Writing by hand is good for your brain • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#401

Post by waterheater » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #229

edude03 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cross out stuff you disagree with, draw a big circles around the stuff that resonates. > Not only does it make consumption a lot more engaging, it makes a revisit of that book extremely rewarding This is actually the biggest reason I own a Remarkable 2/Kindle Scribe, let's me "destroy" the book while also not having to worry about losing my notes.

Honest question: How confident are you that you'll have access to those notes on your Remarkable/Kindle 20 years from now? I love my Kobo. I highlight stuff with it. But for anything really important, I then go to my computer, go through each highlight, and make notes in my org file. (I probably should automate it - I know tools exist to extract all that metadata from the Kobo).

The Remarkable can spin up a web server if you connect it to your computer via USB. You can then access the files through a web browser by entering a dedicated IP address, which the Remarkable will give you. This features is disabled by default for obvious security reasons, but it's trivial to enable in the Remarkable's settings.

Point being: as this feature works perfectly fine in Airplane Mode, you don't need an internet connection to use your Remarkable.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#402

Post by msum » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

t1234s wrote: post #317

Is there an online support group for people who have been on the keyboard so long that their penmanship looks more like klingon than english? Is there a way to correct this?

[dead]

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#403

Post by computerdork » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

erickhill wrote: post #281

computerdork wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the remarkable at converting handwritten notes into text? Especially so that you can search over it? Yeah, I used to handwrite my notes on paper back in the day, and still do for a couple of important topics, but switched over to putting things in Evernote several years ago. The reason is actually do need to do searches over them quite often, and it’s obviously very difficult to do with handwritten documents.

It does a pretty good job. But to be honest I don't use that feature often. I also have the keyboard for it but don't use that often, either. I really mainly use it as a notebook.

Ah, okay. Will probably just have to try it out.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#404

Post by rectang » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

superloika wrote: post #373

rectang wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Write by hand and mark up your books" is excellent advice... that I no longer follow. Marking up books didn't come naturally to me, but I did it for a while. Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral. The illusion of permanence must be confronted and reckoned with. But for the last 15-20 years, I have been taking notes in text files that are saved to vers…

> Paper books are just decaying bundles of plant fiber — and the ideas within them are likewise ephemeral. We still have 1000 year old codex in quite good conditions. A paper book will still be readable 500 and 1000 years into the future, if properly stored. A digital file will be effectively lost in decades, if not mere years.

When I was a child, I imagined that books and the ideas within them lasted forever. The shock is not in how quickly the written word dissipates, it's that it dissipates at all.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#405

Post by computerdork » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

brian-dewey wrote: post #152

computerdork wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the remarkable at converting handwritten notes into text? Especially so that you can search over it? Yeah, I used to handwrite my notes on paper back in the day, and still do for a couple of important topics, but switched over to putting things in Evernote several years ago. The reason is actually do need to do searches over them quite often, and it’s obviously very difficult to do with handwritten documents.

I don't know about reMarkable but LLMs are good at recognizing handwriting from photos. I wrote an iOS app to do this for my handwritten diaries, but it works for any handwritten paper: https://inksightful.app/

Interesting, will take a look!

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#406

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

I wrote almost my entire PhD thesis by hand, with a pencil. When I made mistakes I erased them. My handwritten notebooks contain close to the final version of each chapter (there were, of course, some further corrections after typesetting).

I don't like writing in pen. I like being able to erase stuff. Having scribbled out bits looks messy and gets on my nerves.

Whatever implement you choose, I do concur with the author that writing by hand is good for you.

I don't write much these days, but I do fill pages full of notes, mostly diagrams and other pictures. I don't understand how some people with jobs similar to mine don't use paper at all.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#407

Post by slashdave » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

This post makes me feel old

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#408

Post by Quimoniz » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

codazoda wrote: post #272

I was filling notebooks too quickly and didn’t know what to do with them so I switched to a Kindle Scribe. It’s more expensive than a bunch of nice paper notebooks but it’s worked well for me. I export my handwritten notes for safe keeping and can have AI conversations with them as material. I also tried Kindle HD tablets, which worked just as well, but I got a lot of eye strain since I also work on a computer all da…

I am in the same camp. A year ago I switched over to taking notes on a Kindle Scribe, and as a voracious note taker it has been going very well. There are a few small negatives: - twice a page of text just vanished completely, in roughly 500 pages written in the past year, due to some shenanigans with the selection tool - Over 40/50 pages notebooks don't seem to export reliably. So for my work notes I start a new notebook every month (I average approximately 1.5 pages per workday) - I no longer scribble as many unspoken impressions down as I did with paper (where I had known before, that small writings in the margins on some paper of mine where as save from looking in to, as the insides of my Jeans' pocket watch pocket)

Positive: - I can send PDFs of my notes out within a minute to any email - a lot less to carry around, I just make sure to keep it with me, nearly all the time - organizing notes retrospectively is a big leap forward from paper - I can just select lines of text I wrote and move them around, even shrink them a little (to fit an extra line of text or two on the same page)

So far I haven't gotten used to actually extracting the notes with the Kindle application on my PC, it's always going over Amazon's servers whenever I click "share" to export my notes...

How do you go about having AI conversations with your notes?

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#409

Post by SubmarineClub » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #233

I've always been pretty skeptical of the data which says handwriting is better for learning than typing. Yes, handwriting causes more brain activity, but just because your brain is doing more does not mean it's doing the right thing! For example, if I asked you to code FizzBuzz while riding a unicycle, I'm pretty sure you would show more brain activity than if you were just sitting at a desk. This does not mean it's…

Handwriting notes engages your spatial memory, which is incredibly powerful (see: the ancient method of loci/memory palace techniques)

There were times in college where I blanked on important information during an exam, but was able to recall it by visualizing the physical sheets I had written my notes on. I aced several infamously difficult classes like OChem and OChem 2 using that technique.

I’ve never found it possible to do that with typed notes.

Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain

#410

Post by pillmillipedes » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

Anduia wrote: post #306

Having tried gel rollerball and fountain pens, I always end up going back to clutch pencils with soft leads. The author dismisses all pencils because he has to press down hard to use them, but I don't press down any more than I would with a fountain pen. Being able to erase is also a bonus. Not to mention the ASMR sound!

I've never heard of clutch pencils before! I'll definitely check them out since I'm not sure I'd ever put pencils and asmr in a sentence together -besides the one I'd just typed- and yet I still occasionally need one.

>pressure

the gel pen I use can write under its own weight, so it's surely less pressure than any pencil would require, unless it's particularly soft and hefty?