Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity

Yes - it is true that I sometimes have to thumb through a couple different notebooks to find what I'm looking for, but most of the time it's only my current and maybe last notebook I need to reference.

But now I'm close to 100% on note taking apps like bear or ios default notes.

Insufficient canvas on a digital screen, lack of immediate access that flipping pages has, and poor handwriting recognition.

Wish I could get all the wasted hours back that I spent correcting bad OCR.

So when you go slow and engage more senses and muscles, you aren't taking "better notes", you're making your brain linger on the content longer and in more depth. It's borderline useless if it's a business meeting that you're notetaking, but it's also potentially very helpful for developing the language of shapes and lines, math symbols, molecular diagrams, etc. A lot of study recommendations now say, "take the notes twice". Once in lecture, just letting your hand move without understanding and reducing anything that's lengthy and repetitive to a shorthand symbol. And then a second time when you are at home, allowing yourself to go slowly and develop more comprehension as a mode of study.

A couple of years ago I switched to ipad and apple pencil. The key is that the ipad indexes the handwritten text.

It’s nowhere near as nice as pen and paper (and I’m no snob — mechanically it’s not great). I added a screen cover to increase friction and practiced a little. Works pretty well and I have all my notes with me.

I've never heard anyone suggest you should only hand write. I type most of the time, but use handwriting whenever I need to learn something or absorb a lot of information at once. It's not an effective filing/information retrieval system, it's an effective brain training system.

Write by hand if you want to internalize it in your memory.

Everything else like recipe, TODO list, I just type it directly into my phone/tablet.

But the other thing is - as soon as I start (or started, back when I was a pupil/student) taking notes, I stop learning. Everybody always insisted that "you have to take notes!", so I tried that sometimes - and it was a disaster. Didn't learn. Had to go over the notes and trying to learn from that. Not good at all.

When I didn't take notes I could focus 100% on what was shown and said, and I learned it. I understood it, to the extent that there was nothing to remember (just like you don't have to remember that an apple will fall, if given the chance). So, when class was over, I understood. Easy on the brain.

Obviously there are equations and pure facts. Those you should simply look up when needed. That's how we were thought in my college anyway - learn how to find what you need, when you need it.

For other things - not attending classes I mean - I most definitely prefer using a keyboard (designs, thoughts about designs etc). Handwriting would be the worst for this.

TL;DR - my own experience absolutely tells me that typing is at least as good, probably much better, than handwriting, and it's all a red herring anyway because taking notes is detrimental to deep understanding. Keep that to the absolute minimum, and it can be useful, but only then. And for that, it makes no difference what writing method you use.

Sketching out ideas for something I'll build over the weekend: paper. A list of things I need to get done and chip away at over the next 2 months: paper. A complicated web of info that I might need just a part of at some indeterminate point in the future: digital.

> "The present findings suggest that the intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain’s connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering."

But you are right, they do not directly _prove_ that handwriting yields a greater learning effect.

I find the extraneous load helpful as it forces my attention. But this only works in cases when I can control the pace, such as when reading (as opposed to listening.)

   "Forty university students in their early twenties"

But these forty 20-year-olds? They were probably using keyboards since the beginning, and may have written maybe in grade school or for a signature.

Fluency using a keyboard can be quite easy on the brain. I've been typing a long time and I don't even think of the spelling or word, it just comes out on the screen. In fact, I have forgotten logins and passwords, but my fingers will dutifully type them anyway.

I can also write, but I gave it for keyboards, and now I'm quite rusty. My writing is less legible and requires more concentration.

Probably. Every skill requires practice to become effortless.

You're complaining about handwriting, some people are saying reading is an effort and waste their life watching talking heads on youtube...

I think that handwriting and its constraints, lead to a different mindset from when you're typing on a keyboard:

- It's write Only; You can't erase easily, so you either accept it and just keep pushing forward or you get distracted by not being able to do so (good), leading you to think twice before writing (bad).

- The physical coordination involved is a soothing and mindful process (at least for me) and it feels much more creative than typing. It's way easier to stay focused while doing so (might relate to my ADHD).

I rememeber vividly myself asking my dad when I was a kid why his handwriting was so different from what I learning at school. He told me that the success criteria for writing is can you read your own writing? Can you make an effort to make readable for others when you intend it to be read by someone else? If yes, that's good enough, nobody cares if you draw letters in a uncommon fashion, as long as they can understand the words.

While questionable at times, the way that doctors write follows this logic, because when writing the prescription the tend to optimize for writing more than reading, and therefore allow themselves more freedom.

I feel that once you've taken that step, writing becomes a much more enjoyable process. When I write, a "f" will be drawn differently, depending if it's the first letter of the word, or in the middle (as in "effort").

