[HN Gopher] Writing by hand is still the best way to retain info...
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Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 330 points
Date : 2022-11-23 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stackoverflow.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (stackoverflow.blog)
| Pmop wrote:
| The best way to retain information is by burning it into your
| brain with spaced repetition and Anki to help.
| jackphilson wrote:
| I don't think the purpose of notes is to retain information. It
| is to more quickly re-obtain information that has already been
| obtained. Handwriting is considerably slower than typing for this
| purpose. To retain information, use spaced repetition and active
| recall instead.
| [deleted]
| rinaaa wrote:
| hello
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > 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.
| ianbutler wrote:
| I wonder if we've done comparative work between paper writing and
| writing in something like Obsidian for not retaining the full
| work but effective downstream use?
|
| What I mean:
|
| When I write something I remember all of it, ironclad, written on
| my soul levels of remembrance. When I type something, I don't get
| that, but I get something akin to a pointer. I don't remember the
| content but I know it's stored in Obsidian/Docs and I can just go
| look it up.
|
| What's more effective for day to day life? I don't know. I
| imagine people have a larger bandwidth for the latter, but is it
| better to keep all the details on hand, in buffer?
|
| Who knows? But I'd like to see some work done on it to compare.
| spidersouris wrote:
| Agreed. I take notes for my university classes either by using
| my tablet to type in a markdown file (the content of which I
| then transfer to Obsidian) or by writing by hand in a small
| notebook (and then adding the most important things to
| Obsidian). In both cases, what comes to my memory when thinking
| about my note-taking is how it's organized in Obsidian and in
| what part of my file.
|
| One of the biggest advantages of taking notes digitally (or, at
| least, transforming hand-written content into digital content),
| which the article fails to mention, is the fact that you can
| easily CTRL+F to find the information you are looking for. This
| has helped me so many times during my studies. This is
| impossible to do with hand-written notes.
|
| To add to what you said regarding a comparative work between
| paper writing and digital writing, I'd also like to see other
| ways of _remembering_ content being taken into account. Writing
| by hand may "still [be] the best way to retain information",
| but the article seems to miss that writing is only one way of
| remembering things.
|
| Let's say person A is taking notes by hand and doing nothing
| else, and person B is taking notes digitally and then using
| spaced repetition to remember what they have written. We can
| easily say that person B will retain much more information than
| person A. I think it would be interesting to see what would
| happen if they both used spaced repetition. I doubt there would
| be much difference in the end. What matters is the way
| information is encoded in one's long-term memory, not the way
| is it collected.
| [deleted]
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| The real question is why would you want to retain information in
| your brain when you're already writing down that information?
|
| I take notes so that I DON'T have to remember.
| makach wrote:
| flamebait!?
|
| Best way to retain information is spaced repetition. How you do
| it is up to you. Lots of love.
| chefandy wrote:
| If you're in charge of other people, it's worth noting that some
| very common cognitive problems like ADHD, Dysgraphia, and
| Dyslexia negate these benefits in _some_ affected people. The
| cognitive load of making legible marks can become high enough to
| become the focus, rather than the actual content. Pressuring
| someone already struggling with working memory to do things like
| this, is counterproductive, if not demoralizing. Work style
| advice is great, but make sure you listen if they say it doesn 't
| work for them rather than getting into the "it worked for me so
| you must be doing it wrong" mindset.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I don't think you can lump those 3 together like that, though
| you did qualify it. I don't know anything about dysgraphia, but
| dyslexia is probably the standout thing in that list that make
| writing very stressful.
|
| With ADHD, I've always struggled with consistency and memory,
| and what's been helping for a few months is to start my day by
| writing it out in detail, so I'm forced to work out the kinks.
| ouid wrote:
| 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).
| jrib wrote:
| Writing by hand also lets me /think/ better.
|
| I don't have to change tools to draw a shape or change the
| layout. I have a thought, and my hand creates some visual
| representation of that thought. There's no middle step.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I personally find taking notes at all distracts me from retaining
| information during a meeting or lecture. The notes are useful for
| reviewing afterwards, but my best strategy is to just be fully
| focused in the meeting/lecture, and have someone else take notes
| that I can review later.
| seydor wrote:
| maybe typing _slowly_ works the same way ?
| yamrzou wrote:
| Does it apply equally to E Ink writing tablets, or is there
| something special about writing on paper?
| thathndude wrote:
| Would love to know the answer (if there is one) to this
| hyperturtle wrote:
| I would assume so, but I think the fact that its using more of
| your brain is the reason it works.
