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Take better notes, by hand

brianschrader.com

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Re: Take better notes, by hand

#51

Post by helterskelter »

coldcity_again wrote: post #4

I love taking notes by hand for better retention, but (my) longhand is just too slow. It's also an inconvenient format for representing a hierachy or graph of connections. Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)? They're still my primary paper-based realtime note taking method. They seemed to get a lot of attention a…

You could look at an alphabetic shorthand such as Orthic:

https://orthic.shorthand.fun/

The learning curve is very gentle, you could learn it in a day. Honestly the hardest part is getting used to reading it fluently.

You can also look into various systems of abbreviations developed for telegraph (Evans basic English code), or you could look into using Yublin, which is basically taking all 2-letter combinations and assigning the most common 676 English words to them. Personally I like the idea of Yublin, with the addition of suffixes to modify common words so the word "add" might be "ad" in Yublin, but to make it "addition" you might turn it into "adn" and to further modify it to "additionally" you could write "adnly". This way you get more words out of your limited number of bigrams instead of polluting it with a word plus all it's commonly used variations. Write that shit in Orthic and you'll be flying.

Food for thought.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#52

Post by sonicrocketman »

WillAdams wrote: post #49
JLO64 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ink are you gonna pair with that? I’m not a lefty, but I’ve heard fast drying FP inks are best for writing with a left hand to prevent smudging.

Noodler's has some left-hand friendly fountain pen inks.

Ooh will check out! Thanks!

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#53

Post by ModernMech »

squidbeak wrote: post #28
ModernMech wrote: post #3

This is all good advice but one thing it doesn't touch on is: which pen and notebook? I like the pilot precision v5 pens because they come in a lot of different colors and the point is very fine. For notebooks, I prefer the Leuchtturm 1917 series. They come with page numbers, a space for TOC, a pocket in the back for stuff, two book marks, and lots of different sizes and colors and page layouts. That's important beca…

> This is all good advice but one thing it doesn't touch on is: which pen and notebook? In what way could it possibly be relevant? Do you actually believe that the author could suggest a universally suitable pen and paper type? What if he'd had his best results with toilet paper, a sugar thermometer and a soot/diarrhea/lemon juice blend for the ink? Would his advice be any more complete? The moment you lose sight of…

You can't separate the tools from the craft. Practical disciplines aren't just about doing things but also doing them well. The title of the piece was "take better notes, by hand" so you know, the tools I think are relevent. And come to mention it, the "by hand" part needs some attention too, because one complaint I often hear is that typing is less fatiguing than writing longhand. Ergonomics plays a big role here -- you're not going to write anything at all if you get cramped up. So yeah, I think that the tools are wholly relevent to the idea of taking better notes.

Generally people don't write with diarrhea for a good reason. I think anyone suggesting positive results would be suspect.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#54

Post by sfRattan »

JLO64 wrote: post #24
sonicrocketman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've blogged about this before too! https://brianschrader.com/archive/the-practicals-of-writing-... But I'm in the process of upgrading my pen. I ordered a TWISB ECO.

What ink are you gonna pair with that? I’m not a lefty, but I’ve heard fast drying FP inks are best for writing with a left hand to prevent smudging.

For other left-handers out there, Pigma Micron pens from Sakura are outstanding. They aren't fountain pens, but their archival quick-dry ink doesn't smudge at all when writing with the left hand. They come in varying weights, and I tend to prefer the 05s or 08s. Lots of arts and crafts stores stock them.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#55

Post by Artgor »

I love writing things down when I brainstorm; it helps me think. But taking notes by hand is not feasible for me. My handwriting is atrocious (always has been); if I want to write a nice-looking text, I have to slow down significantly, and then it becomes too slow. Also, searching, indexing, and everything - it works better with digital.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#56

Post by Zancarius »

WhyCause wrote: post #46
coldcity_again wrote: post #4

I love taking notes by hand for better retention, but (my) longhand is just too slow. It's also an inconvenient format for representing a hierachy or graph of connections. Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)? They're still my primary paper-based realtime note taking method. They seemed to get a lot of attention a…

The slowness is a feature, not a bug. It gives your brain time to chew on it a little bit, digesting the information and storing it away instead of just copy-pasting. Speed-hacks like shorthand and stenographers' machines are for copying exactly what was said, not consuming and understanding it. I would be very surprised if there were not very old studies moldering in a paper journal somewhere investigating the infor…

I recently started journaling by hand and was somewhat frustrated with the excruciatingly slow speed versus typing. Eventually, I realized that the slowness was, as you said, a feature. It forces you to think. You have no choice but to take time with your words. Sometimes brevity is a gift (one I usually don't have).

I migrated to fountain pens and haven't looked back. Partially, it's because I enjoy the experience itself as much as writing, but partially it's because they've forced me to become even more deliberate.

I'd highly recommend it!

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#57

Post by hammock »

h45x1 wrote: post #17

I have a dedicated couple of pages in a notebook, where I write down the note-taking conventions I use. When transitioning to a new notebook, I would copy those pages, possibly making a few improvements based on past usage. A most unhurried release cycle, if I can say so myself. Regarding the space management, there are many solutions straight out of the programming world, of course: utilize both sides of the noteboo…

Would you share your notetaking schemata?

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#58

Post by pch00 »

coldcity_again wrote: post #4

I love taking notes by hand for better retention, but (my) longhand is just too slow. It's also an inconvenient format for representing a hierachy or graph of connections. Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)? They're still my primary paper-based realtime note taking method. They seemed to get a lot of attention a…

> Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)?

Yes! Nearly all my notes are mind-map-ish. I’m a visual thinker/planner with ADHD and mind-map style “spatial notes” are the only ones that make sense to me when writing and reviewing later. I’ve tried a few methods of moving this process to digital over the years but nothing sticks like pen & paper.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#59

Post by MengerSponge »

WhyCause wrote: post #46
coldcity_again wrote: post #4

I love taking notes by hand for better retention, but (my) longhand is just too slow. It's also an inconvenient format for representing a hierachy or graph of connections. Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)? They're still my primary paper-based realtime note taking method. They seemed to get a lot of attention a…

The slowness is a feature, not a bug. It gives your brain time to chew on it a little bit, digesting the information and storing it away instead of just copy-pasting. Speed-hacks like shorthand and stenographers' machines are for copying exactly what was said, not consuming and understanding it. I would be very surprised if there were not very old studies moldering in a paper journal somewhere investigating the infor…

+1 Deciding what to write is the critical step. You can get it with careful typing, but it's harder because you can type fast enough to skip that step.

Re: Take better notes, by hand

#60

Post by kid64 »

dotancohen wrote: post #32
Bridged7756 wrote: post #30

Paper is just too inconvenient to use for long term storage and revisiting imo. It's better suited as a transitive storage medium, either for short lived stuff like tasks, checklists, or acting as a writing inbox that you later capture into a digital medium. Even with the capture downside, I don't think that I can do away with paper and pen. There's something invigorating about using paper that no keyboard or screen…

I use a Boox E-Ink tablet with the built-in handwriting notes app. It exports to PDF and I can copy everything to my Debian machine via ADB. I absolutely love it. E-Ink is close enough to paper for me, and the EMR (Wacom) stylus is close enough to a pen for me.

Yeah but do you trust those guys?
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