapping the things to memorize into a story.
Granted certain things are easier to map to a visual space than to language, but that's true in the other direction too. Anecdotally it takes a lot of effort for me to visualize things and I barely do it naturally, but I seem to have a much stronger internal monologue and a better memory for things people say than most of my friends. I wouldn't be surprised if poor visualizing abilities during development could strengthen verbal reasoning a bit like how blind people have other senses heightened.
I really hope research into aphantasia will become more commonplace, but a lot of it is speculation for now unfortunately.
Yeah, I am familiar with this technique, and have tried using it in the past (as my "spatial" memory is very good, despite a total lack of visual imagination), but I've never been successful.
Interesting, how do you experience spatial memories? Is it somehow encoded verbally, or via somatosensation? Or does it feel completely subconscious, like a Pavlovian reaction? Or something else?
I am bad at visualizing things from what I can subjectively tell, but as far as memory is concerned it's mainly the spatial memory tests where I perform poorly. So it's hard for me to imagine what recalling spatial memories is like, besides the assumption that people can probably visualize them.
I am bad at visualizing things from what I can subjectively tell, but as far as memory is concerned it's mainly the spatial memory tests where I perform poorly. So it's hard for me to imagine what recalling spatial memories is like, besides the assumption that people can probably visualize them.
It's kind of (but not exactly) like proprioception. Close your eyes and hold your hand out. Even without visualing (because we can't...), you know "where" it is. It feels a lot like that. I just have a good sense of where things are relative to me and each other.
I recall hearing about one contestants strategy for recalling the most digits of pi using this technique. He said he'd imagine a room with many objects in it. He'd assign 100 digits on the light switch, 100 digits on the top drawer, then the next drawer, and so on until reciting was just a matter of walking around the room in his mind and reading off the numbers from the objects in the correct order.
This is the reason why it drives me nuts when Apple Book randomly chooses to shift the content of the pages of the eBook. Content that was on odd page number starts appearing on even page number. This is also the reason why I never change the font size.
(Please let me know if there is a way to disable this.)
(Please let me know if there is a way to disable this.)
Another memorisation aid I accidentally observed was with using different pens/inks for note taking.
I started taking an minor interest in different pens at some point, and have about a dozen pens I switch between (a mix of cheap fountain pens and rollerballs mostly).
I found that I started remembering which pen or which colour ink I wrote certain things with, it seemed to add yet another memory link to whatever I was writing.
I started taking an minor interest in different pens at some point, and have about a dozen pens I switch between (a mix of cheap fountain pens and rollerballs mostly).
I found that I started remembering which pen or which colour ink I wrote certain things with, it seemed to add yet another memory link to whatever I was writing.
One outcome of that is vicious hier(5) wars - everyone has a particular hierarchy of folders that "makes obvious sense" to them, mostly I suspect because of spatiality.
It would be like someone moving the rooms in your house.
It would be like someone moving the rooms in your house.
I've been noticing this over last few years too. Replying a podcast and I recall where I was at certain bits.
Perhaps the trick is notebooks with little images in the margin
> It’s not eco-friendly
I'm actually curious about this point. I wonder about the actual environmental comparison between, say, going through 3-4 notebooks a year vs. a tablet with a 3-5 year span. A notebook "costs" trees, and in theory is use-once and disposeable, but it's biodegradable, the ingredients are relatively easily accessible, and the manufacturing process is pretty refined by now. A tablet, on the other hand, has a whole world of exotic and toxic materials and manufacturing, doesn't break down nearly as cleanly in the end, and costs energy along the way...
I'm actually curious about this point. I wonder about the actual environmental comparison between, say, going through 3-4 notebooks a year vs. a tablet with a 3-5 year span. A notebook "costs" trees, and in theory is use-once and disposeable, but it's biodegradable, the ingredients are relatively easily accessible, and the manufacturing process is pretty refined by now. A tablet, on the other hand, has a whole world of exotic and toxic materials and manufacturing, doesn't break down nearly as cleanly in the end, and costs energy along the way...
Some concerns with paper might be related to water usage in manufacturing or to the bleaching process.
One other thing is that putting paper into landfill can be a form of medium-term carbon sequestration.
One other thing is that putting paper into landfill can be a form of medium-term carbon sequestration.
Not to mention paper has a recycling rate of ~68%! [1]
I'm just not sure if more energy is consumed by (1) a computer/tablet using a word processor or (2) manufacturing and recycling the equivalent amount of paper.
Then there's also the matter of what type of electricity is used to power the computer or manufacture/recycle the paper (eg. hydroelectric, natural gas, etc).
Wish there was a way to track all of this...
[1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
[1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
Not exactly the same, but I did some research a while ago on the environmental impact of ereaders vs paper books. They're actually quite close, though it depends on how much you read; the overall impact of the ereader is ~100-140x that of a single paper book. A full-on tablet is probably worse, as the display is more expensive to manufacture.
It’s a shame that the reading experience gets worse as you go from book to e-ink to tablet, at least for me. Like many HN readers I’m already staring at screens for many hours per day. Using the library for books seems like the way to go!
I see bookshelves in so many houses and wonder, realistically how many of those will ever be opened again? I have books that will comfort or challenge me for decades to come, but more than a couple of shelves seems like hoarding. Maybe it’s more of a signal to guests that they’re well-read.
I see bookshelves in so many houses and wonder, realistically how many of those will ever be opened again? I have books that will comfort or challenge me for decades to come, but more than a couple of shelves seems like hoarding. Maybe it’s more of a signal to guests that they’re well-read.
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Ideally, it's also for sharing with guests.
Check out rocketbooks. It's erasable notebook basically. I don't use the scan feature but they have the option to have an app, take a pic and get it categorized.
I usually just need something written down for a few days/weeks as I work on projects and don't need it anymore.
I usually just need something written down for a few days/weeks as I work on projects and don't need it anymore.
This is one of the reasons I've started to use the reMarkable tablet for taking notes. Sometimes I don't even look at them again, it's just a more efficient way to get the info into my head.
I wrote more about my current workflow/stack here if anyone is interested (w/ some reMarkable hacks): https://briandoll.medium.com/personal-setup-for-getting-shit...
I wrote more about my current workflow/stack here if anyone is interested (w/ some reMarkable hacks): https://briandoll.medium.com/personal-setup-for-getting-shit...
I take notes in a $.79 spiral paper notebook. When it fills up, I just scan it and get another one.
Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all the pages?
I like paper notebooks, too. Someday, I'd like to have an app that would let me turn any ordinary stack of scratch paper or notebook into a searchable PDF in under 5 minutes. I would finish a notebook and just put my phone on a gooseneck stand and turn the pages one at a time (not riffle) at one page per second or two, and it would know when to take the photos, which it would flatten, orient, and bind into a PDF of the notebook. It would maintain my handwritten pages but add an OCR'ed backstore of the text that could be used to create something like a table of contents, an index, and a fulltext search.
I imagine some portion of that is already available, and the rest will be arriving anytime now.
I like paper notebooks, too. Someday, I'd like to have an app that would let me turn any ordinary stack of scratch paper or notebook into a searchable PDF in under 5 minutes. I would finish a notebook and just put my phone on a gooseneck stand and turn the pages one at a time (not riffle) at one page per second or two, and it would know when to take the photos, which it would flatten, orient, and bind into a PDF of the notebook. It would maintain my handwritten pages but add an OCR'ed backstore of the text that could be used to create something like a table of contents, an index, and a fulltext search.
I imagine some portion of that is already available, and the rest will be arriving anytime now.
I use different methods, but the most important one is an old Fujitsu Snapscan automatic feeder scanner that scans pages by both sides at the same time.
I bought that in order to OCR books(destroying them cutting them with a rotary disk saw) long time ago but I use it today for digitalizing all my notes.
If you don't care about destroying your notebooks, it is the best solution. I did that with my University notebooks because I needed to access them in work after University and travel a lot so I don't want the bulkiness of carrying around 20 kilos.
No need to flatten, orient, color correct anything, tens of pages per minute.
Because of the scanner for my own notes I use single sheets of paper and high quality aluminum clipboards and Staedtler 432 M color pens that last for more than a year or intense work. Way cheaper than a tablet with stylus.
I digitalize old books today that need special care and could not be destroyed, archival material like diaries from wars. For that I use an array of cameras and a projector and sophisticated software to flatten it. But that is expensive and needs lots of work.
If you are interested on that, just google DIY book scanner, but I recommend the automatic feeder scanner if you can.
I bought that in order to OCR books(destroying them cutting them with a rotary disk saw) long time ago but I use it today for digitalizing all my notes.
If you don't care about destroying your notebooks, it is the best solution. I did that with my University notebooks because I needed to access them in work after University and travel a lot so I don't want the bulkiness of carrying around 20 kilos.
No need to flatten, orient, color correct anything, tens of pages per minute.
Because of the scanner for my own notes I use single sheets of paper and high quality aluminum clipboards and Staedtler 432 M color pens that last for more than a year or intense work. Way cheaper than a tablet with stylus.
I digitalize old books today that need special care and could not be destroyed, archival material like diaries from wars. For that I use an array of cameras and a projector and sophisticated software to flatten it. But that is expensive and needs lots of work.
If you are interested on that, just google DIY book scanner, but I recommend the automatic feeder scanner if you can.
> Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all the pages?
The trick is to use a hopper fed scanner that scans both sides at the same time. Not a flat bed scanner.
I use an old Fujitsu fi-5120C scanner.
I haven't found an OCR yet that will decipher handwriting. I would think that with all the advances in AI this would be an easy problem.
The trick is to use a hopper fed scanner that scans both sides at the same time. Not a flat bed scanner.
I use an old Fujitsu fi-5120C scanner.
I haven't found an OCR yet that will decipher handwriting. I would think that with all the advances in AI this would be an easy problem.
I think the technology has already been around for a while, but probably not big enough of a market for desktop usage. On my iPad as an example, Notability, GoodNotes, and OneNote (and possibly on desktop versions as well) are able to perform handwriting recognition and text conversion
Handwriting recognition when you can watch the person write (stroke order and timing) is actually a very different problem from recognizing handwriting from an image without that data, which is much harder. Though these days statistical learning techniques similar to those used in machine translation are getting pretty darn good at it.
I used to mess around with a flat-bed scanner (autofeed would be easier) but my current system is simple but quick.
I use my Canon camera: Click click, flip page, repeat. Copy to laptop, batch resize & rename, drag into a folder.
No OCR, but it wouldn't pick up my shorthand anyway :)
I use my Canon camera: Click click, flip page, repeat. Copy to laptop, batch resize & rename, drag into a folder.
No OCR, but it wouldn't pick up my shorthand anyway :)
Scanning sounds like a pain.
eInk tablets are the future and confer all the advantages of pen and paper. Perhaps they need to undergo a few more generations of UI improvement, and the eInk company itself needs to have its patents expire so the tech isn't held up, but the experience is real. It's tactile, vibrant, and smooth. Battery life is never an issue, even with wifi.
The advantages of having notes always with you and being able to organize into folders and move sheets and figures around beats paper a thousand times over. Highlighting a figure, dragging it to a better spot, rotating it to an affine angle to give it life, and then resizing it to double size is an earth shattering experience.
Erasing, also, is finally a first class experience in a way it can never be with paper. You can even re-sort lists of items with ease.
I'll never go back to pen and paper.
eInk tablets are the future and confer all the advantages of pen and paper. Perhaps they need to undergo a few more generations of UI improvement, and the eInk company itself needs to have its patents expire so the tech isn't held up, but the experience is real. It's tactile, vibrant, and smooth. Battery life is never an issue, even with wifi.
The advantages of having notes always with you and being able to organize into folders and move sheets and figures around beats paper a thousand times over. Highlighting a figure, dragging it to a better spot, rotating it to an affine angle to give it life, and then resizing it to double size is an earth shattering experience.
Erasing, also, is finally a first class experience in a way it can never be with paper. You can even re-sort lists of items with ease.
I'll never go back to pen and paper.
If it works for you, great. I've looked at those, and was put off by the price, poor contrast, no color, and fragility of the machine.
If I need to take notes with me, I'll just snap a photo of it with my phone.
My notebook pages are often stained with coffee, and maybe a bit of jam and butter :-) I don't worry about spilling coffee on it, setting a hot mug on it, setting something heavy on it, throwing it in the back of my car. I don't worry about cleaning it (I once ruined an ipod by trying to clean goop off it with an alcohol swab).
Or maybe I'm just old and Led Zeppelin is still my favorite band.
(Scanning a hundred pages or so takes just a few minutes.)
If I need to take notes with me, I'll just snap a photo of it with my phone.