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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.
| ilyt wrote:
| In high school we had a professor of history that allowed
| us to come with notes to the exams as long as notes were
| hand-written.
|
| 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...
| MostlyInnocent wrote:
| anotheryou wrote:
| Why optimize for retention if that's the exact burden notes can
| take off you?
|
| Optimize for things like understanding, structuring, throughput,
| tool assisted recall, efficiency...
|
| I embrace "prosthetic knowledge" and think it does me a lot of
| good.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I only prefer paper for math and layout.
|
| Layout and sketching is obvious why. For math it's the bit of
| extra "ram" you gain from effortlessly jotting something down
| and building visual helpers.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Never.
|
| I had a horrible manager who just wrote a list of vague
| complaints in his crap hand writing.
|
| Later on he just took a picture of his notes, I swear the worst
| hand writing I've ever seen, and emailed it to me.
|
| As a bonus this company expected employees to work multiple
| nights, and even though some of the directors did, my manager
| never did so.
|
| Now change the title to personal information, like for example
| when you need to get your tire changed, and maybe I'll
| understand. But as far as at work, when you may need to share
| that information later, I have to disagree.
| amp108 wrote:
| If you're wondering why your comment is so lowly rated, I
| suggest you actually read the linked article before commenting
| on it. Or rather, before commenting on a scenario that has
| nothing to do with it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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_.
| treeman79 wrote:
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| 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?
| treeman79 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Brains are weird
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Wow that sounds awful. :-( How are your fine motor skills
| otherwise?
| hyperturtle wrote:
| 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.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| 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.
|
| Directly from the text.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think the slower, deliberate nature is the point here. The
| article does at least attempt to cite some research rather than
| just relying on anecdote.
| thethirdone wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.
| 0181...
|
| [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2
| 2119...
|
| [2]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/2103190808
| 20.h...
| Bilal_io wrote:
| 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.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't have ADHD but I find writing is helpful to keep my
| mind from wandering as well.
| hnbad wrote:
| 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.
| gowld wrote:
| dunefox wrote:
| Just because you don't like does not mean the arguments don't
| hold. If you liked doing it it would help.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| 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.
| californical wrote:
| 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.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| 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.
| newsclues wrote:
| If you need to memorize a phone number rather than learn a
| complex subject, do you feel the same way?
|
| Are your feelings backed by data?
| phyphy wrote:
| 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.
| davisoneee wrote:
| 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.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| 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.
| technovader wrote:
| This was my first thought as well.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| psychomugs wrote:
| Studies like this are never universal, nor do they claim to be.
| The only thing they can claim is statistical significance.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I wish this was more common knowledge. See also: hyperbole.
| randomdata wrote:
| 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.
| yAak wrote:
| 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.
| filchermcurr wrote:
| 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.
|
| You just have to find what works for you.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I find it odd that we were always encouraged to take
| notes, but never once taught how to do it._
|
| Perhaps there were attempts to teach how to do it but it
| was lost amid all the note taking?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Have you gave it an old college try though before giving up?
| Like two years before dismissing it?
| [deleted]
| cartoonfoxes wrote:
| 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.
| linhns wrote:
| Same for me. People kept telling me to take notes when
| listening and when I tried it, I immediate lost track after
| jotting down just a few words.
| qntmfred wrote:
| I wonder if when writing started to become the preferred method
| of transmitting information between humans, some people suggested
| that the methods of oral tradition were superior.
| dijit wrote:
| Well, that's definitely true.
|
| Having someone tell you something is vastly better than reading
| it.
|
| Aside from the intonation and stresses in tone there's also a
| plethora of body language and cues to pick up on.
| mypetocean wrote:
| This might be a function of how passively many people read,
| though - particularly as compared with the highly interactive
| posture of speech.
|
| There are reading strategies which we can employ to engage
| the brain quite effectively.
|
| Plus, writing is immediately _replayable._ Some would rather
| abuse this than rely on a more holistic reading strategy, but
| that doesn 't discount the value of having a concrete,
| immediately-accessible, and yet persistent record of the
| communication.
| indy wrote:
| Socrates on the Forgetfulness that Comes with Writing:
| https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| There seems to be zero proof to that.
|
| 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.
| tjr wrote:
| 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.
| mgreg wrote:
| There are some good studies on this topic such as this one from
| UCLA.
| https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/Teaching/papers/Mu...
|
| 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
| gjulianm wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| 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?
| elil17 wrote:
| Seems like intentionally processing and reframing, regardless
| of the medium used to write, would be the way to go.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| _For some people_ - people learn and remember in different ways
| and writing by hand (if physically difficult, say you have an
| essential tremor (points at self)) can require enough focus that
| it actually makes it difficult to retain information instead
| being overly focused. Different folks have different learning and
| retention habits and while these sorts of articles are helpful in
| learning methods that are commonly useful they shouldn 't be
| taken as gospel.
| vogt wrote:
| I'd be curious if anyone had good advice on how to improve your
| handwriting ability well into adulthood (I'm 35). My penmanship
| was so bad in grade school that I attended special education
| classes to improve it, but it still was and remains horrible.
| This is a source of insecurity for me and since I've always been
| glued to a keyboard it has been easy to handwave away as "screw
| this, the world is all typing-based anyhow".
|
| But I have seen evidence before that handwriting notes leads to
| improved retention, and seeing it here now, I'm wondering if
| there's a framework or resource that can help me feel a little
| bit more confident in my ability to, you know...write words with
| pen and paper. It's embarrassing even talking about it, honestly.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| Just write. No one is going to judge you for your notes. After
| a lot of pages you get better. Also reading helps
| wanderingstan wrote:
| A helpful search keyword would be _handwriting repair_.
