[HN Gopher] Why I'm a sucker for pen and paper
___________________________________________________________________
Why I'm a sucker for pen and paper
Author : pgcm1
Score : 133 points
Date : 2021-03-26 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (productivegrowth.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (productivegrowth.substack.com)
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I do the opposite of what this author does. Digital feels more at
| home
| whiddershins wrote:
| _maybe_
|
| It certainly seems plausible to me, in my personal experience,
| but this article is talking about something that _may_ be true.
|
| This is another headline that is planting an idea in casual
| reader's heads without explicitly mentioning it is in large part
| anecdotal and speculative.
| john-tells-all wrote:
| Agree. I just passed a certificate by writing down all my study
| material for the past three weeks. It's a lot, but the _act of
| writing things down_ really helps cement info into my brain.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I find that it also helps me get over things.
|
| If there's something that I'm obsessing over or simply cannot get
| off my mind, I can write it down and it will go away. Throwing
| the piece of paper is optional.
|
| I think writing puts some kind of structure to your mental model,
| you process it at the time of writing and can move on to the next
| thing while preserving the output of the processing. The output
| tends to be some kind of map about where you can find it and
| short description about the nature of the thing you write down.
|
| It's almost as if you put the stuff of your "hot memory", the
| memory that is about the main process you operate on, into your
| visual memory.
|
| For some reason, typing on a computer doesn't have the same
| effect. It does have some effect but it's different.
| JohnCohorn wrote:
| Current generations may perform better in various ways while
| handwriting because we grew up being forced to write by hand for
| many years while we were developing in childhood. I wonder if
| upcoming generations that grow up typing instead will perform the
| same way, or if they'll do better taking typewritten notes.
| dagmx wrote:
| I have a really hard time writing down notes while things are
| going on. I have very good memory but if I'm taking notes while
| something is happening, I often don't remember anything other
| than writing it down. If I don't take notes, my memory of events,
| topics and discussions is often far better. Writing things down
| post facto also does not help me much, other than I know where I
| wrote it.
|
| However I find the act of discussing a topic helps cement things.
| For me, the engagement with a subject is what really helps me
| remember things, and I suspect writing notes removes that.
| anyfoo wrote:
| In my case at least, I noticed that remembering things has a
| strong "visual" component. I have nothing close to a photographic
| memory (I wish), but for example in university, I often
| remembered facts and formulas by also remembering where on a page
| they were. I wouldn't quite "read it off" the page in my mind,
| but just the visualization of the page helped getting to the
| fact, in a "oh yeah, that's where that was written down" kind of
| way.
|
| Today, I write down the most important dates and facts on pieces
| of paper or a little notebook, and just the strong, vivid, very
| visual recollection of me writing it down (and where) helps
| tremendously in remembering what was written down.
| krrrh wrote:
| In university I used to take notes with lots of arrows between
| concepts, while constantly switching between coloured pens,
| sometimes with an explicit system in mind and sometimes more
| intuitively. I noticed that this also greatly aided my spatial
| memory and recall.
| wealthyyy wrote:
| Memorizing is root of all evil. Understanding is more important.
| briandoll wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I've started to use the reMarkable
| tablet for taking notes. Sometimes I don't even look at them
| again, it's just a more efficient way to get the info into my
| head.
|
| I wrote more about my current workflow/stack here if anyone is
| interested (w/ some reMarkable hacks):
| https://briandoll.medium.com/personal-setup-for-getting-shit...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I take notes in a $.79 spiral paper notebook. When it fills up,
| I just scan it and get another one.
| SiVal wrote:
| Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all the
| pages?
|
| I like paper notebooks, too. Someday, I'd like to have an app
| that would let me turn any ordinary stack of scratch paper or
| notebook into a searchable PDF in under 5 minutes. I would
| finish a notebook and just put my phone on a gooseneck stand
| and turn the pages one at a time (not riffle) at one page per
| second or two, and it would know when to take the photos,
| which it would flatten, orient, and bind into a PDF of the
| notebook. It would maintain my handwritten pages but add an
| OCR'ed backstore of the text that could be used to create
| something like a table of contents, an index, and a fulltext
| search.
|
| I imagine some portion of that is already available, and the
| rest will be arriving anytime now.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Can you recommend a quick, easy method for scanning all
| the pages?