My notebook pages are often stained with coffee, and maybe a bit of jam and butter :-) I don't worry about spilling coffee on it, setting a hot mug on it, setting something heavy on it, throwing it in the back of my car. I don't worry about cleaning it (I once ruined an ipod by trying to clean goop off it with an alcohol swab).
Or maybe I'm just old and Led Zeppelin is still my favorite band.
(Scanning a hundred pages or so takes just a few minutes.)
Erasing and dragging are enough to make my reMarkable worth it, but for random brainstorming I need real notebooks that I actually keep on hand. Never been sure why, something about having to physically locate my writing somewhere is huge for me.
I carry both a reMarkable and a Rocketbook with me -- the e-ink tablet makes taking notes super easy, but, the rocketbook is great for sketching and coming up with arch drawings and the like.
I can quickly turn the RocketBook sketches into pdfs and send them to the reMarkable for further processing...but, I love the flexibility between the two, and honestly, the reMarkable fits in the pocket off my RocketBook...so it's not difficult to carry both.
The more that I use reMarkable, the more I fall in love with it, but, I wish I could find a way to make my own templates.
I can quickly turn the RocketBook sketches into pdfs and send them to the reMarkable for further processing...but, I love the flexibility between the two, and honestly, the reMarkable fits in the pocket off my RocketBook...so it's not difficult to carry both.
The more that I use reMarkable, the more I fall in love with it, but, I wish I could find a way to make my own templates.
Did a search for Rocketbook and found this. Just wanted to plug it in here, not paid or anything.
I'm taking a college cryptography class, and I started by maintaining notes with LaTeX in Markdown. It didn't help much. The moment I started using a Rocketbook was when I would get things. I've reused my book about 5 times now in conjunction with work and other classes. I'm on my sixth cycle and love it!
I'm taking a college cryptography class, and I started by maintaining notes with LaTeX in Markdown. It didn't help much. The moment I started using a Rocketbook was when I would get things. I've reused my book about 5 times now in conjunction with work and other classes. I'm on my sixth cycle and love it!
I'm confused about rocketbook, why would you want to reuse notebooks? Paper notebooks are cheap enough to be disposable
I prefer to minimize the waste I generate with my daily activities. A reusable notebook sounds ideal for me. I don't use paper for this very reason.
Some reasons off the top of my head:
* I can scribble group meeting notes and share them in Slack by just scanning from my phone and they come out great—including drawings
* I can scan my notes quickly as PDFs and keep them for years to come
* Some classes allow me to upload and refer to my notes during exams
* I don't waste any paper
* I can scribble group meeting notes and share them in Slack by just scanning from my phone and they come out great—including drawings
* I can scan my notes quickly as PDFs and keep them for years to come
* Some classes allow me to upload and refer to my notes during exams
* I don't waste any paper
Points 1,2,3 apply to paper notebooks, too.
As for wasting paper, even in my furious note taking days in college, it didn't amount to that much paper. I don't think the stack after graduating reached a foot high. You'll waste orders of magnitude more paper throwing away junk mail, food packages, etc. Besides, paper recycles easily. Plastic rocketbook pages, nope.
As for wasting paper, even in my furious note taking days in college, it didn't amount to that much paper. I don't think the stack after graduating reached a foot high. You'll waste orders of magnitude more paper throwing away junk mail, food packages, etc. Besides, paper recycles easily. Plastic rocketbook pages, nope.
They do, but the accompanying app with RocketBook makes it easier. Each page has customizable bubbles which I can tick off to send the notes to the right destination. It just works which is unusual with most technology.
Additionally, when I was in my undergrad I still went through a lot of paper. I have bad habits when I scribble notes or solve math problems. But with this, it's the only notebook I carry.
I don't have separate notebooks for work, subjects, home, etc.
Additionally, when I was in my undergrad I still went through a lot of paper. I have bad habits when I scribble notes or solve math problems. But with this, it's the only notebook I carry.
I don't have separate notebooks for work, subjects, home, etc.
You can definitely make your own templates. The link I shared above has links to the tool I use for this (https://github.com/moovida/remarkable-hyutilities)
Just imagining trying to “flip” through a notebook of e-ink pages notes puts me off immediately. Doing so in a kindle, or even a PDF on my computer, is unpleasant. Have they a solution to this in the e-ink notebook?
> he eInk company itself needs to have its patents expire so the tech isn't held up,
Citation needed. Really. Please read my past comments. The speed of electrophoresis is held back by physics. Not patents. If you know of even a theoretical way to achieve stable ink particle position with fast moving ink particles then please link to your publication or research work because it would revolutionize numerous industries, not just displays. Thanks.
Citation needed. Really. Please read my past comments. The speed of electrophoresis is held back by physics. Not patents. If you know of even a theoretical way to achieve stable ink particle position with fast moving ink particles then please link to your publication or research work because it would revolutionize numerous industries, not just displays. Thanks.
Absolutely. I did the same for a long time. I work with a bunch of companies every year, and having notes organized by client has been really helpful. That and a nice workflow to send notes/sketches/ideas from the notebook to a client via email is pretty nice. But definitely not for everybody.
Likewise, but I don't bother scanning it. I just throw it away and get another one off the pile. If it's important I'll transcribe it in the moment, but it's almost never that important.
When I was in college, I'd write code in spiral notebooks (didn't have screen editors then). It's amusing to me to see those today.
What about organizing different topics? I like the remarkable because it's like an infinite subject notebook. E.g. I can take notes in a separate notebook for each book I read and can easily refer back to old notes on other books.
For work notes, I index by topic - not too difficult, those don't grow all that fast and finding a few minutes here and there to update the index is not hard. Page numbers increase monotonically across volumes, so cross-volume references by page number work okay; each volume's index covers only its own topics, but that hasn't been a problem so far since needing to refer across volumes is rare except around when one ends and another starts.
For personal notes, I keep those in the same series of volumes as my diary, which I have not yet indexed. I have a very general system of colored tape flags for stuff like "essay ideas", "story ideas", etc., but nothing more specific than that.
I began this diary in 2018; it's now around 1150 pages and about to enter volume 7, and the lack of detailed indexing is beginning to be a problem. For longer-running works, it is not rare to have substantive notes across three or four volumes.
