Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

Moreover, I choose what to remember very carefully as it's something that also influences my personality.

The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to write down even if I never read them again, others I re-read, others are to-dos. No organization, just a flow of braindump, and lots of little drawings everywhere and arrows connecting things and so on. If you'd read it you'd not understand anything, both because the handwriting is atrocious and because there's practically no structure.

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.

Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least)

1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them).

2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question.

[1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x

I think that was the sole value of doing homework assignments and term papers. Going through the act of working out a problem, or researching then writing about a topic, is what reinforced the learning for me.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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)

- 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).

You may have some (mild) form of dyslexia. You triggered me with your remedial classes to improve it, but no improvement.

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.

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.

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).

To me handwriting that looks good has the strokes parallel, spaced equally and almost all circles and curves identical.

Start slow on day 1. Repeat the same stuff on day 2 and 3. Try speeding up a bit on day 4. Then slow down again on day 5. Take a day's break and try again on day 6.

Any human skill I have acquired in my 30s has this pattern. Repeat the same thing, slow at first, speed up till you are barely comfortable without compromising on errors.

Once you hit a plateau, only then introduce more samples and more complexity. The simple stuff the brain encodes has non-linear effects on learning.

In this case, you'd have nothing incredible in week 1. The effects show in week 3-4 onwards.

Same applies here.

But i would say don't worry about it as long as you can read what you have written down. Notes are for personal use only. For example, my handwriting is atrocious and most other people can't read it but that is fine by me.

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.

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.

Where I find this method problematic is professionally: documentation scales well and I don't know if/where there's a limit to when it stops paying off.

The extreme example is this: would you rather see a doctor, or see someone capable of doing med school?

Externalizing memory has greatly expanded what we can "remember", but access is very slow compared to the jello in our skull. Plus, it won't be incorporated into your deeper thoughts. Don't externalize memory which shapes your thinking to be better.

Coding on a screen is different. The code is highlighted, annotated and executed and the screen is part of the tool.

With writing, it’s just me and the notepad. Is it different, I wonder, and also would I code better (or just differently) if I wrote on a tablet with an electronic pen?

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.

However, for myself, the keyboard creates some disconnect when reviewing notes. It's got to be hand written and, like mentioned, I usually only need to review it once or twice over the span of a week or two and then I'll retain the info. Lots of scaffolded and reinforced-by-association information.

Anecdotally, I have probably 4-5 full note books of scribbles and sketches as part of my project. It's not meant to look good or be finished thoughts, and I rarely look at old notes. So for me, the primary purpose is enriching the thinking process, so it's closer to the next step – prototyping. This lets me weed out flawed ideas earlier, so when I actually build something, I have higher confidence it'll work well.

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.

Are your feelings backed by data?

I know for me personally; I always absorb more information when I am just listening and not writing.

When I'm writing whatever the teacher is saying, I can't understand it at the same speed. So I just write without actually comprehending the sentences.

But my listening was always so good that I rarely took notes throughout all my school years. I would just stare at the teacher and listen without writing anything.

Eventually I gave up. It's amazing how much you can learn when you simply listen. I wish I would have realized that sooner.

But if I mostly want to capture highlights, especially if I'm also doing something like taking pics of slides, I generally prefer writing. There are also settings where having a laptop between yourself and the person you're speaking with feels off-putting whereas taking some handwritten notes seems fine.

That isn't what you've said, but you imply that repeatedly.

And by the distinct set of circumstances (recording verbatim) in which writing is vastly inferior to typing, your position is noteworthy. I would argue that a microphone is even still vastly superior & can provide text output. However, whether or not you retain (this is about memory) all that information is another question all together.

If you take your typed notes and then read through them while writing out key elements, you're retention and memory will likely be greatly improved.

Aside, based on your complaints and the fact you said pencil, I'm guessing that your skill with a pen is poor. Writing in general takes practice to master, it is not simply literacy.

Edit: >Although typing notes can be useful and even faster for some note-takers, ultimately it does not have the cognitive, tactile, memory, or visual cognitive effects that people can get when they write by hand. Typing notes can be good, but it won’t make it easier to remember what was said later on.

Directly from the text.

1. If you have an inclination to write things down verbatim, which tool/method is slow enough to force you to paraphrase?

2. If you don't have such an inclination and already tend to paraphrase, which has the least cognitive load in using? Not which engages the most senses or motor skills.

Once you develop a habit of putting what you're taking notes on into your own words, you can move from 1 to 2. However, I think most people have the inclination of 1 and tend to fall back to it when they move to 2.

Because I'm one of those people, handwriting was the best method for me for a long time, until I started my master's program where all the professors have either put out a list of learning objectives at the beginning of the course or at beginning of each lecture/unit. Now, I type my notes. I form those learning objectives as questions and try to answer them as I take notes. Outside of classes, I list the objectives of the meeting/research as questions, adding new questions as they come up, and trying to answer them.

This method has been more effective than anything else I've done and typing is really the only way to do it fast enough for me.

For me writing is huge help in retaining information. I also know people who swear by typing but they all are younger who grew up with computers.

