
The benefits of note-taking by hand - lelf
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200910-the-benefits-of-note-taking-by-hand
======
wenc
Cue the HN note-taking crowd....

From a retention/recall perspective, I think most people are enamored with
finding the perfect note-taking method because we want to find the one method
that optimizes both retention (memory) + recall (long term searchability) at
the same time. It seems to me these two objectives are somewhat in
competition.

(there's also comprehension and thinking but I see those as separate)

I think splitting up the two objectives makes more sense. Handwriting notes
enhances memory formation, but is less optimized for searchability. Digital
notes are great for long-term searchability, but are weaker for memory
formation.

Why not have two systems instead of one? Just handwrite whatever you want to
remember, and type whatever you want to stash away? It seems inefficient, but
in multiobjective optimization we usually end up with Pareto optimality rather
than a single point of optimality.

One might ask, how would I know a priori what to remember and what to stash? I
personally prefer handwriting, so I'll usually go there first and if I need to
stash it I'll retype it into Google Docs. That said, I'll hop on Google Docs
first if it happens to be more convenient (like if I'm browsing and want to
copy-and-paste something for long-term storage, or if I'm outdoors and all I
have on me is my phone)

Meetings are a great candidate for handwriting notes -- and then discarding.
You and I know that most meeting notes are throwaways. Despite that, I
personally find that in complex multiparty meetings, I'm able to follow the
flow better if I continuously take notes. Being able to remember who said
what, and being able to summarize a meeting are all very valuable skills to
have.

(p.s. with regard to memory, Socrates didn't even believe in writing -- he
believed writing things down would weaken our memories in the long term. He
believed that talking about things was a far superior way to form memories and
to understand subjects deeply. He's not completely wrong about the role of
discussion and disputation [emotional connection is a potent force in memory
formation], but all the same I'm glad Plato didn't take to this thinking and
actually wrote stuff down).

~~~
Terretta
Used to fill a large size moleskin a month by hand, and for this sample size
of one, the aid to recall from deciding what to write and processing it back
out is remarkable.

So, of course, I’ve tried the Remarkable pad, as well as apps like Goodnotes
on iPad that try to support handwriting while also supporting search.
Goodnotes suited my needs better, as the Remarkable pad latency was too high,
though I did prefer the feel of writing. Apple materials research needs to get
their glass and pencil closer to this.

However, for recall, I find there’s something about the physicality of a paper
notebook that gives the facts a place to live.

With real x, y, and z dimensions in space, perhaps paper notebooks offer a
fine grained version of the “memory palace” method of storing facts for in-
memory browsing and recall.

Digital notebooks as well as digital books on Kindle lack the physical depth
of the relevant page. It seems likely a visual “depth” indicator would assist
recall of information in e-books. Unclear how that would work in digital
notepads unless they had a fixed quantity of “pages”.

Aside from this loss of physical memory mapping, iOS 14’s handwriting to text
is compelling. One gets to write notes out by hand, exercising that pathway,
but what ends up on the page is real text. Haven’t played with this long
enough to have any opinion on whether this transformation defeats recall.

~~~
emit_time
Can’t you get a screen protector that makes it feel more like paper?

~~~
larrywright
Yes, Moshi makes one that I have and like. It has the added benefit of adding
some anti-glare to the iPad. The one I’ve heard the most praise for is called
Paperlike: [https://paperlike.com/](https://paperlike.com/)

------
amadeuspagel
> Researchers have found that note-taking associated with keyboarding involves
> taking notes verbatim in a way that does not involve processing information,
> and so have called this “non-generative” note-taking.

From the linked paper:

> Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many
> researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than
> longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on
> students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The
> present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take
> notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in
> shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took
> notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who
> took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be
> beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim
> rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is
> detrimental to learning.

The mechanism here is probably that people are able to type faster, so typing
lets them write down every word, whereas handwriting forces them to choose
what to write down. The superior way of note taking by this logic is clearly
typing on your phone.

But this has irrelevant for note taking as people on HN are likely to
understand it: Writing down your ideas.