|
| The trick is to use a hopper fed scanner that scans both
| sides at the same time. Not a flat bed scanner.
|
| I use an old Fujitsu fi-5120C scanner.
|
| I haven't found an OCR yet that will decipher handwriting.
| I would think that with all the advances in AI this would
| be an easy problem.
| bumbada wrote:
| I use different methods, but the most important one is an
| old Fujitsu Snapscan automatic feeder scanner that scans
| pages by both sides at the same time.
|
| I bought that in order to OCR books(destroying them cutting
| them with a rotary disk saw) long time ago but I use it
| today for digitalizing all my notes.
|
| If you don't care about destroying your notebooks, it is
| the best solution. I did that with my University notebooks
| because I needed to access them in work after University
| and travel a lot so I don't want the bulkiness of carrying
| around 20 kilos.
|
| No need to flatten, orient, color correct anything, tens of
| pages per minute.
|
| Because of the scanner for my own notes I use single sheets
| of paper and high quality aluminum clipboards and Staedtler
| 432 M color pens that last for more than a year or intense
| work. Way cheaper than a tablet with stylus.
|
| I digitalize old books today that need special care and
| could not be destroyed, archival material like diaries from
| wars. For that I use an array of cameras and a projector
| and sophisticated software to flatten it. But that is
| expensive and needs lots of work.
|
| If you are interested on that, just google DIY book
| scanner, but I recommend the automatic feeder scanner if
| you can.
| ddevault wrote:
| Likewise, but I don't bother scanning it. I just throw it
| away and get another one off the pile. If it's important I'll
| transcribe it in the moment, but it's almost never that
| important.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was in college, I'd write code in spiral notebooks
| (didn't have screen editors then). It's amusing to me to
| see those today.
| jscipione wrote:
| Single subject notebooks got me through college.
| briandoll wrote:
| Absolutely. I did the same for a long time. I work with a
| bunch of companies every year, and having notes organized by
| client has been really helpful. That and a nice workflow to
| send notes/sketches/ideas from the notebook to a client via
| email is pretty nice. But definitely not for everybody.
| echelon wrote:
| Scanning sounds like a pain.
|
| eInk tablets are the future and confer all the advantages of
| pen and paper. Perhaps they need to undergo a few more
| generations of UI improvement, and the eInk company itself
| needs to have its patents expire so the tech isn't held up,
| but the experience is real. It's tactile, vibrant, and
| smooth. Battery life is never an issue, even with wifi.
|
| The advantages of having notes always with you and being able
| to organize into folders and move sheets and figures around
| beats paper a thousand times over. Highlighting a figure,
| dragging it to a better spot, rotating it to an affine angle
| to give it life, and then resizing it to double size is an
| earth shattering experience.
|
| Erasing, also, is finally a first class experience in a way
| it can never be with paper. You can even re-sort lists of
| items with ease.
|
| I'll never go back to pen and paper.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Erasing and dragging are enough to make my reMarkable worth
| it, but for random brainstorming I need real notebooks that
| I actually keep on hand. Never been sure why, something
| about having to physically locate my writing somewhere is
| huge for me.
| imroot wrote:
| I carry both a reMarkable and a Rocketbook with me -- the
| e-ink tablet makes taking notes super easy, but, the
| rocketbook is great for sketching and coming up with arch
| drawings and the like.
|
| I can quickly turn the RocketBook sketches into pdfs and
| send them to the reMarkable for further processing...but,
| I love the flexibility between the two, and honestly, the
| reMarkable fits in the pocket off my RocketBook...so it's
| not difficult to carry both.
|
| The more that I use reMarkable, the more I fall in love
| with it, but, I wish I could find a way to make my own
| templates.
| amingilani wrote:
| Did a search for Rocketbook and found this. Just wanted
| to plug it in here, not paid or anything.
|
| I'm taking a college cryptography class, and I started by
| maintaining notes with LaTeX in Markdown. It didn't help
| much. The moment I started using a Rocketbook was when I
| would _get_ things. I 've reused my book about 5 times
| now in conjunction with work and other classes. I'm on my
| sixth cycle and love it!
| WalterBright wrote:
| If it works for you, great. I've looked at those, and was
| put off by the price, poor contrast, no color, and
| fragility of the machine.
|
| If I need to take notes with me, I'll just snap a photo of
| it with my phone.
