
Take notes by hand, not on a laptop - jamesbritt
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/4/5776804/note-taking-by-hand-versus-laptop
======
x0054
Being a lazy person by nature, at least when it comes to things I do not care
about, I always took outline style notes on a computer. I think the key to
note taking is not necessarily the implement you use but rather how you take
the notes. I found that any word processor that allows you to build a bullet
list works just fine.

That being said, I can not tell you how many of my Law School classmates
literally transcribed the entire lecture. Sometimes it was kind of nice
though, because if I miss a class, I could borrow the notes from someone, read
them, and take my notes based on that. I always tried to limit my notes to one
typed page per hour (10 pint).

As a side hint, to any one who might be in school right now. I used to scan
all of my books at the beginning of the semester into my computer. I had a
little book scanner, and it would take about 1-1.5 hours per book, I would
watch TV or listen to an audiobook while scanning. That way you don't have to
drag heavy books around with you, and instead, you can have nice, searchable
textbooks any time you need them, on your laptop. Of course, if you are less
than honest, or just exceedingly poor, you could also borrow the books from
the library rather then buy them. Of course, I could not recommend that as it
would mean braking the law :)

~~~
sampo
I don't think scanning a library book, or a book borrowed from a friend, for
personal use, is breaking the law in any country.

~~~
x0054
In US you would argue fair use while the book publisher would argue that you
infringed their copyright by harming the market for that book. Once you scan
the book, you no longer have any need to buy it, thus they loose an extra
sale. Of course, practically speaking, as long as you don't go around selling
your newly scanned copy of said book to all of your classmates, you shouldn't
run into any problems.

~~~
Houshalter
Couldn't you also argue that borrowing a book at all instead of buying it
harms the market for the book?

~~~
erikano
No. Borrowing a book means that you have it instead of the person that bought
it. If you copy it, both can have the book at the same time.

~~~
Houshalter
I am not saying that they are the same thing. Just that the same argument
applies.

------
Jare
I'm surprised they didn't try to get data on students who didn't take any
notes at all. Back in the 90s I irritated quite a few college teachers by not
doing any note taking - my ability to do handwriting has always been terrible
and I absorbed much better by not doing it and then latching on to my friend's
notes. Later on, taking notes on laptops proved a much better experience, and
these days it's Markdown for the best results / effort (if I needed heavy math
I'd have probably learned LaTex).

~~~
jamesbritt
I had a linear algebra course in college where I had to make the choice of
take notes or pay attention. The professor had a really high-density style,
filling multiple blackboards and inevitably turning his black suit to some
form of gray by the end of class.

I usually opted for paying attention, trying to grok the key concepts rather
than endless details.

~~~
kaitai
This was much of math grad school for me. I have a remarkable ability: I can
write down exactly what people said and process absolutely nothing, in
beautiful cursive. Or I can listen.

Now that I know my subject much better, I can take notes & really get
something out of it, because I can process the material at the same time.

~~~
jgamman
after first year, my lecturers handed out the whole year's worth of notes
(photocopy of something they wrote in the 60s...). you revise _before_ class
and then listen and try ask just one _good_ question. having the goal of
having to ask one good question works wonders. pity i didn't learn this tip
until near the end of me degree...

------
rdtsc
100% agree.

I always take notes by hand. I have tried doing on the computer and by hand.
By hand is better. There are 2 advantages the way I see it:

1) The motor effects of moving the pen somehow help me remember the
information better. It is as if I later remember moving the pen on paper when
I have to recall the information. It is very likely that I just trained myself
this way over many years.

2) I can sketch. I have a very visual memory and quite often I doodle diagram.
Arrows connecting to boxes. A little graph with a relationship can be drawn
and visualized very quickly when it might take a whole paragraph to describe.

~~~
teamonkey
Have you tried mind mapping, particularly the Buzan method?

~~~
rdtsc
I have tried a few mind map software and tried doing it with a pen and paper.
It works better with pen and paper. With software I often get bogged down in
the incidental complexity of using the software itself and it distracts from
the actual information.

Mind maps are useful for consolidating and summarizing a large pile of new
information. Say the components of an operating system kernel. Or how sorting
algorithms works. Stuff like that. Usually with lectures, smaller more focused
concepts are presented, so then I still mostly take notes with outlines and
diagrams. But when studying for exams, I might letter build a mind-map from
the notes.