So I end up having three "modes" for handwriting:

- Ephemeral, I'll write things so quickly that I know I'll be able to decipher it only for a few days, while the topic is still fresh in my brain.

- Just for me, so I make zero efforts, just paying a bit more attention so I don't end up scribbling "effort" into "e||o||" which may cause problems in a month or two.

- For others, where I'll keep my handwriting peculiarities, but make sure it's absolutely decipherable (so no shortcuts, no stroked words, etc ..)

Strangely, I remember myself handwriting things, but I never remember typing something (though I'll remember about the thoughts of course). It's like handwriting is a more anchored experience somehow.

As a teacher my grandfather had a special fondness for teaching handwriting. He read literature on it and conducted his own experiments using his pupils, trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.

One of the things I recall vividly is him explaining to me as I started school, how it was vastly beneficial to use thick pencils when first learning to write by hand. He gave me, as he gave his students, a pencil he preferred which as I recall had a diameter about 1.5x a regular pencil. It was also slightly softer, around 2B.

As I recall his explanation was that the larger pencil required less motor skill precision, which lead to more relaxed fingers hence reduced strain. The softer graphite also required less pressure, again reducing strain.

As I recall he had found the reduction in strain really helped kids get comfortable with writing by hand.

I feel like since I've mostly been typing things for the last 30 years that my motor control for hand writing isn't all that good anymore either. When I do write by hand it's less legible than it was when I was in my 20s (now in my 60s).

for me that's the point of handwriting. you have to think careful what you want to write or stick with what you wrote for the sake of authenticity.

> Now young children, by forcing them to handwrite, are denied both these affordances

this sentiment feels very wrong to me for cultural as well as paedagogical reasons.

No way this replicates.

Even simple trivia type questions like "what's the V chord in F" are on basically instant recall for an experienced musician but without your instrument you have to stop and think (possibly even picturing your hands on your instrument) to answer.

As a seemingly overly visual thinker the aspect of making several small decisions about how to layout what I'm writing down by hand also seems to play a huge role in that. I have to make positioning and thereby spacing and sizing decisions, choose the color, as well as making decisions on in what style (caps, cursive, script) I write each letter. I can easily use graphical elements like lines, arrows, boxes, etc.

Anything created digitally by primarily typing will always have a more dynamic and flowing nature, while following the linearity of the typed sequence of characters. It takes away a lot of the decisions that I have to make when laying out a handwritten note.

Anecdotally, I seem to remember mindmaps created with digital tools that rearrange elements automatically based on available space much less than hand-drawn ones. Yet, those come with their own downsides.

Maybe the repeated parsing and checking for legibility is the foil that improves memory retention!

> In the present study, participants only used their right index finger for typing to prevent undesired crossover effects between the two hemispheres.

"We didn't want to see too much brain activity".

Manipulating equations with pen and paper is just in a different league to typing, LaTeX or not.

What probably makes the most difference between the two is thinking about what you are writing. No matter how. Typing is likely to have the same effect provided you're not simply blindly copying stuff.

A more powerful effect that you hint at is the fact that writing by hand transfers the information to a physical location. You remove a layer of abstraction between your memory and what you've written down (yes we try to tie virtual stuff to a 'location' as well, but quite a lot of problems can be explained by people struggling with that abstraction).

2. Burn notes periodically

3. Accept that they may be read at some point, and write anyways

(Unfortunately Remarkable doesn't support device encryption, so it's not an option: https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Does-reMarkable-off...)

Also: If your papers are taken, you probably can figure it out.

At the nation state level... honestly, they'll read it straight off your montior's emissions. TEMPEST exists for a reason.

For these reasons, I tend to NOT trust my computer for absolutely critical things. I prefer paper.

Also remember yesterday's unbreakable crypto is 10 year's from now's breakable and 20 years from now they'll be doing class projects on it in college.

If you lose your onenote encryption key, your data is lost forever.

Another solution is Apple Notes with Advanced Data Protection turned on for your Apple ID. That encrypts your entire iCloud Drive with your encryption key and again if you lose your key data is gone; although there are some recovery options which require a trusted contact.

It isn't exactly 'unknown' - every teacher I've ever met has said 'if you write it down you'll remember it better' and Tom Clancy made 'if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen' a major plot point in one of his novels.

Perhaps 'unexplained' would be a better word.

Part of this relied on the professors distributing lecture slides afterwards, which they always did. Helped jog my memory later and remind me of what to study for the final.

They found activity in desirable parts of the brain. Being chased by a lion would trigger panic responses and parts of your brain would be shut down. So no, any increase in complication will not work. I certainly doubt texting while driving will work to improve connectivity in the parts of your brain required for safe driving.