~~~
bakul
Note taking by hand implies making your hand draw the right shapes in the
right sequence (& "verifying" them by reading) so in effect more of your brain
in involved in actual processing. This may have a larger effect than reframing
in your own words? [Speculation as I rarely took notes. Even the process of
note taking distracted me!]

~~~
jjoonathan
There's a "Price is Right" effect too: more processing = more engagement with
the material = better, right up until you can't keep up with the lecture and
then it falls apart.

It's not just a function of the average conceptual speed of the lecture,
either, it's also a function of how bursty it is, and both are relative to
what you already know and modulated by the quality of the presentation.

Taped lectures are a game changer because you can 2x over the slow parts and
dwell on the bursts.

~~~
chongli
_right up until you can 't keep up with the lecture and then it falls apart_

And that's been my experience as a math student. Professors of advanced math
courses tend to write very quickly for brief bursts and then pause to explain
what's going on. The definition or proof they describe can often be subtle
enough that you don't have much of a chance to understand it unless you've had
the opportunity to preview the lecture notes before class.

Tragically, not every professor provides lecture notes in advance, and some
don't provide lecture notes at all. Then if you're taking notes by hand you're
taking a big risk that you might pause to reflect and miss noting a crucial
step in the proof, leaving yourself baffled by what you wrote later on.

------
jonahbenton
It took a long time but I migrated my handwriting workflow over to a
Remarkable tablet (v1, my v2 coming in a week or so).

It is quite good from a _writing_ perspective. I very much loved the tactile
experience of a good fountain pen and nib on robust heavy paper. Remarkable is
not that, of course, but a worthy experience in its own right. I am using it
at this moment for some creative technical design work.

It is less good from a _reviewing_ and _rereading_ perspective. Even at the
finest line width I have to work a little harder to read back through my poor
script- something I much less frequently found problematic on paper. And page
turning and locating earlier notes in a 20-50 page document (an amount I
easily produce weekly, sometimes daily) is much less ergonomic than with
paper.

The recognition does not work with my writing, but I can see that improving
and that feature becoming killer in the context of more structured document
authoring on the Remarkable, like filling out a templated form with gestures
or short letter/word notes. They are not far from that capability.

And on the whole I have gotten to a place where the ritual is satisfying and
useful. Not perfect, but paper and pen, however enjoyable, were not perfect
either.

I have also recently become aware of a product called Papyr, which has two
features of interest- a larger writing surface, and live synchronization with
other Papyr devices and with software on iPad or desktop. It may be able to be
a useful shared whiteboard.

~~~
jjoonathan
> page turning and locating earlier notes in a 20-50 page document (an amount
> I easily produce weekly, sometimes daily) is much less ergonomic than with
> paper.

That's why I went with an iPad over Remarkable for note taking. I LOVE my
kindle's e-ink display, but from what I saw Remarkable just doesn't let you
zoom and pan through your notes and cross-reference with the same fluidity as
a tablet, and I decided that was more important.

Hopefully they figure out how to get e-ink FPS up because I would love to have
the best of both worlds.

~~~
BrianSenator
What iPad apps do you use for note taking?

~~~
jjoonathan
GoodNotes and LiquidText for lectures and papers respectively. There is a
significant amount of path dependence in those choices.

Youtube reviews are probably the best way to get a feel for the current
competitive landscape (e.g. GoodNotes vs Notability, MarginNote vs
LiquidText).

~~~
hydroxideOH-
I've been using a 2 in 1 Linux laptop for similar use cases, but the software
options aren't amazing.