At some point in high-school I sort of discovered the Buzan (repetitive
recall) method on my own. In the Soviet Union, in schools quite often one had
oral exams. Where have 100 questions related to anything you learned in the
semester or year. And then when you come in, you have to randomly pick from
one of the 100 question. Well that means you need to have a mind-map like
understanding of pretty much everything. So students studied for the big final
test some number of weeks. During those weeks I discovered how certain
cyclical summarization and repetition worked best. Also discovered that sugar
helps memorize stuff.

------
keithpeter
Wondering if there was any control over the _form_ of the written notes in the
study?

Laptop: probably typed text input given the comments about verbatim recording
of speech.

Paper: Quite possibly mind maps or hierarchically arranged notes that mirror
the structure of the talk. Diagrams and rapid tabulations (even just 'pros'
and 'cons' of a position the speaker is outlining). Seems much richer. As
others have suggested a third group using tablet/stylus in a visual note-
taking program might be interesting to include.

~~~
Amezarak
Do people actually take "structured" notes like that?

My experience was that my recall with the handwritten notes was better, but my
handwritten notes weren't much different from my typed notes. In fact, my
typed notes usually contained more information (as the article notes) since I
am a much faster typist than writer.

In both cases, I basically wrote down what the professor said. It might have
been abbreviated, and I wouldn't bother with things I didn't think mattered,
but they were very much essentially an unstructured and disjointed narrative
of the class. I didn't feel like I had the time to structure them (into say,
pro/con lists) because that kind of information often was something I could
only extract after the fact. For example, a professor might start speaking
about a particular subject, mention a benefit to that approach (pro, right?!)
but then go on another five minutes about what that entailed, leaving that
part of my notes long behind and so keeping me from really structuring it as a
pro/con list. If I thought a professor was saying something especially
important I might sit there, absorb it, and frantically write down a condensed
version as he started into something else, but that was as close as I got to
any kind of structure.

On the very rare occasions I reread and reorganized my notes, I did do
something of the sort. But I rarely bothered because a) my notes were hardly
readable in the first place and b) it didn't seem worth it since I already
understood the material by that time. Oddly, I think my bad handwriting might
have contributed to the quality of my notes: when I did go back and read them,
I had to read them very slowly, again and again, to understand them and I
often had to fill in several words from context since they were mostly
illegible.

~~~
keithpeter
_" Do people actually take "structured" notes like that?"_

About one third of my students depart from linear in some way (use of
objectives as headings and add notes under, use of key words as centres around
which to organise sentences). Agreed a small number use full on mind mapping
in the lessons itself. I teach at below university level.

Your point about having to read slowly and _work_ to understand your notes
ties in with some research, but I'm not about to try that on my handouts!

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666)

------
zupa-hu
One shouldn't take notes at all. Class is for _understanding_ ; material
should be available in books.

Notebooks are an _escape_ if the class is boring/irrelevant. They should not
be banned, so students can make at least something useful. I learned a lot
about programming in high school from printed materials from under the desk in
some classes which where not for me.

~~~
sliverstorm
Class is for understanding; notes are for recording the class, so that the
understanding can be revitalized at a later date.

In other words, notes are your tool to have access to those critical moments
of understanding again, later. I don't know about you, but even if I have a
"eureka" moment, it may start to slip through my fingers and require
refreshing once or twice.

~~~
zupa-hu
I am not saying having a _recording_ of the class is not important. It
absolutely is. Just let me download it.

I guess Khan Academy and it's breed could satisfy both camps.

~~~
sliverstorm
I do love having recordings of a lecture, but that is a very recent
development and not always offered. Up until somewhere in the 2008-2010
timeframe, recording/storing/serving decent video in a systematic, campus-wide
fashion was a very daunting task. (Thankfully the hardware & storage has
gotten much cheaper, and people's internet is faster)

------
jmgrosen
Anecdotally, I've taken notes in my math classes using org-mode + LaTeX
snippets for the last two years, and I feel like I'm learning the material
better this way. I can look up background knowledge around a subject, view an
alternate definition of a term, or briefly go more in depth than how my
teacher/professor presented something. In addition, I end up with _very_ nice-
looking notes in the end that I can share with friends if they need them!
(Plus, just staring at LaTeX-generated math is awe-inspiring... _hhnnnnngggg_
)

------
jamesbritt
A few years ago I noticed that despite spending time in numerous conference
sessions I often did not recall very much at the end of the day.

I would typically have my laptop open, ostensibly to take notes, but the ease
of distraction was too great for me. Too easy to get caught up Googling stuff
or writing code or following the live tweet stream.

I then tried keeping the device closed while taking notes on a small paper
notepad. My notes were so much better. If I really did not care for the talk I
would draw pictures; I'd still have a better recall of the talk than if I was
using a laptop.

Using a tablet (as Htsthbjig mentioned) seems like a good alternative since
you then have digital storage, if you are still hand-writing the content. At
least for me that difference in action (writing versus typing, and using
assorted pen-lines and sizes/styles/placement of content) is key for helping
me recall things.