I've started looking for a workable method of maintaining an index by hand across so large a body of content, but haven't found anything that looks good so far - in particular, I don't yet know how to overcome the issue that a handwritten index can't feasibly be reordered to alphabetize or for any other reason. I'd dearly love to hear whatever experience-based suggestions anyone might care to make here!
For personal notes, I keep those in the same series of volumes as my diary, which I have not yet indexed. I have a very general system of colored tape flags for stuff like "essay ideas", "story ideas", etc., but nothing more specific than that.
I began this diary in 2018; it's now around 1150 pages and about to enter volume 7, and the lack of detailed indexing is beginning to be a problem. For longer-running works, it is not rare to have substantive notes across three or four volumes.
I've started looking for a workable method of maintaining an index by hand across so large a body of content, but haven't found anything that looks good so far - in particular, I don't yet know how to overcome the issue that a handwritten index can't feasibly be reordered to alphabetize or for any other reason. I'd dearly love to hear whatever experience-based suggestions anyone might care to make here!
I just get another notebook. For example, I have a separate notebook for my Dodge (it's been extensively customized). In college, one notebook per class worked out nicely.
Single subject notebooks got me through college.
I've been using a Boox and pretty happy with it.
The only thing that bothers me is the time it takes to flip between pages and find something you know you wrote somewhere but forgot exactly where you wrote it. Somehow manual searching is still faster with real paper.
The only thing that bothers me is the time it takes to flip between pages and find something you know you wrote somewhere but forgot exactly where you wrote it. Somehow manual searching is still faster with real paper.
I think this post just barely misses the main reason which, in my opinion, makes writing a better medium for remembering. They mention that typing is faster and easier than writing but I think the real reason this impacts memory is because you have to reduce things into their smallest form in order to keep up (with the person speaking or your own thoughts). This act of condensing makes you internalize the words into concepts, and concepts are easier to recall.
When I was just starting my current startup (a collaborative note-taking platform), I pored over a lot of studies on this subject because I wanted to make sure that if I was going to build a digital knowledge base / note-taking solution I would give our users their best shot at actually remembering what they were storing.
In the end, your theory did seem to be the most frequently validated rationalization when it came to discrepancies between handwritten and typed notes.
As you say, unless you can write in shorthand very few people are capable of writing at the speed of speech / thought, where as many people can easily type that fast. This requires you to be more thoughtful about what and how you record things with pen and paper, meaning you synthesize / summarize / compartmentalize the information as you go.
This was sometimes compounded in environments involving a presentation / lecture slides, as digital note-takers frequently have a copy of the relevant presentation on their device, further reducing the amount of content they feel they need to record in some way and therefore reducing the amount of information synthesis that is happening.
The best idea I could come up with to help encourage handwritten-like behavior when recording info on a computer was to move away from the document/bullet-point format and towards a "digital notecard" format, which encourages you to think about ideas as compartmentalized / discrete ideas rather than a thoughtless information dump. So that's what I built.
But if you or anyone else has any good ideas about how to emulate the benefits of pen-and-paper on digital, I'm all ears!
In the end, your theory did seem to be the most frequently validated rationalization when it came to discrepancies between handwritten and typed notes.
As you say, unless you can write in shorthand very few people are capable of writing at the speed of speech / thought, where as many people can easily type that fast. This requires you to be more thoughtful about what and how you record things with pen and paper, meaning you synthesize / summarize / compartmentalize the information as you go.
This was sometimes compounded in environments involving a presentation / lecture slides, as digital note-takers frequently have a copy of the relevant presentation on their device, further reducing the amount of content they feel they need to record in some way and therefore reducing the amount of information synthesis that is happening.
The best idea I could come up with to help encourage handwritten-like behavior when recording info on a computer was to move away from the document/bullet-point format and towards a "digital notecard" format, which encourages you to think about ideas as compartmentalized / discrete ideas rather than a thoughtless information dump. So that's what I built.
But if you or anyone else has any good ideas about how to emulate the benefits of pen-and-paper on digital, I'm all ears!
I never knew why I unconsciously chose analog over digital in those cases, but it turns out there's a scientific explanation. When we write, we make our brains go through an abstraction process - separating something from a whole to analyze it by itself.- According to neurologist Audrey Van Der Meer, "It seems that keyboards and pens bring into play different underlying neurological processes. This may not be surprising since handwriting/drawing is a complex task that requires the integration of various skills."
I wrote a full article about it in the link above.
I wrote a full article about it in the link above.
Every time this topic comes up, I am curious to see a cross-generational study.
I'd also be interested in seeing the result of taking notes with a less linear note taking tool, such as OneNote and its infinite canvas, compared to pure linear note taking.
Now for most math classes, and other subjects that involve lots of diagrams, hand writing (digital or analog) is better! (Ignoring the people who are so good at LaTeX they can do complex math equations)
IMHO the largest issue with modern teaching is the use of slides. I was going to college just as the transition to PowerPoint was happening, and wow was the degradation in quality of teaching noticeable.
One of my profs, whose class I had a low opinion of, used slides for all his lectures. One day the projector broke down and he had to teach on the chalk board. It was amazing! The quality of his lecture improved dramatically when he was able to go back and make changes to past diagrams, or change examples on the fly to dive deeper into something the students had difficulty grasping.
The other problem with PowerPoint is that it goes by faster than students can take notes! If the prof and the students are both writing notes, they are on (mostly) equal ground, ignoring that profs have decades of experience writing quickly.
I'd also be interested in seeing the result of taking notes with a less linear note taking tool, such as OneNote and its infinite canvas, compared to pure linear note taking.
Now for most math classes, and other subjects that involve lots of diagrams, hand writing (digital or analog) is better! (Ignoring the people who are so good at LaTeX they can do complex math equations)
IMHO the largest issue with modern teaching is the use of slides. I was going to college just as the transition to PowerPoint was happening, and wow was the degradation in quality of teaching noticeable.
One of my profs, whose class I had a low opinion of, used slides for all his lectures. One day the projector broke down and he had to teach on the chalk board. It was amazing! The quality of his lecture improved dramatically when he was able to go back and make changes to past diagrams, or change examples on the fly to dive deeper into something the students had difficulty grasping.
The other problem with PowerPoint is that it goes by faster than students can take notes! If the prof and the students are both writing notes, they are on (mostly) equal ground, ignoring that profs have decades of experience writing quickly.
There was also the transitionary period where teachers and profs would print slides onto transparencies and project those onto a screen. The overhead projectors sometimes had a roll of plastic that they could write on with a felt marker either over the slides or as a blank canvas. A bit of googling reveals that many primary schools still use these, and not all have transitioned to “smart boards”.