|
| My notebook pages are often stained with coffee, and maybe
| a bit of jam and butter :-) I don't worry about spilling
| coffee on it, setting a hot mug on it, setting something
| heavy on it, throwing it in the back of my car. I don't
| worry about cleaning it (I once ruined an ipod by trying to
| clean goop off it with an alcohol swab).
|
| Or maybe I'm just old and Led Zeppelin is still my favorite
| band.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I found that out taking notes in college. It's pretty obvious :-)
| ridaj wrote:
| _Qui scribit bis legit_
| samuell wrote:
| One aspect the article doesn't mention is spatiality, and how
| that aids memorizing.
|
| As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing
| masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined
| 3D world.
|
| This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself
| when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can
| actually remember the exact place along my running route in a
| nearby forest that I was listening to a particular passage in the
| book - and vice versa - going back in memory to a particular
| location immediately makes me start hearing memories from the
| book passages I listened to in that location!
|
| I think this aspect is at play a lot with handwriting as well.
| You are always writing in tangible places inside a notebook,
| while when typing things on the computer there is less of an
| immediate spatial location of each note. In any case that
| location will both be mostly the same for all notes (you sitting
| at the computer), and regarding any virtual spatiality of you
| computer desktop system, that will have a less tangible
| connection with your senses, (although any sense of spatiality
| surely can help a bit).
| bennysonething wrote:
| I've been noticing this over last few years too. Replying a
| podcast and I recall where I was at certain bits.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| During the pandemic, I have been listening to audiobooks while
| I'm programming. I don't really listen to the content, it just
| makes me feel less lonely.
|
| But what I've found is that I end up associating code I'm
| writing to the audiobook I'm listening to at the time. Later
| on, when I work on that bit of code again, I replay the
| audiobook I was listening to when I wrote it, and it helps me
| remember how that code works.
| tzs wrote:
| I suspect that this effect has something to do with why I can
| search a book faster for some non-indexed thing I've previously
| read in it if it is a physical book than I can if it is an
| ebook.
|
| The physical book is 3D. As I progress through the book the
| stack of pages on my left grows and the stack on my right
| shrinks, giving a sense of moving through something physical.
| And as I alternate pages I'm first looking to one side than the
| other.
|
| And so when I'm later wanting to look up something, my memory
| of that thing has associated with it a memory of the feel of
| the book at that point and what side I was looking at, and that
| gives me a sense of where to start looking.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I find I can sometimes remember whether the content I'm after
| was on the left or right page of the open book, which halves
| the area to scan, but has no impact on the number of page-
| turns needed.
| [deleted]
| fatnoah wrote:
| Very interesting! In college, I strongly experienced the
| phenomena of taking a test and not being able to remember the
| exact content, but could accurately remember the layout of the
| page that the data was on.
|
| I also got into the habit of creating 1 or 2 page cheat sheets
| for tests, whether I could use them in the test or not, and the
| spatial organization of the data seemed to correlate very
| directly with my ability to process and absorb the data.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Really interesting to hear others had this experience as
| well. During tests, I would routinely see an image of sorts
| of the page in my head, with the words or equations I needed
| blurred out.
|
| Now that I think about, no clue why I assumed that was unique
| to me.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Yes! Same thing for me. I'm a bit dyslexic so reading things
| never goes well. But I could always remember where on the
| page the equations were in the textbooks. So during a test,
| I'd picture the equations and where they were and the write
| them down so that I could use them.
| samuell wrote:
| Thanks! Interesting observation about the layout!
|
| Indeed, I also feel my most effective notes are the ones
| where I get a little creative with the layout, placing things
| out thoughtfully.
|
| (Also, going back and filling in with a lot of balloons with
| thoughts afterwards etc, to make each page a little
| customized).
| CodeIsTheEnd wrote:
| I had a similar experience in high school with Spanish
| vocabulary tests. I could remember where the word was on the
| page, but not the translation.
|
| At the time I perceived using the location as a crutch, so I
| made photocopies of the pages, cut them into the separate
| columns, then taped them together to make one very long and
| skinny list of words. I would then roll it up into a small
| scroll, little bigger than a tube of chapstick. Maybe the
| spatial location was a learning aid, and this actually made
| it harder to learn words, but it did make it much easier to
| discreetly study during other classes, so it was probably a
| net win overall.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| One outcome of that is vicious hier(5) wars - everyone has a
| particular hierarchy of folders that "makes obvious sense" to
| them, mostly I suspect because of spatiality.
