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Writing by hand is good for your brain
- senko 2mo ago> Being left handed is fine As a lefty, I would rather never write another word then twist my hand the way he's doing (above the current line) to avoid the smudges.
- qyph 2mo agoI find that writing with ai is far superior both in terms of results and for my memory. Writers like Neal won’t be competitive for much longer. It’s time to put the pencils down.
- nehal3m 2mo agoShow me an interesting novel you wrote, then.
- nee_oo_ru 2mo ago[flagged]
- timvdalen 2mo agoI mean, I love writing with fountain pen and I do it every day, but I have _read_ Anathem.
- kettlez 2mo agoHello fellow Anathem reader, there's doesn't seem to be many of us
- thechao 2mo agoAnathem is the best Stephenson book; The Algebraist is the best Iain Banks. There's enough of us to fill a good sized van!
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoSomething is seriously wrong with an author when they think they need to invent an entire new language (and force the reader to learn half of it) just for a book. ENGLISH IS A PERFECTLY FINE LANGUAGE, AND EVERY GREAT WORK OF ENGLISH WAS WRITTEN USING IT! Stephenson was my literally my favorite author, but when I got to Anathem I was like fuck this pompous asshat and his made up language BS: I'm sticking to authors who write in English.
- treetalker 2mo agodupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49004202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49004202
- vivzkestrel 2mo ago- coding without an LLM is also good for your brain - whose gonna tell it to em? - dont worry, the long term studies are going to pick this up big time 5 years from now
- stingraycharles 2mo agoAnd the long term studies will show that it’s indeed not good, people will discuss it, and nothing will really change, except that there will be a counter movement, and writing code by hand will become a real craft again.
- fooqux 2mo agoWe also know fast food, alcohol, etc., are bad for you and yet most people do these things. I wouldn't bet on LLM usage going down due to it anytime soon.
- bee_rider 2mo agoI wonder if an LLM could just turn my hand-written notes into code, and if so, where this’d land on the brain health spectrum.
- jdgoesmarching 2mo agoI thought the purpose of coding was to produce software, but apparently every action I take should be evaluated on how well it achieves arbitrary brain calisthenics.
- monsieurbanana 2mo agoYes the brain is known to be useful when writing software
- arandomhuman 2mo agojej
- 2mo ago
- kstenerud 2mo ago> I’m not an expert on how the brain works, but I can say that, Aaaaaand time to tune out.
- voidnullvalue 2mo agoAppeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. Perverse incentives exist in every domain, and you cannot discount the human factor. The experts can be wrong.
- austinthetaco 2mo agoThe experts in the sciences usually back their claims up using citations, and can be disproven through the normal methods of disproving citations. not through "vibes"
- kstenerud 2mo agoAnd in this case, Van der Meer's experiment showing more "elaborate" brain activity during handwriting was correlational. The conclusion that this leads to better learning outcomes does not follow. More to your point: calling "appeal to authority" does not license argument from ignorance. Furthermore, appeal to authority only refers to an authority who is not authoritative in the domain in question.
- rendaw 2mo agoI don't think this is appeal to authority (or the reverse, I guess). Neuroscience is complex, being a scientist/doctor is one signal that the observations here would be based on/reflective of a large body of knowledge. Probably GP's unstated point is that the author isn't a scientist/doctor and they also haven't studied/read up on their own either.
- erickhill 2mo agoThis is why I use a reMarkable tablet for my notes. I noticed a few years ago that when I wrote down my notes I actually remembered them more easily. Something about the hand/brain connection helped etch my thoughts more deeply. I still use Apple Notes, but more as a place to store copy/paste info I want to save or checklists. But for meeting or game design notes? Writing those down 100%.
- computerdork 2mo agoHow 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.
- brian-dewey 2mo agoI 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/ https://inksightful.app/
- computerdork 2mo agoInteresting, will take a look!
- erickhill 2mo agoIt 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.
- computerdork 2mo agoAh, okay. Will probably just have to try it out.
- malomalsky 2mo agoI like handwriting, but it struggles when you need to copy it in your obsidian
- murat124 2mo agoTake a pic of the pages, extract text.
- malfist 2mo agoRocketbook has some products that promise to help with this here. I've tried them and found them high friction but it might be worth it to you. There's also the pens that use cameras and special papers like livescribe (I think?) but I didn't love those either.
- plastic-enjoyer 2mo agoI just take a photo and let an LLM transcribe it
- criddell 2mo agoIt's a bummer that Apple Pencil support isn't better in the iPadOS version of Obsidian.
- tiahura 2mo agoRemember when serious debugging meant at least an inch of greenbar?
- world2vec 2mo agoAlways boggles my mind that some people can't write cursive. So you write each letter one by one?
- yoz-y 2mo agoYes. When I write cursive and want to be able to read after myself I need to write very slowly and deliberately. All my childhood I optimized my cursive writing for speed. Most teachers I had only valued note taking, not thinking about what is written.
- Aaronstotle 2mo agoI haven't written cursive in many years, i should try it again but since i'm out of practice i find it takes more time to write than going print. Which of course does lead to hand cramps etc
- nephihaha 2mo agoYou need to practice it. It's a survival skill. You'll never know when you'll need it.
- doublepg23 2mo agoI'm almost 30 and I haven't run into a "survival situation" where I needed cursive. I would hazard a guess it falls below knowing Spanish but above folding origami cranes.
- nephihaha 2mo agoNo, definitely not. Although it depends where you are. If you are near South America etc, then Spanish would be useful to know. I have used it before when I've lost a phone etc, or if I had no way of contacting someone otherwise. I can think of more dramatic situations too. Technology can be helpful but if you're overreliant on it then that is a potential weakness.