How well does the iPad handle hand recognition when using a pen? Does it
accidentally scroll down PDFs or lag when you are switching from pen to
fingers to zoom or pan?

~~~
jjoonathan
The apple pen, touch recognition, palm rejection, and 120Hz + low latency are
truly spectacular. I don't want to say flawless, but that's purely on
principle, I can't think of a single screwup. Even my (employer's) macbook pro
has a palm rejection failure about once a week, which is very good, but the
ipad is better still. The base OS and websites have silky smooth scrolling,
ditto for PDFs, even gnarly text book PDFs with scribbles everywhere. The
pencil is super accurate, it has no problems hitting 1x1mm (or 2x2mm maybe)
badges in LiquidText, and the size is perfect. It looks too big, but it's
smaller than it looks. Apple did a good job earning their Apple Tax on this
one.

~~~
sjy
Since you mentioned a 120 Hz display, I assume you’re talking about using the
second generation Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro? A sibling comment pointed out
the much cheaper price of the regular iPad (which only supports the first
generation Apple Pencil) so I thought I should chime in to say that my
experience with the first generation Pencil does not reflect yours. Writing is
laggy and imprecise (I can write legibly at about half the size on paper),
charging with a Lightning connector is extremely awkward, and it needs to be
done almost daily because the battery drains continuously [1]. I‘m still a big
fan of the iPad, but I gave up on the Pencil after two months and switched
back to paper.

[1]
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8231431](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8231431)

~~~
tomduncalf
Apple Pencil 2 is definitely a big improvement on the first one, primarily
because of the charging mechanism - the first one was always either out of
battery or I couldn’t find it when I needed it, as charging it felt stupidly
awkward and there’s no way to attach it to the iPad. The second one just
attaches and charged magnetically so it’s always there and charged when I need
it, making me much more likely to use it (and I do, all the time).

It does feel quicker and more accurate too though I wouldn’t say that’s a
dealbreaker for the first gen (I also upgraded to a 12.9” iPad which I think
makes a bigger difference for note taking etc, maybe because you end up
writing a bit bigger than on paper so the extra space is useful?)

------
baldfat
13 years ago I bought a Tablet PC (Motion PC) with OneNote and I bought a
portable shotgun mic by sony.

BEST THING EVER. I got to write with the pen (Non-touch screen) and the mic
recorded the audio for my graduate classes. It would recognize my writing and
the audio fairly decently and I was living the dream.

I could never get anyone else to use OneNote with a mic, and I was a Systems
Librarian at a College and taught all incoming freshmen. They had laptops and
OneNote and no one used it.

------
Hokusai
> Leonardo da Vinci wrote: “…the more minutely you describe, the more you will
> confuse the mind of the reader and the more you will remove him from
> knowledge of the thing described. Therefore it is necessary to make a
> drawing … as well as to describe …”

I take my notes with the computer or tablet. But, I think with a paper and a
pencil in my hand.

For design sessions my team uses simplified UML diagrams to understand the
flow of data. Just talking and taking notes feels incomplete and, literally,
difficult to visualize.

So, I agree with the post that hand writing is important, and it allows for
graphics and other enhancements.

------
tokai
Maybe a controversial opinion here, but;

I think note taking is seriously overrated. Sure some disciplines have things
you need to know by heart, and having your own notes can help with that. But I
rather use my brain power and attention to interpret and integrate what I hear
during a lecture. Then use the literature if I need to refresh anything. For
some people I feel that learning have been exchanged with note taking.

~~~
projektfu
I agree. I used to fall asleep in classes taking notes. I ditched the notebook
and started intensely focusing on the lecturer and trying to listen actively.
Attention improved and comprehension skyrocketed. As long as what was covered
was also found in printed material like a book, I was much better off.

It's n=1, but I didn't see any studies cited in the article either, just
expert opinion and suggestions like the unweildly "Cornell method", which I
have tried to use without success and never seen anyone else use.

It probably comes down to a lot of cognitive variation among people. In my
experience, reviewing notes that I took during lecture has about zero
productivity. They don't mean anything afterward, they just reflect a few bits
and pieces that made it through eyes/ears, brain, and hand. I'd be better off
with a stenographer's transcript or, you know, a book chapter I had read
before hand.

~~~
paulpauper
If you IQ is high enough, note taking is often not necessary unless the
material is very detailed or complicated. working memory and long-term memory
both positively correlated with IQ. In the high school i went to, the smartest
kids in my class were able to get good grades on tests without taking notes.