|
| It would be like someone moving the rooms in your house.
| beforeolives wrote:
| > I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my
| running route in a nearby forest that I was listening to a
| particular passage in the book - and vice versa
|
| I've experienced the same thing. I sometimes relisten to
| podcasts and specific lines in the podcast bring back the place
| where I was physically when I heard the line for the first
| time. Like "Oh I was walking down this part of that street
| around 7pm 2 years ago when I heard this for the first time". I
| don't think that I have experienced it in reverse though.
| caddemon wrote:
| That's pretty cool actually, I don't visualize things much
| and I've only experienced it in the reverse direction, and
| another commenter above mentioned something similar. Do you
| feel you are more likely to visualize or internally verbalize
| things (or perhaps both are relatively balanced)?
| beforeolives wrote:
| I can't visualise at all and I don't know if that's
| aphantasia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) or
| that I perceive things in the same way as most people but
| we use different words to describe what is happening.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Spatiality, that's it. It really seems to make a tremendous
| difference for me to know _where_ something is written down,
| and sometimes even remembering doing it. I always felt that
| doing it on a computer was indeed too abstract, losing that
| spatiality.
|
| I also agree with the audiobook thing. For example, I recently
| thought back to a passage in an audiobook I enjoyed... and my
| mind instantly visualized how I was standing in front of the
| washing machine, doing laundry, while I listened to it.
|
| A weird thing though is that some concepts and topics in my
| mind bring up images of locations that have nothing to do with
| the topic itself, and as far as I can tell don't match up in
| time. For example, one recent rather abstract concept is
| associated with the parking lot of my old school seen from a
| certain angle--many many years earlier.
|
| I imagine that in those cases I might have been thinking about
| both the old school and the abstract concept at somewhat the
| same time, and they got associated from then on.
| slx26 wrote:
| Though I think it's an even more general mechanism of
| _association_. And places might also be easy to remember
| because they also contain many elements we can associate. You
| can call it the connectedness of a memory. You can also try
| to repeatedly explain to others something you want to
| remember or whatever.
| samuell wrote:
| Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot
| for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial
| connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our
| brains particularly well.
| jfoutz wrote:
| I wish I could find the reference, there's an old Roman
| (Greek? likely older?) rhetorical trick to public speaking.
|
| The speech flows as you invite people to your home, and walk
| them through it. So, the front door is like the greeting,
| welcoming guests into your home. The picture in the front
| room is the first point, the couch is the next point. the
| dining room table is the next point. etc.
|
| practice the speech by looking at each item you select, and
| mapping it to the point.
|
| It's pretty amazing.
|
| Everyone knows what their living space is like, and hopefully
| it's a safe comfortable space. Anyone can talk for a long
| time without notes. The memory of home is emotionally
| calming. Inviting listeners in gives a warmth that's hard to
| explain.
|
| I mean, rehearsing helps a lot too, but mapping talking
| points to objects in the home is an amazing trick.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Documented in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates
|
| https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.h
| t...
| timcameron wrote:
| I have heard the trick commonly referred to as 'memory
| palace' or 'method of loci'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
| heronalps wrote:
| The seemingly "disconnection" between the concept and spatial
| memory happens to me a lot either in day time or dream. Most
| of the scenes occurred in my childhood, and I feel my
| emotions, i.e. happiness, somber, anger, are associated with
| them, which pop up when those feelings struck.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| I have aphantasia (i.e. no visual imagination). It hadn't
| occurred to me that people could use theirs to help them
| memorize things...
| tartoran wrote:
| I think I have aphantasia to some degree and have experienced
| what the OP is mentioning. Also handwriting is a good aid for
| me to remember things, particularly if it is written by hand.
| I don't need to review the notes but the act of putting it
| down sticks a bit better. I will also have to add that my
| memory is better at concepts and abstract things but not so
| good at details.
| caddemon wrote:
| The handwriting thing makes sense, since I don't think
| aphantasia necessarily affects motor memory.
| Drawing/writing by hand could actually be more important
| for people with aphantasia in that case, since it could
| provide a motor memory that directly corresponds to
| something visual.