It was a good trade off, and it’s kind of surprising that the rise of tablets and styluses hasn’t seen this hybrid model return.
It was a good trade off, and it’s kind of surprising that the rise of tablets and styluses hasn’t seen this hybrid model return.
In the 2010s my organic chemistry professor would use one of those projectors and a sheet of blank printer paper, and would just write out chemical formulas all class. We basically all took notes together along with the professor each lecture, which was great because that meant he could never speed up too much since he had to spend time writing everything down, too. Then everything would go up online afterwards if you needed to refer to the professors notes from that day.
It's been over 15 years since I was scribbling on PowerPoint slides while my Tablet PC was hooked to the projector. I'll ask my spouse if her MS Surface supports such functionality, because I found it pretty darned handy at the time.
I have little need for such a feature anymore, so I don't know if an iPad Pro w/stylus can do that with Keynote (not without looking it up).
I have little need for such a feature anymore, so I don't know if an iPad Pro w/stylus can do that with Keynote (not without looking it up).
Apple Pencil is able to markup on Keynote slides [0] as well as Powerpoint (should be like OneNote based on a App Store article) [1]
[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/keynote-ipad/tance6afa...
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1458378181
[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/keynote-ipad/tance6afa...
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1458378181
My own experience in school lines up with what you described. There's something about having to teach 'manually?' that gives more energy to the lecture.
Key quote:
> This cognitive effort of condensing and translating into your own words is what facilitates learning. Which is why you could still do this with typing, but it's easy to avoid the cognitive effort of translating and condensing (and we tend toward cognitive laziness) and just type it verbatim because you can keep up.
When I type notes (all the way back to college), it is in one ear, out the other (onto the page). The act of physically writing it down, and potentially a second pass to clean up the notes, is almost all I ever need to get something into working memory. Back in college, the third time I would look at my notes would be the morning of the test where I would just glance through them. Seeing the general shape of the text was often enough to trigger the recall.
> This cognitive effort of condensing and translating into your own words is what facilitates learning. Which is why you could still do this with typing, but it's easy to avoid the cognitive effort of translating and condensing (and we tend toward cognitive laziness) and just type it verbatim because you can keep up.
When I type notes (all the way back to college), it is in one ear, out the other (onto the page). The act of physically writing it down, and potentially a second pass to clean up the notes, is almost all I ever need to get something into working memory. Back in college, the third time I would look at my notes would be the morning of the test where I would just glance through them. Seeing the general shape of the text was often enough to trigger the recall.
I find that it also helps me get over things.
If there's something that I'm obsessing over or simply cannot get off my mind, I can write it down and it will go away. Throwing the piece of paper is optional.
I think writing puts some kind of structure to your mental model, you process it at the time of writing and can move on to the next thing while preserving the output of the processing. The output tends to be some kind of map about where you can find it and short description about the nature of the thing you write down.
It's almost as if you put the stuff of your "hot memory", the memory that is about the main process you operate on, into your visual memory.
For some reason, typing on a computer doesn't have the same effect. It does have some effect but it's different.
If there's something that I'm obsessing over or simply cannot get off my mind, I can write it down and it will go away. Throwing the piece of paper is optional.
I think writing puts some kind of structure to your mental model, you process it at the time of writing and can move on to the next thing while preserving the output of the processing. The output tends to be some kind of map about where you can find it and short description about the nature of the thing you write down.
It's almost as if you put the stuff of your "hot memory", the memory that is about the main process you operate on, into your visual memory.
For some reason, typing on a computer doesn't have the same effect. It does have some effect but it's different.
Something I've learned is that if you're a disorganized person, you're going to have a disorganized computer, and disorganized notes. But with physical notes, I can put them in a physical pile, and they'll pretty much stay there until I need them, sometimes for years.
Once in a while I can go through them and throw away the ones that I really don't care about, and I can transfer really vital stuff to the computer. Scanning is easy. My cell phone is a good enough scanner.
Where paper shines is equations and drawings. I'm building an elaborate electronic circuit as a hobby project right now. The ease of drawing the schematics by hand outpaces any drawing program, and it's effortless to carry paper into my workshop. Of all places, Target sells a lovely quad ruled notebook where one side of each sheet is 4 grids per inch, and the other side 5.
Now I've read a lot of comments and articles about pens. Uggh. Pens are just not my friend. I've struck a blow for freedom and bought pencils. There, I said it. Lots of them. I know all the cool kids write with pens, but my handwriting is so horrible, I usually have to erase my worst scribbles and start over quite frequently.
Once in a while I can go through them and throw away the ones that I really don't care about, and I can transfer really vital stuff to the computer. Scanning is easy. My cell phone is a good enough scanner.
Where paper shines is equations and drawings. I'm building an elaborate electronic circuit as a hobby project right now. The ease of drawing the schematics by hand outpaces any drawing program, and it's effortless to carry paper into my workshop. Of all places, Target sells a lovely quad ruled notebook where one side of each sheet is 4 grids per inch, and the other side 5.
Now I've read a lot of comments and articles about pens. Uggh. Pens are just not my friend. I've struck a blow for freedom and bought pencils. There, I said it. Lots of them. I know all the cool kids write with pens, but my handwriting is so horrible, I usually have to erase my worst scribbles and start over quite frequently.
Hey, don't let the fountain pen hipsters [1] get you down. The point is what you're writing, not what you're writing it with.
[1] To whom it may: If reading the phrase "fountain pen hipster" has upset you, you may be interested to know that I EDC a Pilot Decimo in lavender with a lightly custom-ground F nib, which right now is inked with Iroshizuku Murasaki-shikibu from a cartridge I filled myself. We're the same, it's whatever, chill, you don't have to take the existence of fountain pen hipsters or a mention of same as a personal attack, it isn't one. Unless you're out there being a jerk to people who use different kinds of writing tools, in which case we aren't the same and you should stop.
[1] To whom it may: If reading the phrase "fountain pen hipster" has upset you, you may be interested to know that I EDC a Pilot Decimo in lavender with a lightly custom-ground F nib, which right now is inked with Iroshizuku Murasaki-shikibu from a cartridge I filled myself. We're the same, it's whatever, chill, you don't have to take the existence of fountain pen hipsters or a mention of same as a personal attack, it isn't one. Unless you're out there being a jerk to people who use different kinds of writing tools, in which case we aren't the same and you should stop.
