I wonder if this holds up for those that grow up only typing.
It might because writing makes you slow down a bit. But would be interesting to see.
A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
211–220 of 243 posts
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#212I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…
I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them.
This is essentially what I always did, but instead of "as soon as I finish" replace "at some long-overdue future time". But the notion of write-only notes was largely identical, with very rare exceptions.
Hilariously, I only kept my notes so long out of poorly surfaced guilt that I was "doing it wrong", compared to some students who seemed to come out of lecture with fancy notes practically ready for prepress...
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also in my 50s, and have been carrying A4 hardback notebooks around since 80s or 90s, that I use similarly. I add a margin, leave 5 pages at the front for indexing, and I've adopted a few highlighting habits to cross reference and link for easy reference later. It's my definitive memory, and has been worth it to answer the months later questions of why we did or didn't include some feature, or designed something…
Yep, I think it's good to note that like me you have tried tech options, but not found them to bring anything useful to the party. It's too easy to look at us old farts and draw the conclusion that we're just too stuck in our ways and unable to cope with this new-fangled stuff, but I've spent periods (maybe perhaps a few months at a time) taking notes in other ways to see if I can 'evolve' - off the top of my head I'…
Yeah, it hasn't been for lack of trying. Laptop I thought too intrusive, though the earliest versions (before the weather widgets and web additions) of Google Desktop search showed lots of promise for retrieval, the note taking itself just took me too much out of the discussion, and too much into faffing about with a laptop. iPad is brilliant for home surfing but useless as meeting tablet. Maybe smart paper and AI indexing one day...
Then there's the software. Evernote was something a previous boss swore by - until some change he really couldn't get on with forced him to migrate, with much muttering, everything to something else. Evernote, wikis and most of the rest are best if you do proper categorisation of notes and indexing. Indexing always feels must be a second pass after, as categories and choices from before never quite do it. So it's always ended up slower than simply writing in an index at the front at the end of the day or week.
Six months later I often don't know quite what I'm searching, haven't a clue of keywords needed, but it's more archaeological, going back through layers of time, then re-following choices and paths. Grab a handful of pages that is about six months... Skim, find the follow-up. Oh, yeah this, that, who and why. Job done.
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#214I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…
I may have well thrown away my notes! I often times had inaccuracies as I fell behind instructors (seriously how fast can they write on blackboards!?) and lost important context which made sense at the time but not later.
But you are correct, writing things down helps commit things to memory, plus there were always some funny doodles to look back on. Too bad I can't doodle anymore in work meetings, it isn't too professional :(
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#215I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…
This is nuts. How would you be able to refer to anything meaningful in the future? That's one of the benefits of notes.
I was relatively at the top of my classes and I never did this.
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#216I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…
I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. This is essentially what I always did, but instead of "as soon as I finish" replace "at some long-overdue future time". But the notion of write-only notes was largely identical, with very rare exceptions. Hilariously, I only kept my notes so long out of poorly surfaced guilt that I was "doing it wrong", compared to some students who seemed to come out of lect…
It was fun for my wife and I to go through all our college notes and laugh at everything we had to go through! Some good classes and some bad classes.
In high school we had a nice big bonfire and burned our notes at the end of the year. Making smores was probably the best use of old notes!
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#217I tended to be in the top of the classes I was in and as far as I've seen my method was somewhat different. I also only take notes on paper, but more importantly, I throw all my notes out as soon as I finish writing them. For me studying is the act of writing the notes. The purpose of notes was never to read them later. That's why writing on paper is important to me. It's not about the qualities and convenience of th…
I had converged on a similar workflow. Mostly due to the fact that my handwriting is terrible and I couldn't even read my own writing sometimes. So I used to rewrite them quite often to make them more clear. The fact of rewriting served as a spaced repetition and re-summarization which helped me remember concepts better.
When I was in college laptops were becoming popular and after trying to takes notes on them I found I didn't remember things as well, was getting distracted by chat and emails, and simply couldn't draw quick diagrams (and I usually do a lot of diagrams).
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if adults can improve their handwriting.
Most skills are things that you can get better at. I bought a nice fountain pen (well, a $14 pilot) and overhauled my cursive writing. It took about 6 weeks and I write pretty legibly in cursive. I'm more legible in various print scripts (that I have also worked on as an adult), but cursive is faster. Admittedly, that is just an anecdote. But if you're curious, try and get better... you'll likely improve if you activ…
I'm also a fountain pen user.
I never liked pure cursive and do a mix, it's more of a print-sive where some letters are always print (F, J, G, Q, a couple others) and others are cursive depending on flow, speed, etc.
I have a bit more practice because I also sketchnote.
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
As another data point, I take notes almost almost solely for increased recollection, I've never really studied them. The physical act of writing down a phrase or idea emphasizes it in my memory to such a noticeable degree that if I lack writing utensils I will mime the action; the physical notes themselves are rarely useful once made. I find this also works in settings that are not live, I am able to work through tex…
Maybe you would do even better just imagining writing it down on paper or actively building mental representations. But if it works well enough, why not? The act of writing notes may involve mental processing or not. If it's just a matter of concentration and focus, there might be better remedies.
No matter how good your mental discipline, it won't be as consistently good as writing down the notes. This is just another variation of point-and-call [0].
Re: A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop (2014)
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is what I came to the comments to say. For me, paying attention was much more important than trying to take notes. It's a shame this study didn't have a third group that didn't take notes at all.
Same here. I wonder if it's the courses we took. I did Mathematics and Computer Science. The only time I took notes it was a disaster. My notes were perfect, my recollection awful. I had to reread them to get any value. The rest of the time I just sat in class and paid close attention, rarely noting down to look up some lemma or the other. Way better results. Instant recollection. I can still remember the Nullstellen…
I actually fall into a third bucket, at least when it came to math courses: I'd attempt to work ahead of the instructor during the lecture, instead of just writing notes or just listening.
Because of the way well-done math courses are structured, with topics building on each other, I was able to do this about half the time. Most importantly, any mistakes I made would be almost immediately corrected, so I never learned the material wrong, like if I'd waited until the homework.