~~~
frou_dh
In the meatspace events I've attended that pushed it, the whole #hashtag
#live-audience-commentary #having-a-blast-at-x #PLZ-USE-THE-HASHTAG hoopla was
complete asinine nonsense. At a basic level it's also disrespectful to the
presenters for the organisers to be promoting mass-distraction of the
audience.

------
Mz
I am 49. I can't help but wonder at aspects like "How does age/culture of the
person in question impact this outcome?" I mean, I grew up with a rotary phone
and a pet dinosaur, not a jillion and one ADHD-inducing distractions. I
imagine I would take notes different from most of you young whippersnappers.

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN.

~~~
gatehouse
It is brutal to try to be sitting in the middle of a lecture hall trying to
focus on a dimly lit academic at the same time as 20-50 future college
dropouts flicker their laptops back and forth between facebook, twitter, and
half-assed note taking attempts... this is only really a problem in intro
level courses though.

------
pessimizer
I've always done it, and I sense a vibe from people like "he hasn't come to
work" when I have a notebook and pencil, and they're on twitter/IM the entire
time. There's a herdmind social pressure aspect to this.

Taking notes by hand definitely improves my memory for things. I thought it
might be the process of production that did it - that it had to go through
your eyes and ears into your fingers, and that the output looked nothing like
the input that cemented it, but the theory advanced here (aggressive
filtering) sounds good, too. I've always been annoyed at lecturers that
stopped for long periods to allow notes to be taken verbatim. Wouldn't that
kill the effect if that were the cause?

------
binarycrusader
While this advice sounds great, I assure you it doesn't apply to everyone.

For example, I've never been able to write for extended periods without my
hand cramping horribly. I suspect it's because I've been typing since
somewhere before or at the age of five years old.

I type fast enough that I can keep up with most speakers word for word if I
need to.

Writing them down? Forget about it; in the time it takes me to actually
scribble out a few short words, the speaker has long since moved on and I'm
already lost.

I think the better suggestion instead is to minimise distractions. Turn off
wi-fi, open your favourite editor in full-screen mode, and avoid other
applications. Apply the technology effectively instead of blaming it for the
failure.