|
| Also I think at the core of the "visualizing things in
| different parts of space" memory trick is just making good
| associations. If you're much better at verbal/internal
| monologue type of thinking you could still do something
| pretty similar, by mapping the things to memorize into a
| story.
|
| Granted certain things are easier to map to a visual space
| than to language, but that's true in the other direction
| too. Anecdotally it takes a lot of effort for me to
| visualize things and I barely do it naturally, but I seem
| to have a much stronger internal monologue and a better
| memory for things people say than most of my friends. I
| wouldn't be surprised if poor visualizing abilities during
| development could strengthen verbal reasoning a bit like
| how blind people have other senses heightened.
|
| I really hope research into aphantasia will become more
| commonplace, but a lot of it is speculation for now
| unfortunately.
| hypersoar wrote:
| I have very little visual imagination and have experienced
| the audiobook/running thing a lot, but only in one direction.
| Running by the same place will often make me think of
| something I heard there, but thinking about something I heard
| doesn't bring back the place.
| JshWright wrote:
| Yeah, I am familiar with this technique, and have tried using
| it in the past (as my "spatial" memory is very good, despite
| a total lack of visual imagination), but I've never been
| successful.
| caddemon wrote:
| Interesting, how do you experience spatial memories? Is it
| somehow encoded verbally, or via somatosensation? Or does
| it feel completely subconscious, like a Pavlovian reaction?
| Or something else?
|
| I am bad at visualizing things from what I can subjectively
| tell, but as far as memory is concerned it's mainly the
| spatial memory tests where I perform poorly. So it's hard
| for me to imagine what recalling spatial memories is like,
| besides the assumption that people can probably visualize
| them.
| JshWright wrote:
| It's kind of (but not exactly) like proprioception. Close
| your eyes and hold your hand out. Even without visualing
| (because we can't...), you know "where" it is. It feels a
| lot like that. I just have a good sense of where things
| are relative to me and each other.
| sethammons wrote:
| Key quote:
|
| > This cognitive effort of condensing and translating into your
| own words is what facilitates learning. Which is why you could
| still do this with typing, but it's easy to avoid the cognitive
| effort of translating and condensing (and we tend toward
| cognitive laziness) and just type it verbatim because you can
| keep up.
|
| When I type notes (all the way back to college), it is in one
| ear, out the other (onto the page). The act of physically writing
| it down, and potentially a second pass to clean up the notes, is
| almost all I ever need to get something into working memory. Back
| in college, the third time I would look at my notes would be the
| morning of the test where I would just glance through them.
| Seeing the general shape of the text was often enough to trigger
| the recall.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I find hand written lists are good for focusing, but if I'm in a
| store hours later shopping for a group of disparate objects (10
| ft ladder, size 5 2.5 inch screws, plant pot etc etc) I find a
| digital list invaluable because I can remove the items I have got
| so far leaving a shorter list. I've found that unless I strike
| out items I somehow miss something on a long list. I know you can
| do this with a pen too but I've gone from wunderlist to the
| various google phone list tools and find them v useful
| bradstewart wrote:
| Yea I actually draw little squares next to my todo items, and
| then fill them in when I complete the task. For some reason, I
| find that way easier to parse than a bunch of scratched out
| words.
|
| I also do that in my engineering notebooks--it makes to-dos
| stand out more from the rest of my notes.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Good idea, I'll remember that for the occasions when I do
| have a pen & paper list!
| Imnimo wrote:
| >All of this makes me believe we need more time for our brains to
| adapt to writing on glass, or technology needs to advance enough
| so that writing on tablets feels like writing in a notebook.
|
| This strikes me as implausible. Did the earliest paper-writers
| (or parchment writers) not get the same benefit because their
| brains were adapted for cuneiform on clay tablets?
| doliveira wrote:
| I don't even ever read back what I wrote. But I find I need to
| write down something to actually remember it.
|
| So it does fit with my experience.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Our biology teacher told us to not bring the text book. He wrote
| and drew everything on the blackboard, and we had to copy it by
| writing it down.
|
| Never had to learn anythings, and I still remember 90% of it,
| even visually.
|
| Remember that the great ones wrote a lot.
| tombert wrote:
| Bit of a life-hack I picked up awhile ago is to "write the notes
| by hand, then type them out later".