|
| There are a lot of videos and pdfs on the subject.
|
| That said, I find all of them wanting and have thought of
| making my own course/book someday. Bottom line is learn a good
| alphabet, then practice it whenever you can until it becomes
| automatic like playing with a fidget spinner.
|
| Self plug: I hit Reddit's front page with some of my work
| practice alphabets.
| https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/969vta/i_practice_alp...
| awd wrote:
| Is your spelling also bad? Do you have trouble reading even
| short strings of digits like 2223232? Do you have trouble
| reading?
|
| You may have some (mild) form of dyslexia. You triggered me
| with your remedial classes to improve it, but no improvement.
| [deleted]
| AcedCapes wrote:
| I used to have pretty poor handwriting as well. It didn't help
| growing up in school when learning to write they would just
| have me trace letters, and never taught what actually makes
| handwriting legible. A few years back I started practicing
| calligraphy for fun and it helped out quite a bit. The basics
| that translate to everyday handwriting are:
|
| 1.Use your big muscles to write.(Move your shoulder/elbow,
| while keeping your wrist and fingers relatively stable.)
|
| 2.Make sure vertical lines are all on the same angle. Vertical
| parts of "l's","h's","T's" etc...
|
| 3.The round parts of letters are the same shape (For example
| the rounded parts of "o's","e's", and "c's" are all the same)
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I'd suggest basically just starting again.
|
| I learned some alternate alphabets (non-Latin) and I used to
| just pin up a reference behind my desk.
|
| I then went back and did the same for cursive English. I still
| have to look at it every now and then, but I don't see that as
| being an issue.
| dchuk wrote:
| Use a fine tip pin (no bigger than 0.38mm), and write slower
| _wolfie_ wrote:
| I guess that depends on what your goal with hand writing is. My
| handwriting is horrible too (no idea if to your degree), it's
| basically my personal cipher by now. My wife can read it,
| sometimes. But that's basically it. And my attitude is "so
| what, I write those notes for myself and I can read them just
| fine". No idea if this helps.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| I've returned to writing by hand increasingly over the last
| couple of years, after a couple of decades of rarely holding a
| pen. To start with, my handwriting was barely legible, and my
| hand painful after a couple of sentences. Now I write
| comfortably and legibly. My advice would be:
|
| - as several others have written, slow down. This is by far the
| most important to start with. If you really needed to record
| something quickly, you wouldn't be handwriting. So accept it's
| going to be slow.
|
| - consciously relax your writing hand and arm, where by
| consciously I mean quite literally reminding yourself, and
| tensing/relaxing the hand and arm to cement the physical sense
| of what the relaxed limb feels like. This helps with the
| cramping/pain
|
| - if legibility matters for your purposes, find the letter
| forms you write most poorly. Read some of your handwriting,
| find the words you stumble over, and identify the letters
| causing this. Show someone your writing and ask them if you're
| not sure (for me it was 'o' and 'e' - in both cases I wasn't
| keeping the loop open). Now find a new more legible form for
| these letters, and use the new form as often as you can
| remember. In my case I reversed the loop direction I had
| learned for the 'o' (the physical difference concentrated my
| mind on keeping it open).
| Zircom wrote:
| Just buy some handwriting workbooks and complete them. And then
| keep practicing, a lot. It might be slow going for a bit,
| you're trying to change something you've been doing for over 20
| years now the same way, it'll take time.
| admend wrote:
| Check out this concept called "Bullet Journaling" (lots of
| YouTube videos on it). That, with a dot grid notebook, could do
| wonders for keeping your notes organized.
|
| But for the writing itself, look into "calligraphy basics" -
| doesn't mean you have to write every letter in a fancy way, but
| the mere exercise of practicing it will at least build better
| habits for letter height (which makes everything more legible).
|
| Lastly, I recommend switching to a fountain pen (yes). I don't
| know what it is - but I just care a bit more when writing with
| one. There are cheap ones (Pilot Kakuno Fine), no need to get
| fancy.
| bbx wrote:
| Have you tried the D'Nealian Pencil Grasp? It might not improve
| your handwriting but it's way more comfortable because you
| apply virtually no tension on your fingers: https://www.ot-mom-
| learning-activities.com/pencil-held-betwe...
| MivLives wrote:
| Can confirm this improved my handwriting. It also made it not
| degrade over time as my hand got more tired and lazy from
| using the pen.
|
| That said pen width is important. My hand writing tends to be
| more legible with ultrafine tips
| v-erne wrote:
| As otheres have said - just sit down and write. But sometimes
| if you do not feel like writing - try to do at least some light
| drawing exercises (like drawing small straight line thousend
| times over, or small circles or other geometrical shapes). I
| used to do this because I wanted to draw better but in the
| meantime my handwriting got legible by accident.
|
| It appears that in reality writing is nothing more than drawing
| and same rules apply. The secret is hand-eye coordination
| (hence simple shapes), consistency (hence thousend times over
| and then thousend more) and the ability to observe subject
| (this is not so important at first with writing, but if you
| want to have really nice style, it can be useful).