Bit of a life-hack I picked up awhile ago is to "write the notes by hand, then type them out later".
This has a few advantages. First, you basically get all the benefits listed in this article. Second, you get the advantage of repetition, and possibly correcting errors in your handwritten notes. Last, you have pretty notes to read off of later if you need to study for something, which is useful.
This has a few advantages. First, you basically get all the benefits listed in this article. Second, you get the advantage of repetition, and possibly correcting errors in your handwritten notes. Last, you have pretty notes to read off of later if you need to study for something, which is useful.
Yeah I do this for anything that's both important and complicated - it can be a slow process for me, but when typing things up I'll usually end up further refining my thoughts and coming up with new ideas, in addition to the benefits you mentioned.
Although my handwriting is also hilariously bad, so it's kind of necessary for anything I anticipate needing to closely review in the future.
Although my handwriting is also hilariously bad, so it's kind of necessary for anything I anticipate needing to closely review in the future.
Fellow bad-handwriters unite! I forgot to mention that as another perk.
Funny, I did the opposite for bar exam prep. I took notes on the computer like a machine so I didn't miss anything, then I reformatted them afterward. After that, I hand-wrote them. By the end, they were pretty much memorized.
I have a really hard time writing down notes while things are going on. I have very good memory but if I'm taking notes while something is happening, I often don't remember anything other than writing it down. If I don't take notes, my memory of events, topics and discussions is often far better. Writing things down post facto also does not help me much, other than I know where I wrote it.
However I find the act of discussing a topic helps cement things. For me, the engagement with a subject is what really helps me remember things, and I suspect writing notes removes that.
However I find the act of discussing a topic helps cement things. For me, the engagement with a subject is what really helps me remember things, and I suspect writing notes removes that.
I think there's a critical element missing from these experiments: transcribing information vs storing knowledge.
When you're transcribing things (writing down as you hear or see it), you're normally not involved in learning or remembering the information; merely writing it down. In this case, handwriting would help to remember it later since writing on autopilot a more involved process than typing on autopilot.
HOWEVER, when it comes to writing down KNOWLEDGE, it's a very different experience. This is why I always advocate to think before you type, and why less than 10% of my time spent developing software involves actually touching the keys on my keyboard. A live coding session with me would be extremely boring; 10 minutes of me staring into space, followed by 1 minute of dumping the code into the source file. But I'm very productive; my projects on github, sourceforge and sunsite speak for themselves.
From the point that I entered college onwards, I've barely handwritten a paragraph of text per year (going on 25 years). I noticed no difference in cognition or memory then, nor do I now. Re-reading things I've typed in the past bring the whole experience flooding back the same as is expressed in the article as a handwriting experience. But then again, I'm not transcribing; I'm writing down knowledge.
When you're transcribing things (writing down as you hear or see it), you're normally not involved in learning or remembering the information; merely writing it down. In this case, handwriting would help to remember it later since writing on autopilot a more involved process than typing on autopilot.
HOWEVER, when it comes to writing down KNOWLEDGE, it's a very different experience. This is why I always advocate to think before you type, and why less than 10% of my time spent developing software involves actually touching the keys on my keyboard. A live coding session with me would be extremely boring; 10 minutes of me staring into space, followed by 1 minute of dumping the code into the source file. But I'm very productive; my projects on github, sourceforge and sunsite speak for themselves.
From the point that I entered college onwards, I've barely handwritten a paragraph of text per year (going on 25 years). I noticed no difference in cognition or memory then, nor do I now. Re-reading things I've typed in the past bring the whole experience flooding back the same as is expressed in the article as a handwriting experience. But then again, I'm not transcribing; I'm writing down knowledge.
The Brain That Changes Itself. Life changing book. One of the surprising studies there shows how kids with all kinds of learning disabilities can be radically transformed just by being given cursive handwriting exercises. Brain development and activation under handwriting is measurable, and very different from typing or even printing.
One thing that stuck with me from that book was the notion that the fine motor control gained through the rote learning of handwriting might carry over into verbal fluency. iirc it was a speculative point in the book, and I wonder if that has been any research into it since then. It partly inspired me to relearn cursive as an adult using the Getty-Dubay italic.
https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/
https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/
I find typing perfectly adequate for remembering things - in school if I was copying out notes I did just as well typing as handwritten, and could do it faster (and so get more repetition in) on a computer. Both blew away just reading or listening passively.
However, for brainstorming or planning, which is a lot of what this article is talking about, the unbounded spatial component of paper (or a drawing app with stylus) is much better for me than the constrained nature of a word processor. Something like graphviz isn't bad for certain types of things, but anything that relies on mouse-based selection and dragging of things breaks my flow in a way that jotting a new note off to the edge of an open paper doesn't.
However, for brainstorming or planning, which is a lot of what this article is talking about, the unbounded spatial component of paper (or a drawing app with stylus) is much better for me than the constrained nature of a word processor. Something like graphviz isn't bad for certain types of things, but anything that relies on mouse-based selection and dragging of things breaks my flow in a way that jotting a new note off to the edge of an open paper doesn't.
maybe
It certainly seems plausible to me, in my personal experience, but this article is talking about something that may be true.
This is another headline that is planting an idea in casual reader’s heads without explicitly mentioning it is in large part anecdotal and speculative.
It certainly seems plausible to me, in my personal experience, but this article is talking about something that may be true.
This is another headline that is planting an idea in casual reader’s heads without explicitly mentioning it is in large part anecdotal and speculative.
Anyone interested in writing faster and with less hand strain should look into fountain pens. With a quality nib, that doesn't scratch/catch the paper one can continuously write for hours at decent speed. I usually do the first draft of anything I need to write by hand with a fountain pen as it allows me to get out my thoughts without the distractions of editing. You can cross out your work, but it is still there to go back to, or incorporate in later edits (done at the computer). Plus you can draw out ideas that you can't immediately put into words, when words fail you.
Some gel point pens are equally comfortable.
Some gel point pens are equally comfortable.
I find hand written lists are good for focusing, but if I'm in a store hours later shopping for a group of disparate objects (10 ft ladder, size 5 2.5 inch screws, plant pot etc etc) I find a digital list invaluable because I can remove the items I have got so far leaving a shorter list.