|
| This has a few advantages. First, you basically get all the
| benefits listed in this article. Second, you get the advantage of
| repetition, and possibly correcting errors in your handwritten
| notes. Last, you have pretty notes to read off of later if you
| need to study for something, which is useful.
| caddemon wrote:
| Yeah I do this for anything that's both important and
| complicated - it can be a slow process for me, but when typing
| things up I'll usually end up further refining my thoughts and
| coming up with new ideas, in addition to the benefits you
| mentioned.
|
| Although my handwriting is also hilariously bad, so it's kind
| of necessary for anything I anticipate needing to closely
| review in the future.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I disagree. Writing is helpful for thinking things through, but
| the writing itself doesn't do anything. I used to take a lot of
| notes to remember things and it can just act as an excuse to not
| think hard. It's the hard thought and periodic review that
| cements things
| anyfoo wrote:
| As I elaborated in another comment, not just the act of writing
| things down, but the actual very visual recollection of how I
| wrote it down and where on the page I did helps a lot. I don't
| know why it works that way, but it definitely does.
| _rpd wrote:
| Yeah, the title should be "Handwriting helps particular kinds
| of people remember particular kinds of things"
| anyfoo wrote:
| There was a somewhat recent astonishing revelation that a lot
| of people are apparently unable to visualize things in their
| mind (which was interesting to both groups in different ways
| respectively), so I bet that if you don't visualize things in
| your mind, it won't help much with recollection.
| caddemon wrote:
| I think it could depend a lot on how strong the person's
| other modalities of memory/imagination are. Some people
| commenting above mentioned they have good spatial memory
| despite poor ability to visualize, but others are bad at
| both of those. I could imagine handwriting having big
| benefits over typing for someone that has a strong
| sensorimotor memory for example, even if they can't
| visualize much.
|
| Personally I don't have much visualization ability, and I
| don't think note taking helps me at all in remembering
| things that can be easily verbally encoded, for example a
| history class. But taking notes in certain college math
| courses seemed to make a big difference, even when I never
| looked at them again.
|
| I'm not sure whether it's directly a memory thing (perhaps
| drawing stuff by hand could subconsciously affect recall),
| or that I use my own shitty drawings as a weak substitute
| for visualization thereby making it easier for me to
| conceptualize highly spatial topics. But in any event I
| think the subject matter could also be a mediating factor.
|
| Tangentially related, but this is why I really appreciate
| video recorded lectures, being able to pause for a few
| minutes to work through or look up visual demonstrations is
| so much more efficient than trying to go back and make
| sense of everything afterwards.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I think that Galton figured that one out at some point in
| the 1800s, no? There's a huge amount of variation in how
| precise your mind's eye is, from absolutely nothing to
| vague impressions to photo-real images.
| caddemon wrote:
| IIRC it was dismissed by most people at the time though.
| I've only started to hear it discussed by people in
| psych/neuro academic departments in the last few years.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| I find typing perfectly adequate for _remembering_ things - in
| school if I was copying out notes I did just as well typing as
| handwritten, and could do it faster (and so get more repetition
| in) on a computer. Both blew away just reading or listening
| passively.
|
| However, for brainstorming or planning, which is a lot of what
| this article is talking about, the unbounded spatial component of
| paper (or a drawing app with stylus) is much better for me than
| the constrained nature of a word processor. Something like
| graphviz isn't bad for certain types of things, but anything that
| relies on mouse-based selection and dragging of things breaks my
| flow in a way that jotting a new note off to the edge of an open
| paper doesn't.
| igammarays wrote:
| The Brain That Changes Itself. Life changing book. One of the
| surprising studies there shows how kids with all kinds of
| learning disabilities can be radically transformed just by being
| given cursive handwriting exercises. Brain development and
| activation under handwriting is measurable, and very different
| from typing or even printing.
| krrrh wrote:
| One thing that stuck with me from that book was the notion that
| the fine motor control gained through the rote learning of
| handwriting might carry over into verbal fluency. iirc it was a
| speculative point in the book, and I wonder if that has been
| any research into it since then. It partly inspired me to
| relearn cursive as an adult using the Getty-Dubay italic.