| captainkrtek wrote:
| I struggled with this as well in school. In elementary we were
| taught cursive, then in middle school switched curriculum to
| print, so I ended up with a weird messy print/cursive hybrid.
|
| I can thankfully write cursive, for my own notes, but it can be
| hard to read back for others.
|
| I had to make a conscious effort to write my print neatly, only
| tips I can give is having good reason to write, and using that
| to take your time and write slowly. Most of my sloppiness in
| writing came from being too quick and not caring enough. I take
| weekly classes for a second language, and use my homework as
| opportunities to write slowly and legibly. Best of luck!
| naet wrote:
| I don't have a resource but I'd recommend slowing down your
| writing speed, doing some practice, and possibly experimenting
| with other writing styles. Writing is like other physical
| skills, you need to get your practice and reps in to build your
| muscle memory.
|
| My writing is pretty illegible when I write quickly, but when I
| slow down and use capital style block letters my notes are a
| lot easier to read back later.
|
| As a side note, sometimes it doesn't matter if the notes are
| illegible later. Just the very act of trying to write it helps
| with the later retention as you are more deeply engaging with
| your brain and muscle combination. In school I often took
| written notes that never got looked at again, but just having
| taken the notes helped a lot.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Honestly, handwriting is mostly just practice, kind of like
| art. The exceptions are generally medical sorts of things
| (including stuff like dyslexia).
|
| In that vein: Have you tried learning calligraphy? If you use
| the more traditional nib shapes (even if using a fountain pen),
| you'll likely form letters in a different manner than with a
| ball point pen. You can move from more traditional stuff to
| things that look like print or cursive that you like. And then
| it is just practice.
| pkrotich wrote:
| I can relate - I struggle spelling words on paper, but not on
| the keyboard! So I rarely write handwriten notes to avoid
| looking stupid!
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What I did - and I'm handwriting the manuscript/first rough
| draft of a non-technical book - is the slow down to whatever
| speed allowed me to form letters consistently and neatly.
|
| I found this to be massively effective, and I recovered my
| cursive script that I hadn't really used since I was 12, and am
| now up to "full speed" again. Like anything really, slow
| deliberate practice is pretty much the only, best tool you've
| got.
| zingar wrote:
| I used to be unable to focus in meetings, and I was dissatisfied
| with my notes being write only. Now I have the best of both
| worlds with iPad+pencil, and the diagrams I can sketch and modify
| or share later are excellent.
| ordu wrote:
| It is a very suspicious article. It is a psychology trying to
| provide justification for a myth that most people believe in any
| case, and there are no clever experiments to find what factor is
| at play. Is it tactile response at play or the limits of speed of
| handwriting?
|
| Such reasoning is a subject to all kinds of biases and
| heuristics, and they are known to support folk myths instead of
| establishing the truth.
|
| I personally believe that a laptop allow me to stick in a local
| minima of note taking: to write down every word while my mind
| wanders elsewhere it likes. It is all about my attention and
| concentration on what I'm trying to digest. My opinion is based
| on a sample size of 1 and my "sample" think all these thoughts
| and can purposely provide data that justifies my ideas, so I'd
| advise you to doubt them, but the point is they work for me.
| While I manage to immerse myself in the information processing it
| doesn't matter if I'm writing, typing, picking my nose of
| whatever else I'm doing at the time with my hands so they do not
| distract me from the information processing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yup. The way to attend a lecture is to leave your laptop behind.
| Take a cheap spiral notebook and a couple colored pens.
|
| Take notes.
|
| Once the notebook is filled (or the semester is over) scan the
| pages, toss the notebook, and buy a fresh one for the next
| semester.
|
| It works, from much personal experience You're welcome!
|
| 1. yes, sometimes I fall behind the lecturer taking notes, which
| can be a bit frustrating
|
| 2. while the notes may not be complete, they trigger the context
| of the lecture which works
|
| 3. reading my notes from 40 years ago - they don't make much
| sense, as the context is forgotten
|
| 4. I wish I had made audio recordings of the lectures. But that
| was impractical, as I could not afford the cassette tapes
| required
| chongli wrote:
| This only works with old-school professors who teach by writing
| on the blackboard. New-school professors like to bombard you
| with one-hour, 50-slide Powerpoint presentations where each
| slide has a full page of text in 12-point font, with a
| smattering of images and diagrams throughout. Since the prof
| does not need to take time to write anything down, they have no
| qualms about showing one of these slides for a total of 10
| seconds before jumping to the next.
|
| Of course, the _nice_ new-school profs will provide their slide
| deck as a download some time later that day. The _nicer_ ones
| will provide the slide deck at least one hour before class,
| giving you a chance to download it so you can follow along. And
| the _really nice_ ones will provide the slides in a format with
| plenty of space along the sides to take your own notes. This
| works great either for printing out and taking notes directly
| on the page or for making notes on an iPad or Windows tablet
| (with OneNote).
