4 ms·

The sciencey side of this is that writing stuff down boosts memory, retention and learning, even if you immediately throw away what you wrote. Here's one of th

The sciencey side of this is that writing stuff down boosts memory, retention and learning, even if you immediately throw away what you wrote. Here's one of the hundreds of articles about this, it's a very well documented phenomenon https://www.newscientist.com/article/2414241-writing-things-down-may-help-you-remember-information-more-than-typing/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2414241-writing-things-... Writing by hand also has a greater effect than typing because it engages more of the senses and more of the brain, in particular the motor cortex. I keep telling myself that this would all make a great excuse to get a Moleskine, but handwriting just isn't a part of my workflow. Typing copious amounts of stuff into text buffers and then transforming it is, especially now that we have LLMs. If my brain is totally non-functional I simply start typing barely intelligible phrases into a text editor until it wakes up, then I go back and edit/refactor/clean up, and frequently something comes out of this that looks like a vague outline of an email or piece of code I need to write that day. Or at least a todo list. Then we're off to the races doing actual work. Most of the initial doodling is destroyed. Handwriting does aid retention though.

bee_rider 1y ago
Unscientifically I always assumed that the pencil-and-paper was not really the important part, just the ritual of memorization that modern people have from however many years of schooling. I assumed the important part was the ritual. I guess we have a large enough population of people who’ve always taken notes on their computers that a natural experiment could have occurred. But I wonder about the crosstabs—computers can be very distracting so I wonder if people who prefer them to notebooks will also just tend to be more distracted.
thfuran 1y ago
My handwriting was terrible all throughout school, and then I avoided it pretty much entirely for a decade or two. I'm not sure what's left can really be called handwriting. I guess maybe it still works to help recall, but it's barely useful as reference.
- tailspin2019 1y ago
  FWIW My handwriting (and the experience of writing) improved quite a bit when I switched to fountain pens. I always used to find writing a bit uncomfortable physically, and difficult mentally (due to ADHD) but fountain pens improved the experience somewhat. You don’t need so much force to be applied to the pen compared to other writing instruments and the more comfortable writing experience helped my ADHD brain better tolerate it to.

bee_rider 1y ago

Unscientifically I always assumed that the pencil-and-paper was not really the important part, just the ritual of memorization that modern people have from however many years of schooling. I assumed the important part was the ritual. I guess we have a large enough population of people who’ve always taken notes on their computers that a natural experiment could have occurred. But I wonder about the crosstabs—computers can be very distracting so I wonder if people who prefer them to notebooks will also just tend to be more distracted.

thfuran 1y ago

My handwriting was terrible all throughout school, and then I avoided it pretty much entirely for a decade or two. I'm not sure what's left can really be called handwriting. I guess maybe it still works to help recall, but it's barely useful as reference.

tailspin2019 1y ago
FWIW My handwriting (and the experience of writing) improved quite a bit when I switched to fountain pens. I always used to find writing a bit uncomfortable physically, and difficult mentally (due to ADHD) but fountain pens improved the experience somewhat. You don’t need so much force to be applied to the pen compared to other writing instruments and the more comfortable writing experience helped my ADHD brain better tolerate it to.