~~~
wffurr
It's not "advice", it's data reported from a study.

~~~
binarycrusader
Maybe it isn't "advice", but it is subjective interpretation, since the
results are an interpretation of a single study. Nor does the study appear to
account for other factors, such as physical constraints.

Obviously, in my particular case, I can't physically write for more than a few
minutes at a time.

And quite frankly, my handwriting has degraded to the point where it's barely
legible even to myself unless I place a rather exhausting amount of effort
into it.

------
MaxScheiber
If a professor is lecturing off of bullet-point-style slide decks, I suspect
that the benefits of taking notes by hand are reduced. I always handwrite my
notes, and I've found that I learn better from trying to understand diagram-
based slides than from copying bullet points summarizing what's in the
diagram. I'm sure this isn't exactly mystical to most of you; trying to
understand a diagram requires you to think, while copying down bullet points
does not.

------
sliverstorm
FWIW, in the business environment, I find the people who are the most
connected and seem to know everything are the ones who do a good job of taking
notes with a computer.

It's a bit of a different story, of course, because rather than _learning_
what they are really doing is compiling vast troves of information, like a
squirrel harvesting nuts, and the advantages of computerized notes (ease of
searching, for example) pay large dividends in this scenario.

------
mercer
I find my 'natural' retention is better with hand-written notes. I get a
better 'general idea' and I organically remember certain parts of the lecture.
However, I also end up

However, my long-term retention is _far_ better and deeper with digital notes,
as they are not only indexed by spotlight (osx), but I drop them into
DEVONthink which can relate text to other text through word frequency (and
perhaps some other techniques).

For example, I remember attending a lecture in my fourth year where the
teacher's statements sparked a memory of some earlier lecture. I entered some
search terms in these tools and immediately found both the notes I had made
_three years earlier_ as well as the original articles that they were based
on. As a bonus, I ended up remembering more about both these lectures and the
topic at hand.

My ideal approach would be to take notes by hand and then transcribe them into
my 'information systems'. Unfortunately, I often forget this crucial second
step and end up forgetting where I left those original notes, or losing them
entirely.

The same principle applies to reading. I much prefer reading and annotating on
paper, with all the 'drawing' freedom that gives me. But reading an ebook,
exporting all my highlights and annotations, and then importing them into my
'systems' has been much more valuable in the long run.

(for an idea of how someone actually uses spotlight, devonthink, or some other
digital storage system effectively, this could be informative:
[http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002...](http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html))

------
withdavidli
100% disagree from a personal standpoint. Loved taking notes via laptop for
the pure reason it was faster and then I could actually participate in
classroom conversation.

All during my non-college years I was forced to take notes via pen and paper.
I remember that I actually threw my pen down in history class one day because
all the slides and not knowing what's actually going on. My teacher was
perplexed, but understood my reasoning. I'm too busy scribbling down pages of
notes, to comprehend anything until I read it again. This might mean I was
just a poor note taker though. But having digital notes helped me much more,
especially when searching or sections to study and having something much more
legible.

I can't be the only one who this is a case for. Remember most classes where
the teacher asks a question and all but 2-3 students where rapidly copying
notes instead of answering? Though this might be a heuristic error, but I
remember this to be the rule instead of the exception.

------
arikrak
> But the crazy thing is that the many college students being distracted by
> their laptops are simultaneously paying tens of thousands of dollars for the
> privilege of doing so.

No, most students are paying for a credential so they can get a job, and also
for social and other aspects of college. While there may be some students who
want to listen to a lecture but get distracted, I think most choose not to
listen because lectures aren't usually that interesting or even helpful.

You need to be actively involved to learn a topic, and taking notes may be the
best option available in a lecture. But once you leave the lecture behind,
students can be involved more directly, such as by working on challenges as
they learn. It would be interesting to see a study that compared students who
took notes to those who answered questions.

------
kenjackson
They should try with a Surface Pro device. I wonder if handwriting notes on a
tablet is any different.

~~~
timothyb89
I've been using an older tablet PC for notetaking for a few months, switching
from a combination of typed and pencil + paper notes. Anecdotally I think
think is the best notetaking solution I've yet tried since:

    
    
      * No smudging (left-handedness issues solved!)
      * Never out of paper or space to write
      * Very fast erase, almost no cost to correcting mistakes
      * Can move things around on the "paper" very quickly
      * Copy and paste, resizing, shape recognition, ...
      * Can insert graphics, formulas, etc as needed, quickly
    

Honestly the only downside is battery life and I'm working around that with a
2nd battery. My overall note quality has massively increased and I find I can
keep up with lectures without any trouble, something I often couldn't do with
only pencil + paper due to my slow writing speed and frequency of mistakes.

Specifically I use xournalpp [1] and ipython with a custom onscreen keyboard
layout for math-related activities. It works exceedingly well for a ~$300
total investment (used PC + FOSS apps).

[1]:
[https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp](https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp)

~~~
asdasdkjhasd
I concur; xournal with any old Thinkpad Tablet PC is definitely the sweet spot
for me, too, and it has allowed me to go completely paperless for a couple of
years now.

------
lunchladydoris
Wow, those are some large error bars.

~~~
lucb1e
Exactly what I was thinking. Not sure we can really draw conclusions from
this...

------
thorne
I took all my notes in org-mode on a little Eee PC for my last two years and
graduated summa. A representative quote from the article says, "research shows
students who use laptops perform more poorly in classes." This is the standard
statistician's fallacy of confusing individuals with Gaussian distributions.
You are not a statistical amalgam; you are an individual. If you are too
stupid to use a laptop as a tool without turning it into a distracting toy,
then don't use one; but don't imply that everybody shares your malady.