| nradov wrote:
| This never worked for me. The physical process of writing is
| just so slow and awkward that it distracts me and inhibits
| learning. Yes, I tried using higher quality pens and different
| writing techniques. Nothing really helped. So forget writing by
| hand, for me it's worse than useless. YMMV.
| grenoire wrote:
| Practice improves this, I suppose as you age it's harder to
| get that commitment to becoming a speedy note-taker, but I
| share the sentiment among many that speed is not necessarily
| a deal breaker. I can barely decipher my scribbles after the
| fact, but doubling down on the neural pathways is a deal
| breaker.
| nradov wrote:
| I practiced for literally decades. It didn't help much.
| gjulianm wrote:
| The problem with that is working with the notes later. My
| method of learning included reorganizing, rewriting, extending
| notes because it's very rare that you're able to write things
| down properly on the go and fill in the gaps.
|
| That's very unreasonable to do in written notes, it ends up a
| complete mess and takes a lot of time.
| gjulianm wrote:
| 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.
| jlengrand wrote:
| I wrote about why I still do it not so long ago, interesting to
| see it in the SO blog : https://lengrand.fr/why-i-still-take-
| notes-on-paper/
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Writing by hand is still the best way to take notes. I think
| Apple pencil is coming close but still not there.
|
| 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
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Is it just me or do dribble and enjin seem to yield positive
| results for (almost) any name, however returning broken links?
| badrabbit wrote:
| No joke, I took my passion in computing seriously because of my
| hatred towards writing by hand!
| [deleted]
| graphenus wrote:
| It looks like folks haven't studied in a modern environment or
| haven't used all the tools available to them.
|
| During classes you take notes using a keyboard. The you and your
| colleagues merge everything into a single set of notes. E.g., in
| a private wiki. That makes you review your notes at least once,
| and in the end you will end up with mega notes written in the
| language common to students of the year that you wouldn't be able
| to creat on your own. Beat that.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| 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.
| chitowneats wrote:
| 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.
| kcindric wrote:
| I'm looking into buying a iPad with a pencil for better
| organizing my work and personal notes with added searchability.
| The only thing I'm afraid off, as I have ADHD and as a result
| trouble learning/retaining information, is that the iPad + pencil
| won't have the same effect as pen and paper. Anyone made the
| switch from paper to iPad and can't share their experience?
| filchermcurr wrote:
| I tried to switch but I never use it anymore. There's a
| weird... I don't know, almost burden to it.
|
| Pen and paper is always on, always available. The interface is
| completely blank and unassuming. You have a page, you have a
| writing utensil. Text is always visible, nothing needs charged,
| there's a pleasant tactile sensation, minimal noise.
|
| On the iPad, you have to turn it on. Launch the application.
| Navigate to the right notebook or page or whatever. (Unless you
| use Notes, maybe, and there's a double tap to launch option)
| There are ambiguous icons everywhere. Sometimes palm rejection
| doesn't work and you zoom, move the page, or mark on the page.
| There's a bright backlight, distracting notifications, the
| sound of the pencil tapping on the glass. It doesn't lie flat
| without a case. It all just feels very unnatural to me. I never
| got used to it.
|
| Of course there are benefits. Optical character recognition for
| instant search, backups, unlimited 'paper', multiple notebooks
| in one thin place.
| criddell wrote:
| If you tap the Pencil to the screen of the iPad when it's
| off, it turns on and launches the notes app.
| m_eiman wrote:
| If you're going to be writing a lot, I'd recommend something
| like the Paperlike screen protector - the increased friction
| makes writing noticeably easier.
| madiator wrote:
| 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.
| elevation wrote:
| Handwriting may be a good way to reinforce what you've already
| learned. But it can also act as a crutch which disengages your
| brain before you've processed new information more deeply.
|
| I have a coworker who hand writes nearly all technical
| information spoken in meetings and 1 on 1 conversations, and yet
| remains incredibly ineffective at recall.
|
| The problem is she lacks a mental model of the topic, so she has
| no structure around which to organize incoming facts. Being
| unable to assess the relative importance of a new fact, she
| dutifully transcribes everything she hears -- but never becomes
| able to summarize or reason about it. This also means that she's
| unable to correct herself when she's mistranscribed something,
| such as substituting Gigabytes with Gigahertz. Little of what she
| writes is worth retaining.
|
| If you're unclear about what's being discussed, it can be so much
| more effective to put the pencil down and ask a few questions.
| shakow wrote:
| I don't want to disparage your colleague; but the way you
| describe it, it looks more like an her issue than a handwriting
| issue.
| lzooz wrote:
| I think your coworker is simply daft.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Sounds to me like her note-taking is pretty critical for her.
|
| It's very difficult to piece together cause and affect here. Is
| her memory & mental model bad because she's using notes as a
| "crutch", or is that crutch the only reason she's functional
| _in any way_. To expand on the crutch analogy, if someone has a
| game leg taking away their crutch isn 't going to improve their
| walking.
|
| Speaking as someone who has problems with working memory, I
| take a lot of notes because I can't trust my brain to
| effectively parse what requires long term storage. I might
| understand everything perfectly clearly, and then
| days/hours/minutes later it's gone.