Also the handwritten notes don’t need to write everything in alphabets. The biggest advantage of writing is freeform. I could draw a diagram or other doodles. My old notes of drawings of the classroom, random objects, etc. I think those doodles helped me retain some information.

I share that exact same experience you describe.

For me, learning is all about making connections between the new material and material I already know.

If I kept notes I would have to do three things at once: (1) Follow the material, (2) try to question the material and search my brain for material I already know to make connections with, and (3) take notes, and there's just not enough cognitive capacity to do all three.

Taking notes means turning off the making-connections piece, and that's the most valuable piece to me, and I believe that this is not just a subjective experience, but something that would affect other people too: Focussing on note-taking instead of connections, creates a qualitatively different learning outcome, namely one that leans more towards superficial rote reproduction and less towards real understanding.

In school, when the teacher said something that was unclear or that flat out made no sense, I'd frequently be the one to ask for clarification. Then 20 other heads would pop up from their note-taking and notice that they didn't understand it either, but somehow they didn't notice, and I did. ...they would have happily reproduced the material that made no sense given the right prompt in an exam situation, but that didn't change anything about the fact that they didn't understand it.

What's more: I couldn't engage in that style of learning even if I wanted to. Like: If I tried to turn off the part of my brain that searches for meaning, e.g. when something simply has no meaning, like an exact date of an event in history that I need to know for an exam, then I still wouldn't remember the damned date, plus I wouldn't remember any of the broad themes either. The only thing that would happen would be that my brain would be bored and would wander off thinking about something else that's more interesting.

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).

That’s very unreasonable to do in written notes, it ends up a complete mess and takes a lot of time.

Do you believe that Anki cards is more efficient for learning a song, than, say, spaced repetition of playing or singing the song?

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.

Always a good reminder, the man with a hammer syndrome.

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.

E-ink tablets, like a word processor, always starts with a blank page.

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.

It must. The ingestion method, and particularly how long the info sits in our consciousness, will govern the depth of indexing operations possible.

Something you’ve seen many times is typically easier to remember than something you’ve only seen once. This is obvious, but under your model it makes no sense.

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.

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.

Notepads and pens are always on, cheap and disposable.

I try to use writing not for cataloging information but rather thinking aloud.

This particularly applies to reading. I print, then read with a pen in my hand, marking up and jotting down thoughts.

Once I've ordered my thoughts, a markdown wiki is where all the long form writing happens.

This system works great for me.

Once I've organized and stored my thoughts, the paper can be thrown away / recycled to reduce clutter etc..

I wish I had adopted this strategy decades ago, I use to laugh at old timers who printed everything ... now I know why.

I have three note taking times:

1. Meetings, online or in person 2. Instant. Examples: vet suddenly telling me medicine mgs for my lizard. At hackathon and someone telling me some new software I wanna try. Unexpected philosophical insight from podcast while at gym. 3. Reading book (anywhere: cafe, train, desk, couch) 4. Studying time (at desk)

For said methods, the crosssection of effective note taking strategies I've found to be:

Spiral notebook and pen: meetings, reading book, studying time. Too big to have on me at all times for instant.

Smaller notebook (like, traditional moleskin sized) with pen: effective at all, including instant IF I had my backpack on me, so not truly great for instant.

Surface pro + pen: good for meetings and study time, somewhat ok at reading notes, phenomenal at reading notes if reading on the device itself (splitscreen reading app with onenote). EXCELLENT for classes and meetings because of quick multi-color pen functionality.

Upgrade to notebook resulted from surface pro: use multi-color pen instead of simple black pen. Now same study benefits as smaller notebook, with increased effectiveness in meeting and classes. Missing: cut + paste from surface pro, uploading to onenote to read on phone, etc.

Teensy tiny notebook + pen: best at instant notes, kinda shit at all other notes because so tiny, like think detective notebook. Possibly improved by better strategies, just had conversation with actual detective who made me realize I was probably using the notebook wrong.

Foldy phone with samsung pen thing: Similar to surface pro in effectiveness, better in terms of portability and always having on me (making its instant effectiveness better), worse in terms of its simply kinda small. Would love to use this for reading notes as well, right now can "kinda" split screen but it's really too small for that, would prefer in-same-reading-app note taking feature, yet to find good app for that (considering my books are epubs, this is probably impossible. PDF markup not bad though! in samsung notes app. Surpsrisingly good app). Thing about instant notes is, it's hard to hold, and still slower to get going than a tiny notebook + pen. I'm going to attach a little ring to the back and see if that makes me feel more confident holding this absurdly expensive device in one hand while writing on it while standing up.

TLDR: Technological investment cost of ipad + pen could be worth if you really like the digital features of cloud, multi-device, organization etc. Otherwise, recommend much cheaper option of smaller ipad-sized notebooks + multi-color-in-one pens (check jetpens). Also, this is more fun imo than using digital device, and retains better tactile experience (good for me with ADHD: can click pen as fidget activity).

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

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.

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.

All this is aided by memorization not hindered. In my experience studying Physics not memorizing has slowed down my thinking while having the main concept in my brain has made certain problem go from "impossibile" to "trivial".

At work I use the handwriting keyboard input to write directly into Confluence notes.

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.