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Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information

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

#221

Post by makeitdouble »

I was hoping the cited studies weren’t about the same rehashed students taking notes ones…there was a most recent one [0], but guess what ? it’s about volunteer students from the University of Tokyo.

On one hand I believe some people will remember things better when using the media they’ve used for almost their entire life (to note: japanese school is more reliant on paper and writing than most western countries to my knowledge), so I totally understand the results.

On the other I’m surprised we see no actually serious, wildly targeted research that also touches on working people, like sales fleet who actually make a living following calendar appointments. With nothing coming out from outside of the “kids learning” setting, it kinda feels like the reality is way more complex than “hand writing is better”

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

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

#222

Post by karmakaze »

moth-fuzz wrote: post #108

I'm going to challenge the question - if I've got something written down, why would I need to memorize it? Maybe in school where closed-notes tests are a thing, sure, but nowhere in the 'real-world' tests one's ability to memorize in the strict sense. I write things down for a reason and that reason is not just accessory to memorizing it. I put things on paper precisely so I don't have to put them in my brain. To kee…

My andecdata-points are (1) As soon as I make a shopping or to do list, I promptly forget the items on the list as that responsibility has been delegated to the piece of paper which I can rarely later find, and (2) I never took notes in class and instead payed good attention in (most) of my classes connecting the dots so that they fit and made sense to me in some way rather than rote memorization. I was usually slower at solving problems as I would often start closer to first principles but was usually able to get to the answer soon enough. Some classes didn't lend themselves to this form of learning requiring memorization of tricks or unexplained long formulas to get answers fast enough or at all--I didn't like those ones.

Where I find this method problematic is professionally: documentation scales well and I don't know if/where there's a limit to when it stops paying off.

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

#223

Post by chefandy »

brailsafe wrote: post #218
chefandy wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't qualifying categorizing these things, I just gave a list of things that can cause difficulty writing among some who have them. Dysgraphia is a writing-specific neurological disorder.

I meant that you qualified it with "some" which is probably true, but I guess on the ADHD side, there are so many other management issues that would supercede this and be much more impactful. For example, my formerly laidback team lead used to give me the agency to get my work done without much oversight, but now they feel like checking in frequently to get "updates" is a good idea. It's provoking me to procrastinate…

Sure, there are. Using written notes is the topic of the article, though, so that's what I was commenting on.

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

#224

Post by chefandy »

tiagod wrote: post #213
chefandy wrote: post #197

If you're in charge of other people, it's worth noting that some very common cognitive problems like ADHD, Dysgraphia, and Dyslexia negate these benefits in some affected people. The cognitive load of making legible marks can become high enough to become the focus, rather than the actual content. Pressuring someone already struggling with working memory to do things like this, is counterproductive, if not demoralizin…

I have ADHD, which affects my short-term memory a lot, and my most valuable tool while working is a notebook and a pencil. I rarely look at the previous pages, and they invariably end full of scribbles, but it helps me a lot to keep my current goals in the current page and looking at it while thinking. Once it gets too messy I turn to the next blank page and copy whatever part of the text/diagrams that's still releva…

Yeah, I know a lot of other folks with ADHD who get a ton of use out of a bullet journal or something similar. The variance is not at all surprising considering that even the two primary symptoms, inattention and impulsivity, often aren't both present. These things aren't cut-and-dried, but these sorts of cognitive problems often impact writing: sometimes enough to make basic mark making a real chore.

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

#225

Post by cratermoon »

Not sure how the article can state it so conclusively. See e.g How Much Mightier Is the Pen than the Keyboard for Note-Taking? A Replication and Extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) [1] and Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: a Direct Replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar Studies [2]

1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-019-09468-2

2 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620965541

There's quite a bit of variance, and the early results may have been biased by the fact that have a laptop and typing while taking notes were relatively new things.

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

#226

Post by cratermoon »

dchuk wrote: post #216
CSSer wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered buying loose leaf notebook paper instead of printer paper? You get lines and I’d imagine it’s even cheaper.

I actually distinctly prefer not having lines on my paper, because my notes are typically big outlines and drawings and diagrams. I am planning on coming up with a few different paper templates that I can easily print when I need it (I have a cheap $100 brother laser b&w printer that works perfectly and cheaply for this purpose).

How about dot grid paper?

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

#229

Post by chrischen »

chefandy wrote: post #197

If you're in charge of other people, it's worth noting that some very common cognitive problems like ADHD, Dysgraphia, and Dyslexia negate these benefits in some affected people. The cognitive load of making legible marks can become high enough to become the focus, rather than the actual content. Pressuring someone already struggling with working memory to do things like this, is counterproductive, if not demoralizin…

Interesting I was diagnosed with ADHD and always felt the teacher was stupid for making us hand write because I spent more time focusing on the writing than remembering what I had written down (and I thought this was likely the case for most people)… but never knew these two things could be related.

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

#230

Post by sickmate »

blindseer wrote: post #227

I just want an eink tablet that lets me search my handwriting using grep. It's almost 2023, why doesn't something like this exist!?!

Onyx Boox tablets can convert your handwritten notes to text, and export them as TXT files. I'm not certain but the export can probably be automated.

At work I use the handwriting keyboard input to write directly into Confluence notes.

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