|
| https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/
| pgcm1 wrote:
| Subscribe here: ProductiveGrowth.substack.com
| abduhl wrote:
| I think this post just barely misses the main reason which, in my
| opinion, makes writing a better medium for remembering. They
| mention that typing is faster and easier than writing but I think
| the real reason this impacts memory is because you have to reduce
| things into their smallest form in order to keep up (with the
| person speaking or your own thoughts). This act of condensing
| makes you internalize the words into concepts, and concepts are
| easier to recall.
| dave_sid wrote:
| I handwrite my todo list at the start of everyday and scribble
| notes down when I'm in meetings and almost never look at them
| again. It definitely helps solidify things in my head for
| whatever reason. I'm not uptight or anything, it just seems to
| help me.
| alex_c wrote:
| This is me. I've tried various note taking apps but I never
| stick with them for more than a few days.
|
| My notebook is everything. If I don't have it for any reason
| (most often: it ran out and need to buy a new one) my
| productivity actually takes a big hit. Basically: if I don't
| write it down, I probably won't get it done.
| pgcm1 wrote:
| I never knew why I unconsciously chose analog over digital in
| those cases, but it turns out there's a scientific explanation.
| When we write, we make our brains go through an abstraction
| process - separating something from a whole to analyze it by
| itself.- According to neurologist Audrey Van Der Meer, "It seems
| that keyboards and pens bring into play different underlying
| neurological processes. This may not be surprising since
| handwriting/drawing is a complex task that requires the
| integration of various skills."
|
| I wrote a full article about it in the link above.
| com2kid wrote:
| Every time this topic comes up, I am curious to see a cross-
| generational study.
|
| I'd also be interested in seeing the result of taking notes
| with a less linear note taking tool, such as OneNote and its
| infinite canvas, compared to pure linear note taking.
|
| Now for most math classes, and other subjects that involve lots
| of diagrams, hand writing (digital or analog) is better!
| (Ignoring the people who are so good at LaTeX they can do
| complex math equations)
|
| IMHO the largest issue with modern teaching is the use of
| slides. I was going to college just as the transition to
| PowerPoint was happening, and wow was the degradation in
| quality of teaching noticeable.
|
| One of my profs, whose class I had a low opinion of, used
| slides for all his lectures. One day the projector broke down
| and he had to teach on the chalk board. It was amazing! The
| quality of his lecture improved dramatically when he was able
| to go back and make changes to past diagrams, or change
| examples on the fly to dive deeper into something the students
| had difficulty grasping.
|
| The other problem with PowerPoint is that it goes by faster
| than students can take notes! If the prof and the students are
| both writing notes, they are on (mostly) equal ground, ignoring
| that profs have decades of experience writing quickly.
| krrrh wrote:
| There was also the transitionary period where teachers and
| profs would print slides onto transparencies and project
| those onto a screen. The overhead projectors sometimes had a
| roll of plastic that they could write on with a felt marker
| either over the slides or as a blank canvas. A bit of
| googling reveals that many primary schools still use these,
| and not all have transitioned to "smart boards".
|
| It was a good trade off, and it's kind of surprising that the
| rise of tablets and styluses hasn't seen this hybrid model
| return.
| asdff wrote:
| In the 2010s my organic chemistry professor would use one
| of those projectors and a sheet of blank printer paper, and
| would just write out chemical formulas all class. We
| basically all took notes together along with the professor
| each lecture, which was great because that meant he could
| never speed up too much since he had to spend time writing
| everything down, too. Then everything would go up online
| afterwards if you needed to refer to the professors notes
| from that day.
| mikestew wrote:
| It's been over 15 years since I was scribbling on
| PowerPoint slides while my Tablet PC was hooked to the
| projector. I'll ask my spouse if her MS Surface supports
| such functionality, because I found it pretty darned handy
| at the time.
|
| I have little need for such a feature anymore, so I don't
| know if an iPad Pro w/stylus can do that with Keynote (not
| without looking it up).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My own experience in school lines up with what you described.
| There's something about having to teach 'manually?' that
| gives more energy to the lecture.
| lightlyused wrote:
| For me it does in a way, but I still need to read my notes while
| the details are still fresh in my mind. The main reason is I'm a
| sloppy writer and I might not be able to make out my mess if I
| haven't reviewed it enough. Also, for small things like
| passwords, saying them 10 times helps me get over 'what was that
| again' hump.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| what the heck is "digital handwriting"?
| reificator wrote:
| Presumably using something like an active stylus on a tablet?
|
| https://www.trustedreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2...
| [1]:
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