Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#181

Post by Broken_Hippo » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

vogt wrote: post #148

I'd be curious if anyone had good advice on how to improve your handwriting ability well into adulthood (I'm 35). My penmanship was so bad in grade school that I attended special education classes to improve it, but it still was and remains horrible. This is a source of insecurity for me and since I've always been glued to a keyboard it has been easy to handwave away as "screw this, the world is all typing-based anyh…

Honestly, handwriting is mostly just practice, kind of like art. The exceptions are generally medical sorts of things (including stuff like dyslexia).

In that vein: Have you tried learning calligraphy? If you use the more traditional nib shapes (even if using a fountain pen), you'll likely form letters in a different manner than with a ball point pen. You can move from more traditional stuff to things that look like print or cursive that you like. And then it is just practice.

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#182

Post by randomdata » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 8:53 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #101

headbee wrote: post #4

I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situations. In college, I needed to be able to recall all of the information I had ingested: it was low-write, high-read. In the workplace, there's much more information, but I'm unlikely to need most of it: it's high-write, low-read. I need to be able to reference t…

I still do it and it has worked for me from being an individual contributor, to leading a team, to leading a part of the org that has a tree of ~50 people across multiple contexts. The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to wri…

> if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it.

I wonder that myself. Earlier in my career, when the internet wasn't so great, we had to rely on textual communication for everything. This left the ideal 'paper' trail to look back on for reference. Everything well communicated, everything perfectly retained. It was unbelievably efficient.

Now that the technology has improved, easily transmitting voice and even video, there is a curious push in that direction. Communication quality has declined dramatically as you now have to suffer through a bumbling stream of consciousness instead of words someone put effort into writing, which adds significantly more human time involvement to get a point across, and once spoken the information is automatically lost save even more human best effort to retain what can and never perfectly so.

I likely shiny newfangled tech as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place. Why we stopped using what worked best boggles the mind.

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#183

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

vogt wrote: post #148

I'd be curious if anyone had good advice on how to improve your handwriting ability well into adulthood (I'm 35). My penmanship was so bad in grade school that I attended special education classes to improve it, but it still was and remains horrible. This is a source of insecurity for me and since I've always been glued to a keyboard it has been easy to handwave away as "screw this, the world is all typing-based anyh…

[deleted]

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#184

Post by klabb3 » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

noNothing wrote: post #31

FOr me, if I write it down I will remember it and do not need to refer to my notes. But if I don't write it down I am likely to forget. So I did some testing and found that it isn't only the act of writing that helps me, it is quickly looking at what I have written. I think, for me, writing in my own words, and then reinforcing by going over what I have written, is the secret to remembering things. As far as handwrit…

> But if I don't write it down I am likely to forget.

Anecdotally, I have probably 4-5 full note books of scribbles and sketches as part of my project. It's not meant to look good or be finished thoughts, and I rarely look at old notes. So for me, the primary purpose is enriching the thinking process, so it's closer to the next step – prototyping. This lets me weed out flawed ideas earlier, so when I actually build something, I have higher confidence it'll work well.

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#185

Post by CrypticShift » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

headbee wrote: post #4

I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situations. In college, I needed to be able to recall all of the information I had ingested: it was low-write, high-read. In the workplace, there's much more information, but I'm unlikely to need most of it: it's high-write, low-read. I need to be able to reference t…

Yes! these read/write, and reference/recall ratios are good measures of how we should do things. the article case is only valid for a certain range.

Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least)

1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them).

2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question.

[1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#186

Post by amp108 » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #130

Never. I had a horrible manager who just wrote a list of vague complaints in his crap hand writing. Later on he just took a picture of his notes, I swear the worst hand writing I've ever seen, and emailed it to me. As a bonus this company expected employees to work multiple nights, and even though some of the directors did, my manager never did so. Now change the title to personal information, like for example when y…

If you're wondering why your comment is so lowly rated, I suggest you actually read the linked article before commenting on it. Or rather, before commenting on a scenario that has nothing to do with it.

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#187

Post by v-erne » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

vogt wrote: post #148

I'd be curious if anyone had good advice on how to improve your handwriting ability well into adulthood (I'm 35). My penmanship was so bad in grade school that I attended special education classes to improve it, but it still was and remains horrible. This is a source of insecurity for me and since I've always been glued to a keyboard it has been easy to handwave away as "screw this, the world is all typing-based anyh…

As otheres have said - just sit down and write. But sometimes if you do not feel like writing - try to do at least some light drawing exercises (like drawing small straight line thousend times over, or small circles or other geometrical shapes). I used to do this because I wanted to draw better but in the meantime my handwriting got legible by accident.

It appears that in reality writing is nothing more than drawing and same rules apply. The secret is hand-eye coordination (hence simple shapes), consistency (hence thousend times over and then thousend more) and the ability to observe subject (this is not so important at first with writing, but if you want to have really nice style, it can be useful).

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#188

Post by iquerno » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

headbee wrote: post #4

I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situations. In college, I needed to be able to recall all of the information I had ingested: it was low-write, high-read. In the workplace, there's much more information, but I'm unlikely to need most of it: it's high-write, low-read. I need to be able to reference t…

a notebook is a great column oriented database for when you cannot bring technology with you. I don't think there is any useful scenario for one otherwise

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#189

Post by gjulianm » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #82

Yup. The way to attend a lecture is to leave your laptop behind. Take a cheap spiral notebook and a couple colored pens. Take notes. Once the notebook is filled (or the semester is over) scan the pages, toss the notebook, and buy a fresh one for the next semester. It works, from much personal experience You're welcome! 1. yes, sometimes I fall behind the lecturer taking notes, which can be a bit frustrating 2. while…

The problem with that is working with the notes later. My method of learning included reorganizing, rewriting, extending notes because it’s very rare that you’re able to write things down properly on the go and fill in the gaps.

That’s very unreasonable to do in written notes, it ends up a complete mess and takes a lot of time.

Re: Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

#190

Post by thethirdone » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #61

crazygringo wrote: post #35

I just want to add a gigantic caveat: NOT FOR EVERYBODY. I know a lot of people who insist writing by hand helps them. But I also know it's TERRIBLE for me personally. The article claims: > Writing by hand on paper creates a tactile, personalized experience... The complex experience of hand writing on paper contains a multitude of variable elements: the creativity of an individual’s written representation of language…

I think the slower, deliberate nature is the point here. The article does at least attempt to cite some research rather than just relying on anecdote.

The research cited does not make any statements about improved recall of facts based on note taking (handwritten vs typed). I have found EEG studies [0] that do not actually measure a learning outcome, studies on letter recognition [1], and calendar apps vs physical calendar [2].

Citing studies which do not prove the thesis is actually worse than citing nothing at all. The fact that there is not a cited study showing clear memorization outcomes of typing vs handwriting, I would actually conclude the opposite of what the article is trying to say.

More generally I think the idea that "The article does at least attempt to cite some research" is very problematic if the cited papers don't actually show what the article is stating.

[0]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...

[2]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210319080820.h...