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I totally get this. If I need to focus and truly understand something, there is no replacement for writing. Keyboards are fast, but the interaction patterns fr

I totally get this. If I need to focus and truly understand something, there is no replacement for writing. Keyboards are fast, but the interaction patterns frequently devolve to almost squirrely behaviour. rapid movements, editing, and fleeting thoughts. It encourages you to move from one thought to the next as quickly as possible. Our MODE of measurement when typing is measured in WPM--how quickly you can output text. Writing... is not that. Yes, you can rush. But it's slower, and I find that it helps me stay on single lines of thought. There's no manic jumping around, edit here, edit there. You can write the words, slowly even, and ruminate in their meaning. Computers are unparalleled for editing, but I just don't find it as good of a medium for creating things that require large spurts of unbroken thought. And it's not that you CAN'T produce good, creative, well-thought through things behind a keyboard (we all do it to some extent every day), it's just not _as good_ of a medium for it.

ozzythecat 5y ago
> Writing... is not that. Yes, you can rush. But it's slower, and I find that it helps me stay on single lines of thought. There's no manic jumping around, edit here, edit there. You can write the words, slowly even, and ruminate in their meaning. I really like what you’ve said here. This rings true for me as well. For years I was on a hunt for a better note taking app. I tried everything from a basic Mac notes app to Sublime Text to more niche tools like Omnifocus. Every time I ended up writing out the most critical notes by hand in a spiral notebook because it was more effective for me personally to retain that information.
gowld 5y ago
OTOH, of you do need to keep up (with a lecture, for example), handwriting hurts because you don't have time to finish.
- cguess 5y ago
  Learn some form of shorthand, and learn how to summarize on the go. Writing down word-for-word what a professor is saying is not going to work well. For that, bring a tape recorder (or an iPhone if you want to kill your battery) and retake your notes later when you can pause, rewind, etc.
  - zihotki 5y ago
    And then you still will spread your focus. You'll have to summarize in paralel with trying to understand a professor. That doesn't work well and very tiresome. Why not to watch a recording of a lecture in the first place and pause when you need to think?
  - Multicomp 5y ago
    I was and am always too lazy to go back after the recording. But I found that for me, my half-learned dialect of Teeline shorthand is enough for me to keep up with speakers...when they are not speaking especially fast. I'd speed up more if I got used to cutting out vowels and doing phonetic spellings and brief forms like the Teeline Fast book says to do, but like the sibling comment says, that can slow me down even more as I try to figure out what is being said -> how to make it phonetic -> oh crap he's moved on, lets jump back to the newest offset. I'd do Gregg shorthand but with my handwriting being so poor as is and the apparent risk that the writing can be ambiguous later, I went with a phonetic shorthand. Works for my 'threat model', write it down now, review now or in 10 years and you can translate it back.
- stevesimmons 5y ago
  This will get easier if you summarise the main points, write quicker (a skill you can practice), and do it with minimal looking down at your page.
  - rmetzler 5y ago
    There are also lots of techniques to turn notes on paper into something else than a stream of words. For example you could create mind maps, tables, diagrams. From my personal experience I also found I remembered hand written notes much better than notes I took on the laptop. While learning for tests at university I made it a point to write down the most important points from handouts into s ring book in order to better memorize the content.
  - DelightOne 5y ago
    How do you summarize when you don't know what the main and what the probably unimportant point is?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yodelshady 5y ago
  It normally takes me about 2-3 hours to get through a one-hour online lecture. But I actually do get through them. As an undergrad, with in-person lectures, I learnt maybe 50% of the content with a good lecturer. 30% with a bad one. Well worth the change.
pessimizer 5y ago
I don't think the speed matters as much as that drawing words cements them more solidly in the mind than touching them. So more an imbalance in process difficulty than speed. The same effect happens in note-taking. I almost never review my handwritten notes, but the act of writing them is probably why I don't have to review them. When I'm recalling information, I frequently remember where and how on the piece of paper I wrote it.
kstrauser 5y ago
iA Writer in typewriter focus mode is great for me this way. It encourages me to treat a document as append-only until I'm completely finished writing it.

ozzythecat 5y ago

> Writing... is not that. Yes, you can rush. But it's slower, and I find that it helps me stay on single lines of thought. There's no manic jumping around, edit here, edit there. You can write the words, slowly even, and ruminate in their meaning. I really like what you’ve said here. This rings true for me as well. For years I was on a hunt for a better note taking app. I tried everything from a basic Mac notes app to Sublime Text to more niche tools like Omnifocus. Every time I ended up writing out the most critical notes by hand in a spiral notebook because it was more effective for me personally to retain that information.

gowld 5y ago

OTOH, of you do need to keep up (with a lecture, for example), handwriting hurts because you don't have time to finish.

cguess 5y ago
Learn some form of shorthand, and learn how to summarize on the go. Writing down word-for-word what a professor is saying is not going to work well. For that, bring a tape recorder (or an iPhone if you want to kill your battery) and retake your notes later when you can pause, rewind, etc.
- zihotki 5y ago
  And then you still will spread your focus. You'll have to summarize in paralel with trying to understand a professor. That doesn't work well and very tiresome. Why not to watch a recording of a lecture in the first place and pause when you need to think?
- Multicomp 5y ago
  I was and am always too lazy to go back after the recording. But I found that for me, my half-learned dialect of Teeline shorthand is enough for me to keep up with speakers...when they are not speaking especially fast. I'd speed up more if I got used to cutting out vowels and doing phonetic spellings and brief forms like the Teeline Fast book says to do, but like the sibling comment says, that can slow me down even more as I try to figure out what is being said -> how to make it phonetic -> oh crap he's moved on, lets jump back to the newest offset. I'd do Gregg shorthand but with my handwriting being so poor as is and the apparent risk that the writing can be ambiguous later, I went with a phonetic shorthand. Works for my 'threat model', write it down now, review now or in 10 years and you can translate it back.
stevesimmons 5y ago
This will get easier if you summarise the main points, write quicker (a skill you can practice), and do it with minimal looking down at your page.
- rmetzler 5y ago
  There are also lots of techniques to turn notes on paper into something else than a stream of words. For example you could create mind maps, tables, diagrams. From my personal experience I also found I remembered hand written notes much better than notes I took on the laptop. While learning for tests at university I made it a point to write down the most important points from handouts into s ring book in order to better memorize the content.
- DelightOne 5y ago
  How do you summarize when you don't know what the main and what the probably unimportant point is?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yodelshady 5y ago
It normally takes me about 2-3 hours to get through a one-hour online lecture. But I actually do get through them. As an undergrad, with in-person lectures, I learnt maybe 50% of the content with a good lecturer. 30% with a bad one. Well worth the change.

pessimizer 5y ago

I don't think the speed matters as much as that drawing words cements them more solidly in the mind than touching them. So more an imbalance in process difficulty than speed. The same effect happens in note-taking. I almost never review my handwritten notes, but the act of writing them is probably why I don't have to review them. When I'm recalling information, I frequently remember where and how on the piece of paper I wrote it.

kstrauser 5y ago

iA Writer in typewriter focus mode is great for me this way. It encourages me to treat a document as append-only until I'm completely finished writing it.