|
| Note-taking prevents information being lost to the aether, and
| revision helps commit stuff to long term memory.
| bostonsre wrote:
| I would guess her handwriting words per minute is not fast
| enough to keep up with conversations. I would find it
| difficult to pay attention and understand stuff if I'm
| constantly trying to drain the buffer of words coming in and
| I would have to start throwing some 409s and would miss some
| stuff. At least with typing, I can keep up with conversations
| when I need to take notes for a given discussion.
| [deleted]
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Sounds to me like the note taking isn't her issue.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ekTHEN wrote:
| I made the observation that hand-writing extremely helps me to
| solve problems (especially programming and math related). In some
| way it removes mental barriers / distractions I have when using
| digital tools (how do i want to organise this? can i link
| something here?). I can just dump every thought on paper and work
| way more creatively. In most cases the notes are dumped in the
| bin afterwards (one couln't uderstand them when reading them
| without context).
|
| In meetings I also really enjoy to outline some points / a little
| agenda for myself. This way i don't forget to address "my" topics
| or can wait for a better moment.
|
| In a way pen and paper are a tool for me to organize my thoughts
| in a more structured way. And it seems to be more socially
| accepted to take hand-written notes while talking to someone
| rather than typing away on a notebook.
| adameasterling wrote:
| 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.
| cronix wrote:
| > for reasons that I don't really understand.
|
| 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.
| adameasterling wrote:
| 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.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > on paper showed more brain activity than subjects who recorded
| the same information onto a smartphone
|
| This just shows that smartphones require less effort, not that
| paper is better, necessarily.
|
| Then they say people were 25% faster to recall information later
| when they used paper, instead of smartphone. But is it like a 4
| to 5 seconds increase? I bet so and it's irrelevant.
| barbazoo wrote:
| ... in mice /s
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I envy all the people who don't find writing by hand intolerably
| excruciating.
| hyperturtle wrote:
| I find the lack of learning science and the state of teaching how
| to learning to be detrimental to our current society where people
| are required to know more and more. Knowledge that doctors,
| lawyers, even computer engineers keep increasing as time goes on,
| but the way we learn has never been scrutinized or emphasized and
| is mostly up to each person to deal with.
| silveira wrote:
| 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.
| midjji wrote:
| Mostly confusing the benefit which taking notes provides with the
| benefit paying the minimum attention taking notes requires.
| Though there is also the memory habit confounder, i.e. if you are
| used to needing to remember only the things you write down, you
| are less likely to remember it if you dont. Similarly, if you are
| used to not need to remember what you type, you wont. However, if
| you are able to pay attention regardless, and are used to needing
| to remember even if you aren't taking notes, you will. These
| confounders are obvious and the article is completely oblivious
| to them.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I heard someone describe the process of writing notes as
| conditioning his mind for the problem space. The first thing he
| does with any new subject is write down pages of messy notes with
| no intention of consulting them again. They are just an
| expendable resource to help get the info into his mind.
|
| I found it really refreshing to approach notes as totally
| expendable one time things to help memory. In school we were
| taught to treat them as a well organized, legible reference log
| and I was terrible at taking them. I wish I had just slammed down
| everything of relevance with no concern for organizing the info.
| oxff wrote:
| I have an atomic note like ``Paxos`` and when I re-read or add to
| it, I usually refactor it to resemble my improved understanding.
|
| This is a colossal waste of time if you do it by hand, but it is
| something that really helps me, and is enabled by taking notes on
| a keyboard + Obsidian.
| ebjaas_2022 wrote:
| I don't agree with this article. I write hundreds of lines of
| notes each day, as a part of my coding and work routine. I do it
| all digitally, in Visual Studio Code, as pure text. I think, as
| long as you can write fluently on a keyboard, and as long as the
| writing and typing itself does not steal CPU cycles from your
| brain while you're doing it, it works just as well as handwritten
| notes, and, I would wager, probably even better, as you're able
| to write quite a bit faster on a keyboard than you are when
| you're writing with a pen.
|
| As for the "slowness" of the writing being a point in itself, I
| don't think that's true. I achieve the same by editing my text as
| I write it, pondering over my wording, to make sure that I
| communicate (to myself, mind you) the precise intent that I'm
| going for.
|
| I think the fondness for handwriting is mostly based on romantic
| notions, for lack of better words, predicated by our closeness in
| time to a period where handwriting was much more common. We think
| of it as the "original" way of writing, and the most "pure" way
| of writing. Personally I think jotting down text notes on a
| keyboard is just as "pure", and I don't really think that there
| are any extra qualities associated with handwriting, as far as
| learning and retaining information goes.
| blindhippo wrote:
| To be clear, haven't read the article yet.
|
| But I disagree that fondness for handwriting is a romantic
| notion. For me writing things down by hand engages a different
| part of my brain. It's similar to "rubber ducking" for me,
| meaning I have to think about the information in a different
| way. I don't get the same from typing, for whatever reason.
|
| Literally, different strokes for different folks.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Your point about many lines of notes is actually highlighting
| another benefit of writing: handwritten notes simply force you
| to choose which things are truly important because you cannot
| possibly record as much. This process also helps retention. I
| don't actually look at most notes I take very often.
