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Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

productivegrowth.substack.com

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Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#81

Post by WalterBright »

echelon wrote: post #67
WalterBright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take notes in a $.79 spiral paper notebook. When it fills up, I just scan it and get another one.

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 yo…

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.

(Scanning a hundred pages or so takes just a few minutes.)

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#82

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #72
samuell wrote: post #16

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…

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 on…

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#83

Post by bumbada »

SiVal wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take notes in a $.79 spiral paper notebook. When it fills up, I just scan it and get another one.

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 t…

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.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#85

Post by wombatmobile »

jfoutz wrote: post #64
anyfoo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 look…

Documented in The Art of Memory by Frances Yates

https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Art_Of_Memory.ht...

Yates' book is a scholarly treatment of memory systems. She is an historian who waded into the subject matter, but isn't a mnemonic practitioner. For a practical treatment, see Memory Craft by the science writer and memory champion, Lynne Kelly.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/memory-craft-lynne-kelly/book/9...

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#86

Post by caddemon »

anyfoo wrote: post #26
_rpd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the title should be "Handwriting helps particular kinds of people remember particular kinds of things"

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.

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.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#87

Post by caddemon »

ravi-delia wrote: post #75
anyfoo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#88

Post by beforeolives »

caddemon wrote: post #74
beforeolives wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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)?

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.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#89

Post by base698 »

I always assumed this is because of the extra brain power used for your hands. When you write the tactile sensation, the pressure, the texture all activate different parts of your brain. My assumption was more activation means more opportunity for memorization.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#90

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #72
samuell wrote: post #16

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…

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 on…

[deleted]
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