~~~
bosie
The problem is that probably everyone on HN thinks they fall into that
category....

~~~
Aeolun
At least IQ is easy enough to measure. Whether or not that correlates to
improved memory is a whole different question though.

------
emerged
I take extremely detailed hierarchical notes all day, using software similar
to org mode. Enough that it isn't feasible to use handwriting. But when it
comes to working out a particularly difficult problem, there's no substitute
for pen and paper IMO. I'd really like for the two to be better integrated,
but writing with a stylus doesn't feel good to me.

~~~
cgriswald
I took notes on an iPad Pro for a semester in college. It worked well and
there were some advantages. Infinitely expanding pages, moving notes around,
pages only exist when they’re necessary, etc.

But the thing that I missed most was the feel of pencil on paper. A stylus
sliding around glass felt... bad and I was always distracted by it.

~~~
CharlesW
> _But the thing that I missed most was the feel of pencil on paper._

Has anyone tried Paperlike? I'm interested in the "feel" and how it affects
display quality.

[https://paperlike.com/](https://paperlike.com/)

~~~
mindri0t
I have the first iteration of it and it is very very nice in terms of feel but
I found it impacted screen quality more than I could tolerate. I believe this
has improved in later versions and I’m somewhat tempted to try one of the
current ones. I was really torn when I took it off, it does feel like paper
and it even feels nicer with your hands not just the pencil, at the time it
really damaged colour accuracy and also made the screen look like it was
composed of rainbow crystals, it had a tiny prism effect on every element of
the matte surface.

~~~
CharlesW
Thanks for sharing your experience with it!

------
pier25
I went back to fountain pen + Rhodia journal while waiting for the perfect
digital device to solve this.

I have an iPad Pro but the pen on the glass just doesn't work for me. Yes,
I've tried with screen protectors but the feel is still not as good, the
screen experience is seriously degraded, and they chew your expensive pen
away.

The Remarkable seems very limited and expensive for what it is.

~~~
samatman
The tips of an Apple Pencil are an inexpensive consumable, for what it's
worth.

That said, I've had the same experience, the iPad is lovely for sketching and
calligraphy, but trying to write on it at a decent clip is an exercise in
frustration.

------
MichaelZuo
People are shaped by the tools that they use. There are significant physical
changes in the brain when writing is learned for the first time compared to
someone who never has learned writing.

It’s possible this aspect can atrophy if physical writing is not practiced for
long enough. And it’s probable relearning it will ‘reactivate’ so to speak
those pathways.

As a bonus handwriting on paper is an excellent archival medium, if stored
properly.

Hard real-time access and retrieval with guaranteed future and backwards
compatibility. No power or maintenance requirements. Guaranteed versioning is
possible, immutability, and no licensing or region issues. Also operable in
extreme cold.

Really a great solution if you need any of those features.

------
hajimemash
Wow, for 30 years I thought cursive was a fluffy, largely-useless style
technique. Didn't know it had practical uses for writing faster.

~~~
tomjen3
Cursive can be faster, if you have a slanted desk, ideally can slant the paper
a bit and that you use a fountain pen.

------
m0zg
I'm convinced that it's impossible to properly learn most complex subjects
from a lecture if you take notes on a laptop or (especially) don't take notes
at all. What little knowledge managed to stick to my brain in school, I owe to
taking copious handwritten notes, and then looking at them a few times later.
You are _forced_ to understand, since you can't possibly write down
everything, and the ease of capturing formulas and graphs is not to be
underestimated either.

Speaking of which, it makes me wonder if the current aversion to taking
handwritten notes people seem to have biases academic achievement towards some
subjects where notes are generally not very useful (e.g. programming) and away
from fundamental, formula- and graph-heavy stuff, e.g. physics and math, which
you can hardly properly learn without notes at all.