------
tzs
The device I want: a computer keyboard with built-in storage or support for a
memory card or flash drive. It can be used as a normal keyboard with a desktop
computer.

You can also take it away from the computer and put it into "note taking
mode". In this mode, you can type and it records your typing. When you return
to your desktop, you can tell the keyboard to play back your notes and it
sends them to the computer as if you are typing them.

Optional feature: a one line LCD display so you can see your typing in note
mode.

This gives the speed of typing, without the distraction of a laptop.

~~~
e2e8
Something like this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart)

------
ianstallings
One of the smartest guys I know always carries index cards and a set of pens
and records almost everything he works on that way, before putting it into a
formal digital design.

I carry a notebook and I highly recommend it for all the reasons described but
I have one more - going through them years later is a huge amount of fun.
Seeing old ideas sketched out makes me happy and I keep all my notebooks in a
stash for later perusal. Looking at old digital documents doesn't give me the
same feeling, with tangible paper and ink bringing back memories.

------
ibrahima
I don't know what it is, but somehow being in front of a laptop reduces my
cognitive ability significantly :/. I actually take notes on a tablet just so
that my notes are all in one place but I kind of wonder if I should go back to
paper. It's not even the distraction possibilities I think, though that does
happen. I can have some task to do, open up my laptop to do it, and then
instantly forget what it was I wanted to do, then go on HN/reddit for a while
and then realize I was supposed to be doing something...

------
quotient
I agree that taking notes by hand allows me to focus better on the lecture,
improves recall, and is generally more engaging. Yet I still choose to take
notes on my laptop. Why?

I first note that there are, in my opinion, two major types of lectures: there
are those in which I only need to note down major ideas and in which it is
more important to listen to the lecture, and those which move more quickly,
making it necessary to note down everything, as a single omitted detail can
cause hours of confusion later on.

It is clear that for the first type of class, handwritten notes are just as
good as those taken on a computer. There is little difference between the two,
practically.

For the second type of class, however, it is clearly easier to type notes.
Most people type faster than they handwrite, and with reasonable proficiency
in LaTeX, anyone is able to more or less type up an entire lecture of notes
quite easily.

But my reason for typing notes goes beyond that: the major issue I have with
handwriting my notes is the inevitable accumulation of loose-leaf paper, and
the ensuing confusion. I have only rarely actually managed to keep together an
entire set of handwritten notes on a class. More rare is the case in which I
actually manage to decipher my own handwriting later on, and rarest of all for
me is actually going over handwritten notes. For some reason, I (virtually)
never bother revisiting my handwritten notes. Organizationally, handwriting my
notes is an enormous hassle that I cannot deal with. It just never works out.

Electronic notes --- I keep a single .tex/.pdf for each class --- are much
easier to maintain, organize, and browse later on. I can continue making
revisions, add hyperlinks to relevant web resources, etc. Moreover, as they
are (when you are sufficiently quick) easier to take than handwritten notes,
it's also easier to thus create a _complete_ set of notes that cover
everything.

I recognize that by transcribing all my lectures in real-time, I am probably
missing out on some of the experience I would have if I were more immersed in
my professors' lectures, although I feel that I should point out that despite
taking notes electronically, I am quite immersed. After some time of practice,
I'm able to listen and pay reasonably close attention to the lecture while I'm
just typing as the professor speaks. I would probably be more immersed if I
were not taking notes at all, or very few, on a piece of paper, but as it is,
having a complete set of typeset notes is just far more valuable to me (not to
mention the value to the other students, and occasionally even to the
professor --- I often distribute my notes to others).

------
dm2
I found that taking notes by hand and then rewriting them on a computer works
nicely.

When rewriting the notes you can make them more condensed and leave out the
parts that might be irrelevant, but the information is still available with
the handwritten notes if ever needed.

Also, just making a summary of notes or an outline is a good way to remember
and organize them.

Will kids in 20 years still be taking notes or will they just upload entire
textbooks to their brains?

------
ivancamilov
If I was still in college, I would:

1) Record the audio of the lectures 2) Do a quick mind map with an tablet.

That way you get all the technology benefits with none of the reported issues.

------
hrktb
My personal take out from this article is that typing on a keyboard is usually
seen as distracting and somewhat less natural than hand writing.

I would think a signifiant number of students would already type faster than
they can write, and wouldn't even need to continually look at the screen to
take readable enough notes. At least that's was my experience in college after
3/4 years on IRC.

------
kybernetyk
Having been a heavy computer user since the age of 12 my handwriting is so
cryptic now I couldn't decipher my written notes after 2 hours.

