HN should add downvote option.
It exists I think, they just require you to score a certain amount of points before you obtain the privilege
Writing by hand is good for your brain
561–570 of 708 posts
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#562A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. 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. Don’t get caught up tr…
I recently lent a book with some scribbled notes of mine to a friend and they were all like "oh we love scribbles in books". Another way to connect.
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#563A corollary to this is, when reading books, mark them up! Don’t be precious with them. Destroy the spine so it’s easier to read, fold pages, write the important stuff inside the front cover of the book. 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. Don’t get caught up tr…
Post it notes tho...
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#564On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…
Paperlike is indeed nice for handwriting, but it has drawbacks. The increased friction makes it uncomfortable to use your fingers to navigate the iPad for long, and since it makes the finger motion along the screen less smooth, it sometimes prevents the iPad from correctly interpreting drag-and-drop or multi-finger gestures in my experience. It also makes writing very noisy compared to the stock iPad, and also compared to paper, so if you have a shared office you might want to reconsider. I ended up removing it again from my iPad. But to be fair, this was on a $400 iPad ~5 years ago, so perhaps high-end iPads with newer Paperlike versions work better.
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't read notes, why waste time making them instead of slowing down even more and spending that extra time/effort on active listening/thinking?
Writing is thinking.
Thinking is thinking. Then you can write your thoughts for later use of think more instead
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been using LLMs for this and they excel and understanding my very poor calligraphy. All I do I take photos of the pages I wrote by hand, and then ask the LLM to convert those notes to markdown and convert any diagrams that I might have to mermaidjs style, and worked wonders for me.
Hmmm - I guess all the "chatbot" web interfaces for LLMs have an option to upload images. And they're really good at this now you say? That's a really useful tip; thanks.
Yeah they work really well. I have tried Claude opus and ChatGPT 5.5
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#567[dead]
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't read notes, why waste time making them instead of slowing down even more and spending that extra time/effort on active listening/thinking?
I get distracted and my mind starts to think of better ways to explain the last point... Soon I have no clue what the last ten minutes were about. Taking notes makes me get back on task faster so I can find the next note to write. I'd like to slow down and just listen but the reality is I won't.
Interesting, so "otherthinking" is bad here. Have you tried other devices to turn yourself back on track without the extra work?
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#569On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…
Personally found newest paperlike to be a lot like glass still, you barely get that paper feel at all and I hated it. They tried to keep clarity of the screen near glass level, but that affects the feeling a lot. Eventually I did some research and found that Japanese screen protectors that give you a feel of Kent paper are excellent for writing, so I wholeheartedly recommend those. You can find best rated ones by looking at top rated ones on jp websites, I have bellemond one.
Re: Writing by hand is good for your brain
#570On the gadget front, I really love the paperlike screen protector for the iPad. This combined with the Apple Pencil made a huge difference in the usability of my iPad for writing/drawing. I still prefer to write on paper, but it’s really great for things like my writing group where we generally meet over zoom & I can give the author a marked up manuscript (with multicolor notes). I’m also opposed to getting too preci…
I think people send too much time optimizing the notebook instead of optimizing what goes into it. I've seen beautifully organized notebooks that were never opened again and messy scraps of paper that someone referred back to after years.