~~~
FalconSensei
In my experience, the parts from math and physics that required a lot of note
taking were things more related to memorization instead of understanding, like
formulas. Which, to be fair, seems to be the most of it, but anyway, there's a
big difference from memorizing and understanding.

~~~
m0zg
I've found it completely useless to memorize all but the most fundamental
formulas without understanding their derivation. If I just memorize a formula,
it's gone 3-6 months later. I need to understand how it came about if I want
to retain it long term.

------
somewhereoutth
I am reminded of one of the Arthurian legends - King Arthur was given a sword
_and_ a scabbard. The sword meant he could not be defeated in battle, but the
scabbard prevented his mortal wounding. He prized the sword over the scabbard,
and according to one legend left the scabbard behind to face his foe. He won
the fight, but in doing so was indeed mortally wounded, and so met his end.

The sword is being able to remember, the scabbard to forget. It is the latter,
the scabbard, to be able to forget, that is the more important. It is our
filter for the reality we endure, and gives us both wisdom and comfort.

Wisdom, because it frees us from that which was unimportant; and comfort,
because it unburdens us from those things which cause us pain.

~~~
Aeolun
That was interesting, but I am not sure how it is relevant to the topic at
hand?

------
hajimemash
Ever since the GTP-3 blog posts came out, every single article I read now
makes me wonder- am I being fooled again into thinking a article was written
by a human? Thanks u/adolos haha

------
mongol
Would love to but my handwriting is awful. Don't know why. I write so cramped,
perhaps I am holding the pen too hard. And my writing deteriorated over the
years. Became almost illegible in university. Today my hand makes the least
effort possible when I write. It is like it wants to drop the pen as soon as
possible, but is forced to hold on by its conscious master. The keyboard is a
bliss for me, it allows me to make structured notes effortlessly. But I still
wish my relationship to handwriting was better.

~~~
freehunter
The reason your handwriting gets worse is because the more you type, the less
you write. You’ve fallen out of practice, and the only key to nice handwriting
is to keep practicing and keep writing.

~~~
kitd
Agreed.

When I was younger and writing regularly, I could scribble fast and it would
still be relatively neat.

Now I type all day, the few occasions when I do write just end up in a
mistake-ridden scrawl.

I find I need to relax my finger grip and slow down, almost like I'm back in
junior school.

------
bserge
Well, I disagree. I can't CTRL-F my paper notes, and I've got a ton of them. I
need to digitize them, fortunately Google Lens can actually understand most of
my scribbles, which is really impressive.

I do like sketching ideas on paper, can't do it as fast on a computer. I tried
the Note 9 with its stylus, it's rather good, but the screen is too small.

~~~
intrasight
Read that and wondered why you would struggle with moving the cursor one
character forward. Then realized that I live in Emacs and that you had meant
something else;)

~~~
samatman
This is one of the advantages of macOS, all the familiar GUI shortcuts live on
the command key.

Not unrelated: Readline/emacs shortcuts work almost everywhere, which is to
say that Ctl-F is forward in this very text buffer.

Not that I use it, but I do use Ctl-A and Ctl-E a fair amount.

------
gaurangagg
I have taken over 10K notes in last 9 years and this is what I do -- I take a
lot of hand-written notes and then I type down everything -- I believe it
reinforces everything for me as I do the latter after a few days.