~~~
MartinCron
If you're anything like me, your default speed is too damn fast for
handwriting. If you slooooow down, you may be surprised.

------
yodsanklai
I find it very hard to understand new concepts if I don't have a pen and piece
of paper to take notes and draw some diagrams... Unfortunately, I'm not able
to reproduce this experience with a keyboard and a mouse/trackpad.

How do the kids learn maths or CS nowadays? I can't imagine that they do it
exclusively with a laptop.

------
wffurr
Today's Doonesbury is on this exact topic:
[http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2014/06/0...](http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2014/06/08)

------
zapt02
My programming professor used to say that programming an algorithm was always
more effective on paper and that computer removed some of your skill.

------
bak3dj0
But with a laptop you can just use a graphics tablet and you'll save trees
from getting turned into paper.

~~~
dmoo
Trees are a crop with a long growth cycle. If you don't need paper then you
don't plant trees.

------
gatehouse
Here is a mind-dump of my personal note taking strategies, which are highly
context dependent [CCW]:

(FWIW, I studied in an elite-ish engineering program, finished with a B
average)

Lecture: My number one goal is to stay awake, and listening to the words
coming out of the professor's mouth. For a chalk and talk scenario, I use a
notepad (that tears off at the top) and follow the blackboard and add
commentary. If I can't process the information, I devolve to rote copying.
This is the raw material of studying that I will attempt to understand later.
For slides: ideally I will have a copy of the slides and take notes overtop.
If I don't have the slides before but I will have them after, then I will try
to understand the information and take extra notes. If I will never have the
slides I'm unlikely to really benefit from the lecture, I might actually buy
the textbook.

Tutorial: If the TA is good I'll sit still and pay attention to the problem
solving. Otherwise I won't attend. No notes.

Reading: Highlighting and margin notes on the first pass, and then very very
terse notes on paper on the second pass. I might end up with 10 pages of notes
for a one semester course.

Other non-student situations:

For keeping track of actions taken from the command line I use a text file,
emacs org-mode, and keep track of every command run, issues that I ran into,
and commands used to verify. After a few run-throughs this may get boiled down
to a shell script or some other type of program. I initially developed this
habit working on EC2 before EBS existed, but now I deliberately destoy VMs and
start from scratch often so I can be sure that I have a working process for
getting up and running.

For some type of programmatic data processing, I will usually use a python
file. As I'm working I won't revise anything, I'll just keep adding on the
bottom. I will then run it like "% python -i scratch.py" so I can examine
failure at the prompt and continue to add the the file and re-run as I figure
things out.

For memory augmentation while thinking, for example for design work, I
personally generally use letter (A4) size paper along with a pen, so I can
spread out the paper on my desk while I get to grips with the problem. Typical
to fill 3-10 pages. At this point I'm mainly using the computer just to
retrieve reference material and the verify things. Ideally these notes get
scanned later but I probably won't use them again. Stage 2 is to take the
notes and try to distil it into a 1-page coherent top-down design. Sometimes I
will cheat by using 11x17 notepad and a mechanical pencil, which allows an
extravagant amount of detail an a single sheet.

I currently have a fresh A3 170-page moleskine that I'm saving for some kind
of massive project that needs this much space.
([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8862931956/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8862931956/)
)

------
Htsthbjig
Do not tell me what to do.

I take notes using my tablet and a wacom like device, it works great.

~~~
plucas
Wouldn't using a "wacom like" device count as "by hand"?

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jamesbritt
Of course. Seems like it might be the best of both worlds if you can avoid
toggling over to the IRC back-channel and the like.

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Ayaz
I find that in most cases, for me at least, taking notes on a smart-phone
instead is a reasonable middle way. Of course, I have to make sure I don't get
distracted, but surprisingly, while taking notes on the phone, I don't feel
the urge to do so (but I suppose every one's mileage may vary). However, since
it takes time and effort to tap down notes on a smart-phone, doing so likely
produces the same results that does taking notes on a paper with a pen.

PS: I regularly take down notes on my phone during work meetings.