I've found that unless I strike out items I somehow miss something on a long list. I know you can do this with a pen too but I've gone from wunderlist to the various google phone list tools and find them v useful
Yea I actually draw little squares next to my todo items, and then fill them in when I complete the task. For some reason, I find that way easier to parse than a bunch of scratched out words.
I also do that in my engineering notebooks--it makes to-dos stand out more from the rest of my notes.
I also do that in my engineering notebooks--it makes to-dos stand out more from the rest of my notes.
Good idea, I'll remember that for the occasions when I do have a pen & paper list!
This is a particular research paper on taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand, and how notes are transcribed. They conclude that longhand is better than the taking notes on laptops. Pretty popular paper.
(The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard) [https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/Teaching/papers/Mu...]
(The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard) [https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/Teaching/papers/Mu...]
I had a task at work today where I had to go to pen and paper first in order to get myself moving forward on it. Not exactly the point of the OP, but it was a different kind of enabling factor.
I had a web site update to do that involved a handful of different pages, with related forms and emails and so on. I had an email chain of modifications from the requestors. I was putting it off for a couple days because there were too many places to start and I needed to straighten things out in my head.
So I printed the email chain, and then with my favorite pen (Sharpie Pen) split the emails into parts and drew little blocks for each page and added bullet lists of steps to be done. Once I scribbled things out like this, I was then able to get into the editor and make the changes (Divi Builder on WordPress). And most importantly, check things off as I went along! Endorphin hits!
As I was making the content and layout adjustments, I got frustrated with the builder and clicking and dragging to change each little bit and wished for a text-mode way of making these adjustments, something above the level of HTML and CSS but below the GUI approach. So at this stage I wanted to go back to typing.
To finish up I would get into OneNote and write up the steps I did, including screen clips and links and file paths, then I will have something to search for next time I do this. So for me several forms of note taking are useful at different stages of the process. Often I will do this all in OneNote, but today I needed the physical stuff to get going!
I had a web site update to do that involved a handful of different pages, with related forms and emails and so on. I had an email chain of modifications from the requestors. I was putting it off for a couple days because there were too many places to start and I needed to straighten things out in my head.
So I printed the email chain, and then with my favorite pen (Sharpie Pen) split the emails into parts and drew little blocks for each page and added bullet lists of steps to be done. Once I scribbled things out like this, I was then able to get into the editor and make the changes (Divi Builder on WordPress). And most importantly, check things off as I went along! Endorphin hits!
As I was making the content and layout adjustments, I got frustrated with the builder and clicking and dragging to change each little bit and wished for a text-mode way of making these adjustments, something above the level of HTML and CSS but below the GUI approach. So at this stage I wanted to go back to typing.
To finish up I would get into OneNote and write up the steps I did, including screen clips and links and file paths, then I will have something to search for next time I do this. So for me several forms of note taking are useful at different stages of the process. Often I will do this all in OneNote, but today I needed the physical stuff to get going!
I personally use more or less 3 stages. 1. whiteboard and marker - explore ideas, big-picture thinking, fast iterations. 2. paper notebook - things that emerged from point 1 are more precisely recorded into a paper notebook. Things go much slower here, especially because the eraser or the paper burns out quite quickly and there is no point to keep pointless notes. The structure of the paper is quite important as well. I noticed blank paper does not work that well and I spent more space there with less structure. Linked paper is also not good. Square paper is better. But the best one for me is dotted paper. Ideal compromise between structure and freedom. 3. everything that survives stage 2 goes to real code and git logs. Here the structure is maximal. Keeping notes in the code is of course good way as well as extensive git comments.
I disagree. Writing is helpful for thinking things through, but the writing itself doesn’t do anything. I used to take a lot of notes to remember things and it can just act as an excuse to not think hard. It’s the hard thought and periodic review that cements things
As I elaborated in another comment, not just the act of writing things down, but the actual very visual recollection of how I wrote it down and where on the page I did helps a lot. I don't know why it works that way, but it definitely does.
Yeah, the title should be "Handwriting helps particular kinds of people remember particular kinds of things"
There was a somewhat recent astonishing revelation that a lot of people are apparently unable to visualize things in their mind (which was interesting to both groups in different ways respectively), so I bet that if you don't visualize things in your mind, it won't help much with recollection.
I think it could depend a lot on how strong the person's other modalities of memory/imagination are. Some people commenting above mentioned they have good spatial memory despite poor ability to visualize, but others are bad at both of those. I could imagine handwriting having big benefits over typing for someone that has a strong sensorimotor memory for example, even if they can't visualize much.
Personally I don't have much visualization ability, and I don't think note taking helps me at all in remembering things that can be easily verbally encoded, for example a history class. But taking notes in certain college math courses seemed to make a big difference, even when I never looked at them again.
I'm not sure whether it's directly a memory thing (perhaps drawing stuff by hand could subconsciously affect recall), or that I use my own shitty drawings as a weak substitute for visualization thereby making it easier for me to conceptualize highly spatial topics. But in any event I think the subject matter could also be a mediating factor.
Tangentially related, but this is why I really appreciate video recorded lectures, being able to pause for a few minutes to work through or look up visual demonstrations is so much more efficient than trying to go back and make sense of everything afterwards.
Personally I don't have much visualization ability, and I don't think note taking helps me at all in remembering things that can be easily verbally encoded, for example a history class. But taking notes in certain college math courses seemed to make a big difference, even when I never looked at them again.
I'm not sure whether it's directly a memory thing (perhaps drawing stuff by hand could subconsciously affect recall), or that I use my own shitty drawings as a weak substitute for visualization thereby making it easier for me to conceptualize highly spatial topics. But in any event I think the subject matter could also be a mediating factor.
Tangentially related, but this is why I really appreciate video recorded lectures, being able to pause for a few minutes to work through or look up visual demonstrations is so much more efficient than trying to go back and make sense of everything afterwards.
I think that Galton figured that one out at some point in the 1800s, no? There's a huge amount of variation in how precise your mind's eye is, from absolutely nothing to vague impressions to photo-real images.
IIRC it was dismissed by most people at the time though. I've only started to hear it discussed by people in psych/neuro academic departments in the last few years.
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Was this a scientific study? If so, that’s interesting
In my case at least, I noticed that remembering things has a strong "visual" component. I have nothing close to a photographic memory (I wish), but for example in university, I often remembered facts and formulas by also remembering where on a page they were. I wouldn't quite "read it off" the page in my mind, but just the visualization of the page helped getting to the fact, in a "oh yeah, that's where that was written down" kind of way.