| Dowwie wrote:
| 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?
| amp108 wrote:
| 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.
| chaostheory wrote:
| You can have both hand written notes and something digital that's
| saved in the cloud. Just get a rocket book
| PetitSasquatch wrote:
| There is a big difference between note-taking and critical
| analysis by hand.
|
| I use pen and paper for organising thought and critically
| engaging with text I'm reading.
|
| Unequivocally, it is a far superior method for me than typing, in
| the early phase of digesting new / difficult information.
|
| Once the initial cognitive hurdle has passed, typing in long form
| is also helpful for recall.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| Some of us can't read our own handwriting.
| justinram11 wrote:
| I've always found that it's the act of actually "processing" the
| information that helps with my retention and understanding.
|
| Most of my notes (especially in college) are short sentences /
| random words with arrow to other rows (with most of my notes
| being incomprehensible to even myself after some time).
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I had one course in engineering school (ethics I think), that
| had us take shorthand notes in class, then re-write into long-
| form in a separate notebook to be submitted at the end of the
| semester. It was super effective at driving home the lessons
| since the act of translating short-form to long-form required
| (re)comprehension of the material.
| david422 wrote:
| 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.
| phyphy wrote:
| 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.
| noNothing wrote:
| 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.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > 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.
| sethammons wrote:
| 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.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'd hypothesise that typing would be as useful for recall if
| it stayed out of the way as handwriting does (for most
| people)?
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I am deaf and grew up with sign language. I find that typing on
| the keyboard is better for me. I remember better when I type.
| Writing takes too long and takes me out of the flow of thinking.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| There's something about writing that makes it very personal. I've
| noticed when I make information personal I retain it better.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| 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.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| I've recently got into fountain pens and I'm totally in love
| with the whole experience. Use them for writing, sketching
| and drawing.
|
| TWSBI is my favorite so far.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] - https://digitalorganizationdad.substack.com/p/the-tools-
| of-e...
| maCDzP wrote:
| I prefer writing by hand. Right now I am studying STAT110 - a
| free Harvard course - and I am copying the the course book by
| hand.
|
| I have noticed that by the time I get to exercises I have written
| so many examples that I am better position to solve them.
|
| I know it's nuts. It takes an awful lot of time, but hey, it
| works.
| keiferski wrote:
| This reminds me of the Steve Jobs comment [1] about condors and
| bicycles:
|
| _"I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for
| various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy
| to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather
| unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It
| was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that
| didn't look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American
| had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on
| a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew
| the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that's
| what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it's the
| most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the
| equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."_
|
| I agree that writing by hand (the condor) is better than typing
| (the human), but the missing part is Spaced Repetition (the
| bicycle.) Typing information into a SRS system is almost
| certainly more effective at retaining information than
| handwriting alone is.
|
| I suppose you could handwrite cards and use something like the
| Leitner system [2], but this is extremely inefficient compared to
| using Anki/a software program. At the end of the day, if you
| seriously want to retain information, you should just use a SRS,
| full stop.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c__DV-Ul9AM
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system
| hkon wrote:
| I find that most times the goal is just to have the
| information, and when you write it down by hand in the first
| place you're more likely to remember it. Seems overkill to put
| more effort into it.
| type-r wrote:
| It depends on how adept you are at creating cards, I think.
| If you have a non-manual pipeline that automates most of the
| work, I think the lifetime cost of reviewing a card a few
| times is comparable to writing out the same information out
| by hand. The difference with the card is that now this
| information is there for life, instead of for a few
| days/weeks with writing.
|
| Agree that if we're talking about manual creation of cards,
| it can be hard to see the ROI given how much effort it
| typically takes to create high-quality one-off questions and
| answers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Probably true for facts that you need to be able to recall
| without consulting notes.
|
| Most of my notes are not that. I mostly don't need unassisted
| recall. Spaced repetition memorization of everything I write
| down in my notebook would be very inappropriate and an
| inefficient use of my time and memory resources.
| gowld wrote:
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I found that I retain the most information when I write in LaTeX
| over md, txt, word, hand.
|
| 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.
| picardo wrote:
| I think it's more helpful for certain tasks, such as learning a
| new language, than others, such as creating a complex document.
| I've been using handwritten notes to improve my Korean recently,
| and I've noticed that I can recall the words and characters much
| more accurately and for much longer after writing them by hand.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I know the research says this but I did this for a whole grad
| school semester class and remembered the least. When I try to
| remember a concept, I recall the place (sometimes down to the
| rough seating location in class) and the whole thing comes
| instantly flooding back to me.
|
| Since my memory is nothing close to eidetic - I forget my keys,
| my car's parked location, all that stuff - I decided that note-
| taking would help supercharge me, but it debilitated me. I think
| it's because note-taking is its own skill and without being
| skilled at it, it took too much of my conscious thought pattern
| to:
|
| - do the mechanical task of pen to paper
|
| - edit to salient parts to select what goes down
|
| So, I think a lot of the "writing is the best way" stuff comes
| from people who are akin to my "vim bindings are the best way".
