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.
Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
31–40 of 152 posts
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#32One 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…
I have aphantasia (i.e. no visual imagination). It hadn't occurred to me that people could use theirs to help them memorize things...
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#33maybe
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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#34I 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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#35One 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…
I have aphantasia (i.e. no visual imagination). It hadn't occurred to me that people could use theirs to help them memorize things...
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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#36One 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…
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 t…
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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#37Qui scribit bis legit
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#38I 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 g…
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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#39The 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.
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.
Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
#40>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?