And thank you all for sharing such insightful comments.

~~~
wussboy
Writing things down lets other parts of your brain know what’s going on. I
reach for my notebook a dozen times a day. Often just writing my question down
makes the answer obvious.

------
radium3d
I must do it differently with a keyboard. I usually use bullet points for all
note taking and I do process it, in fact have more time to process it and
think about it because I spend less time drawing symbols. Must be a tough one
to measure for a study.

------
vira28
Bought both Notability and Goodnotes this week; Their macOS apps (I feel)
really terrible. How do you folks use across mac and iPad. (Multiplatform is a
big thing which I feel missing in both apps). Any suggestion? Thanks.

------
agumonkey
Physical involvement is probably diffusing stimuli in many many parts of our
brains. Because anything kinetic was extremely important to our lives.
Probably creates symbolic memories coupled with musculoskeletal ones.

------
wdb
I like the combination of paper and fountain pen, a bit thicker than normal,
feels so much better than using the iPad :)

WFH left me doing less note taking, though. As I just audio record the
important meetings.

------
jl2718
What ever happened to mini digital notepads? They were terrible but must have
since improved. I want a stylus for my phone, and I want instant access to
blank page as soon as I pull it out.

~~~
nicbou
The Remarkable and the Supernote seem to fill that role.

I started obsessively looking at them earlier this week, and my conclusion is
that they're not ready for prime time yet. The Remarkable software team is
facing heavy criticism. The Supernote team is lauded for their responsiveness,
but they don't have warehouses in Europe. Both companies accept preorders, not
actual orders.

The ideas and hardware are there, but the products still need a lot of
refinement.

------
zb1plus
I take notes on an iPad using an Apple pencil. It seems to right balance
between using the digital to organize and correct things and the cognitive
benefits to handwriting.

~~~
sandeeps_
Is the experience of using Apple Pencil with iPad very close to a real paper
and pen? I’m tempted to get one myself.

~~~
mattacular
It's pretty close. The tactile sensation of writing against paper versus glass
is different.

I do wish pencil could be attached to the ipad easily without having to buy a
special case though as they always tend to separate in my household and having
to go hunt the stylus down makes it a lot less useful.

~~~
DenisM
FYI Recent iPad Pro models have pencils magnetically attached and charged at
once.

~~~
pcbro141
As well as the new, cheaper iPad Air coming in October.

------
Paianni
My typing is much faster than my handwriting, so if I am able to type I always
opt for that. Slide changes when my notes for them are unfinished are really
annoying.

~~~
criddell
If you believe the research, the slower speed of handwriting is a feature not
a problem.

~~~
rsamvit
What about writing on a phone? I've been taking a lot of mobile notes and have
found it to be a very convenient optimal point between slower, intentional
writing vs digital format and accessibility.

~~~
FalconSensei
you mean, typing/swiping on the phone? Also less useful for retention, I would
say. It's only slower than typing on the computer because of the inconvenient
keyboard size. But you are still just pressing buttons that are millimeters
apart. While handwriting you have to actually make different shapes.

For me, optimal is to use something like OneNote, which you can use with a pen
(iPad/Surface), and it recognizes what you handwrite

------
AndrewOMartin
The article appears to conflate notetaking by hand versus notetaking on a
keyboard with summarised notes versus verbatim notes.

There is a paradox here though, and I'm experiencing it myself as I review
10yrs of note books filled during the course of my PhD. I was hoping to find
lots of forgotten treasures but I'm discovering more and more that anything I
wrote down was also retained (more or less), of course anything not written
down was lost to time. It's as if I may as well have been writing onto a
ceramic tile with a drinking straw.

------
sigmonsays
personally I have a notebook and when learning new things or in meetings for
building software. I write key things down. Just this alone allows me to
remember more, recall things much later and provide structure for exploring
and learning more. Plus old notebooks are kinda fun to skim through and look
back on when updating a resume.

------
AniseAbyss
The last time I actually wrote something down I couldn't decipher my own
handwriting so yeah about that...

------
mraza007
This is why i got my self a remarkable tablet so i don’t have to deal with
paper anymore

------
SenpaiHurricane
I recommend to use stone tablets...

------
soniman
This is going to get downvoted but note taking is yak shaving. Don't waste any
time thinking about optimal note taking.

------
afrojack123
The year was 1970. Fred Flintstone time travelled to the future. Amazed at the
efficiency of digital note-taking, he renounces hand-written notes. Fred
Flintstone now uses his memory to remember actions that build things, not
useless, easily searchable facts like fire is good.

