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Comment by whatevermom | Hacker News Reader

Obsidian has been really positive for me. It has paid dividends for years — I look up notes I made years ago pretty regularly. I highly recommend it. I used Anki on and of with benefits but without enough discipline. Good thing with Obsidian is that you can write and forget about it - your obscure notes about http2 multiplexing will still be there.

One thing to remember: most stuff can be forgotten safely. There are very few things you’ll actually want to look up a few months from now on…

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Yes, but the process of creating the notes, storing ideas and connections you made during a day is useful right?

well, if you're using the process of creating notes as a means for learning, handwritten notes would probably be more beneficial

that's a myth; while it's true that handwriting does lend to better recall, it's the process of breaking down what to write down (thus spending more time making sense of it) that helps you remember.. not the 'muscle memory' everyone talks about. You can do the same thing in digital tools (typing out notes, structuring notes, etc) and sometimes you can do it faster.

Pretty sure all those studies were comparing laptop (typing) to handwriting.

Here is the first one I found: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614524581

Right, there's no "thought processing" that often happens when you write by hand. Most people tend to transcribe when they are taking notes with a keyboard, which can be akin to riding a bicycle (e.g. muscle memory without deep thought).

Do you have a source? I’ve always heard that handwriting improves retention vs typing, but I’m interested in hearing about any research that counters that.

Not a single source of truth.

The often cited study is [3] which shows longform writing to be more beneficial - it also comes to this conclusion: "Although more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a lap-top than when notes are taken longhand, the benefit dis-appears."

There was a follow-up study made (see [1], [2]) that showed it made no difference in the end. It's what you do with it afterwards that really matters.

Long story short? One form is not more superior to other, but I find typed text (in a digital document) easier to manipulate, transfer to other tools (i.e. Anki) and less friction when I'm thinking as I type.

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[1] https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2023/01/20/note-...

[2] https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2022/01/is-handwriting...

[3] https://brucehayes.org/Teaching/papers/MuellerAndOppenheimer...

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