| People who didn't grow up with vim bindings will find them
| unreasonable to learn - but I am much faster when I use them
| everywhere.
|
| So I lean into my method: what I repeat I remember. I had a
| period where I needed to get a duplicate car title and insurance
| and everything. I can now write down my VIN by heart.
| headbee wrote:
| 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.
| mywacaday wrote:
| 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.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| As a more vanilla alternative...
|
| 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).
| qwertox wrote:
| I used Confluence which is excellent for inputting data, but
| the search functionality is abysmal.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jimmaswell wrote:
| 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.
| 998244353 wrote:
| 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.
| dchuk wrote:
| 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.
| CSSer wrote:
| Have you considered buying loose leaf notebook paper instead
| of printer paper? You get lines and I'd imagine it's even
| cheaper.
| koolba wrote:
| Indeed. It's pretty hard to be $.25 store brand spiral
| notepads for cost per page.
| hanoz wrote:
| What sort of folder do you use? Is it something you can lean
| on when writing?
| CrypticShift wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x
| vasco wrote:
| 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.
| sevensor wrote:
| 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.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> 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.
| ryyr wrote:
| 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
| iquerno wrote:
| 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
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| What are you using the host your wiki and write markdown? I'm
| looking at self-hosting a similar system.
| headbee wrote:
| 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.
| mhint88 wrote:
| It might not be exactly what you need, but I use _Zim_ for
| this purpose.
|
| [https://zim-wiki.org/]
| inferense wrote:
| 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.
| CodeIsMyFetish wrote:
| Not OP, but I use an app called Obsidian for this. It's my
| favorite way to take notes and make connections between
| topics.
| psychomugs wrote:
| 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.
| ihaveabeardnow wrote:
| 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.
| emodendroket wrote:
| 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Typing scales to the speed of the conversation. While my wpm is
| say only about 60 perhaps, I can get enough down in meetings for
| that to be useful.
| erdaniels wrote:
| I also believe that writing is better than typing for
| information. What's more though is that I think AI coding
| solutions could worsen our retention of information when it comes
| to coding.
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| Until you lose track of the paper...
| alexk307 wrote:
| Worked for me. Once I realized I could learn anything by just
| reading the assigned textbook and taking long form handwritten
| notes, studying became an efficient exercise that I didn't mind
| doing.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| I also find that writing by hand led to better retention and
| understanding when I learned a new language, compared to writing
| with a keyboard. My guess is that it's because handwriting is
| slower, which somehow creates a better focus window.
| moth-fuzz wrote:
| I'm going to challenge the question - if I've got something
| written down, why would I need to memorize it? Maybe in school
| where closed-notes tests are a thing, sure, but nowhere in the
| 'real-world' tests one's ability to memorize in the strict sense.
| I write things down for a reason and that reason is _not_ just
| accessory to memorizing it. I put things on paper precisely so I
| _don 't_ have to put them in my brain. To keep them in both
| places would be redundant.
|
| On that note, I have ADHD, and very little 'brain-RAM', and
| really lack the ability to memorize things or recall what I've
| memorized. The only consistent way I've found to 'memorize'
| things is to deep-learn them, to the point where I can infer all
| the answers from prior knowledge, and draw new conclusions from
| existing conclusions, pretty much all the way down. I can't just
| brute-force-memorize the conclusions themselves. Every step
| inbetween has to make sense. It's like memorizing the square
| series as individual numbers, 1, 4, 9, 16, etc. (something I
| cannot do) vs memorizing the formula x^2 and being able to
| calculate the resulting numbers when needed (something I can do).
| moffkalast wrote:
| Before the internet was a thing the only two ways to get
| information were by remembering it (or remembering by proxy by
| asking somebody else) or checking a book. Since it was still
| impossible to lug around an entire library, schooling gave a
| large emphasis on memorization.
|
| These days at least some university tier education has adapted
| to the model of just acquainting people with a concept quickly
| to the point where they can search for it when they need it.
| Most of the educational system still needs to catch up though.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > I put things on paper precisely so I don't have to put them
| in my brain. To keep them in both places would be redundant.
|
| I think that makes sense if your only goal is to _reference_
| the information, like looking up information in a personal
| library. But I like to write by hand so I can record my
| _understanding_ of the information, my putting the information
| in context in my own words. Sometimes I 'll never refer to the
| written thing again. The writing is part of the leading to
| understanding by way of reformulating the information into my
| own words --- situating it in a context that makes sense for
| me. Writing by hand feels more connected to the development of
| my understanding. Typing never really gets to that point for
| me.
|
| But I think it's also very subject oriented. Writing in a
| technical context requires handling information in a different
| way than if it's in a more analytical or critical/expository
| context.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| this is true. and here's my sexy pen hack -
| https://www.lambdacurry.com/blog/2017-05-10-cheaper-better-w...
|
| i use a waterman rollerball and use a signo 307 refill. which is
| probably as good as an ink pen.
|
| Added benefit being the signo 307 is a fraud-proof ink.
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