Today, I write down the most important dates and facts on pieces of paper or a little notebook, and just the strong, vivid, very visual recollection of me writing it down (and where) helps tremendously in remembering what was written down.
Today, I write down the most important dates and facts on pieces of paper or a little notebook, and just the strong, vivid, very visual recollection of me writing it down (and where) helps tremendously in remembering what was written down.
In university I used to take notes with lots of arrows between concepts, while constantly switching between coloured pens, sometimes with an explicit system in mind and sometimes more intuitively. I noticed that this also greatly aided my spatial memory and recall.
I handwrite my todo list at the start of everyday and scribble notes down when I’m in meetings and almost never look at them again. It definitely helps solidify things in my head for whatever reason. I’m not uptight or anything, it just seems to help me.
This is me. I've tried various note taking apps but I never stick with them for more than a few days.
My notebook is everything. If I don't have it for any reason (most often: it ran out and need to buy a new one) my productivity actually takes a big hit. Basically: if I don't write it down, I probably won't get it done.
My notebook is everything. If I don't have it for any reason (most often: it ran out and need to buy a new one) my productivity actually takes a big hit. Basically: if I don't write it down, I probably won't get it done.
I got a tablet with a pen from a popular South Korean company and I love it precisely because it serves as a great alternative to typing. I take notes for class with its native app. This format works for me because I love paper notes but can't get over how hard it is to organize my chaotic style. Having it all located and organized on in a single object I can pick up any time is amazing. Lots of potential there but what is available already has led me to replace pen and paper with digital handwritten notes and papers. I live with limited space so this saves on space and allows me to maintain an easily searchable database of my work.
Can you link to the device?
When I was in high school in Montréal, waaay back in 1995, our French teacher would tell us “qui écrit, lit deux fois” (“the one who writes, reads twice”), as a motto to encourage us to copy the texts we read via handwriting, instead of really just reading. And I can attest that it works really well. I remember a lot more when I write. On the surface, it’s slower; but in really, if I took the same amount of time to only re-read the same material without copying, I still wouldn’t remember as much.
I personally really enjoy the world of GTD (Getting Things Done). I like reading about the best techniques, latest to-do apps and I tried a lot of them over the years.
But in practice, for whatever reason, the only to-do lists that I complete are the ones I quickly write down on a random piece of paper sitting on my desk.
Even though digital notes have many more advantages and I would like to use them, they just never work for me. I forget to periodically check them and if they send me notifications I simply ignore them.
But in practice, for whatever reason, the only to-do lists that I complete are the ones I quickly write down on a random piece of paper sitting on my desk.
Even though digital notes have many more advantages and I would like to use them, they just never work for me. I forget to periodically check them and if they send me notifications I simply ignore them.
>All of this makes me believe we need more time for our brains to adapt to writing on glass, or technology needs to advance enough so that writing on tablets feels like writing in a notebook.
This strikes me as implausible. Did the earliest paper-writers (or parchment writers) not get the same benefit because their brains were adapted for cuneiform on clay tablets?
This strikes me as implausible. Did the earliest paper-writers (or parchment writers) not get the same benefit because their brains were adapted for cuneiform on clay tablets?
For me it does in a way, but I still need to read my notes while the details are still fresh in my mind. The main reason is I'm a sloppy writer and I might not be able to make out my mess if I haven't reviewed it enough. Also, for small things like passwords, saying them 10 times helps me get over 'what was that again' hump.
Current generations may perform better in various ways while handwriting because we grew up being forced to write by hand for many years while we were developing in childhood. I wonder if upcoming generations that grow up typing instead will perform the same way, or if they’ll do better taking typewritten notes.
I like pen and paper because it's secure. It's an unhackable, hard to forge tamper evident record.
There's a stupid number of problems where the easiest answer is "pen and paper" because while it's hard to make redundant, it's completely security auditable.
There's a stupid number of problems where the easiest answer is "pen and paper" because while it's hard to make redundant, it's completely security auditable.
I always assumed this is because of the extra brain power used for your hands. When you write the tactile sensation, the pressure, the texture all activate different parts of your brain. My assumption was more activation means more opportunity for memorization.
Our biology teacher told us to not bring the text book.
He wrote and drew everything on the blackboard, and we had to copy it by writing it down.
Never had to learn anythings, and I still remember 90% of it, even visually.
Remember that the great ones wrote a lot.
Never had to learn anythings, and I still remember 90% of it, even visually.
Remember that the great ones wrote a lot.
Agree. I just passed a certificate by writing down all my study material for the past three weeks. It's a lot, but the act of writing things down really helps cement info into my brain.
For me, I differentiate between note taking & note archiving. The latter is best done electronically. The former is best done by hand for many reasons stated by the author.
I endure a fair amount of ridicule around my use of pen and paper but have known instinctively for some time that it is far better for many use cases, in practical terms.
If you are in Canada, you can go to Dollarama and get sketch notebook with ring binding for $4, and a gel pen. No lines easy to flip pages and a smooth pen. Perfection.
Relevant: The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee.
I don't even ever read back what I wrote. But I find I need to write down something to actually remember it.
So it does fit with my experience.
So it does fit with my experience.
> We could transcribe real-time audio with our eyes closed and still be pretty accurate.
umm, overstating the case a bit on average.
umm, overstating the case a bit on average.
Qui scribit bis legit
I do the opposite of what this author does.
Digital feels more at home
I found that out taking notes in college. It's pretty obvious :-)
I love note taking on paper; the problem is finding my notes later.
what the heck is "digital handwriting"?
Presumably using something like an active stylus on a tablet?
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The sound of writing with a wood-cased pencil is very soothing. Currently I'm using a MITSU-BISHI 9800 with my absolute favorite being the CARAN D'ACHE Swiss Wood red tip.
As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined 3D world.
This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my running route in a nearby forest that I was listening to a particular passage in the book - and vice versa - going back in memory to a particular location immediately makes me start hearing memories from the book passages I listened to in that location!
I think this aspect is at play a lot with handwriting as well. You are always writing in tangible places inside a notebook, while when typing things on the computer there is less of an immediate spatial location of each note. In any case that location will both be mostly the same for all notes (you sitting at the computer), and regarding any virtual spatiality of you computer desktop system, that will have a less tangible connection with your senses, (although any sense of spatiality surely can help a bit).