- julienchastang 2mo ago
- losvedir 2mo agoWow, I can't believe Neal Stephenson of all people writes exclusively by hand. His books are tomes. I totally buy that this is the case for him. I wonder how much is just what he's used to vs what's actually better. I feel like I write so slow compared to how fast I type that I struggle to put the words together on the paper. I can spurt out something with a keyboard 10x as fast, and then re-review and re-organize and all that.
- criddell 2mo agoIf writing by hand is good for your brain (and I suspect it is), the slowness may be part of the reason for that.
- mbreese 2mo agoKnowing that makes a lot of sense. Sometimes his prose can read like a sentence that was started but he’s too much effort in to give up on. It probably helps his writing to do it by hand - you can’t edit quickly on the fly with paper (unless you’re cutting stuff out). I could see this as being part of his process - just write and let the editing happen later. Whatever the process it is, long as his books may be, it works.
- citizenpaul 2mo agoThis actually explains why I've never been able to get into his writing despite rave reviews and countless recommendations by people I know. Something about his writing always just felt tedious to me. Im an avid reader btw.
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoHis earlier stuff was much better. If you tried Snow Crash or Diamond Age and didn't like them, he's not the author for you, but if you tried his more recent crap like Anathem I would strongly advise you not to judge him based on it. Give his earlier works a try and you may find he used to be able to write well (ie. he used to actually edit his work), before he stopped caring and just wrote 1000 pages of unfiltered garbage.
- clivestaples 2mo agoI taught Gore Vidal how to use a computer in 1995. After a week worth of trying to use a PowerBook Duo, he went back to pen and paper. When asked how to improve my writing, he said use a pen and transcribe your favorite author. That I would eventually find the rhythm and style and make it my own.
- The_Blade 2mo agoi read half of Troilus and Criseyde out loud to myself one summer in college and i may be a weirdo but it paid dividends. unbowdlerized Chaucer is the tits
- uneoneuno 2mo agoThat's really cool. I read Lincoln when I was around 18 and it has always stuck with me. The books you read become a part of you; they grow your view of the world. Books are the only way we have to capture the experience or mind of another person, and directly transfer not only their words but almost a sliver of the authors soul directly to others. Movies, sure.. But books hook into the imagination and mind.
- criddell 2mo agoAs I understand it, that's more or less what Benjamin Franklin says he did to become a better writer. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/10/02/how-ben-franklin-learned-to-write/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2017/10/02/how-ben-franklin...
- ellyagg 2mo agoBenjamin Franklin said the same in his autobiography. I wonder if Gore Vidal had read it.
- costco 2mo agoVery interesting. Hunter S. Thompson described the same technique for learning to write. I'll try it even if it only gets applied to technical blog posts...
- pmarsh 2mo ago
- Tepix 2mo agoGreat advice. Didn't know Neal is left-handed. Neal, if you're reading this, will you ever visit Germany on a book signing tour?
- postalcoder 2mo agoA 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 trying to figure out the right notation or highlighter color for a line. Just mark them up and later it’ll make sense. Edit: I think the broader point that some of you may be missing is that I’m not prescribing a particular form of notetaking. I’m saying that reading is made more rewarding with active engagement. How you best engage is up to you.
- dw_arthur 2mo agoIf I'm really studying a book I'll have an office supply store cut the spine out and make the book spiral bound. It's pretty cheap to do it too, like $10 or something.
- jboss10 2mo agoMichael Stevens (of Vsause fame) copies long quotes into notebooks, and he claims the act of writing it helps him remember. And if it's not worth writing, it's not a good enough quote.
- baruz 2mo agoThose are called commonplace books.
- SomeHacker44 2mo agoYes! 100x this. I do this all the time with my print technical books.
- nephihaha 2mo agoDepends on the edition. I lent a book years ago to someone that was destroyed by damp on a window sill. I've never been able to get another copy of it. A less rare book in a mass market edition would be another thing.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- hmokiguess 2mo agoI have been thinking about that with regards to the new generation, I forget where but I saw a YouTube video interviewing Gen Alpha and how they couldn't recognize calligraphy texts. I was sad, of course, but at the same time, it made me think if their brain is just being shaped differently. Could it be that this sort of thesis "writing = good" applies to us because we belong to a generation that had our formative memories shaped through that activity? Is there something inherent to writing that makes it good or is it just a consequence because we did things that way?
- enaaem 2mo agoI write by hand to hack my productivity. I buy nice notebooks and nice pens that are satisfying to use. I practice my handwriting, so the finished work is satisfying to look at. I think it gives me a bit of dopamine boost.
- ignu 2mo agoI switched from an Obsidian fanboy to only writing by hand, and I'm never going back. It seemed preposterous to put notes in something I can't back up or "CTRL+F" search, but I've found that yes, sometimes I spend two minutes looking for a note, but when I do I generally never have to look up that information again... as opposed to things I'd search Obsidian for constantly that seemed to never get stored in my brain.
- criddell 2mo agoIn my first job, my supervisor gave me a Day Timer binder and set of pages for it and I very dependent on it within a few weeks. That thing was always with me and I was a little terrified that I would leave it somewhere. If I were hit by a bus and they gave that book to my replacement, they would have no problem picking up where I left off. Then I got a series of Palm Pilot devices and left the paper behind. It worked pretty well for me and the grafitti handwriting system was ingenious. Aside from my contact list being duplicated a few times a year, I didn't really have any negative experiences. Then smart phones hit and even though they can do everything any electronic organizer ever did for me, I've never been as happy with them. I'm seriously considering buying a paper planner again. Shared calendars is the only thing blocking me. I love Obsidian too, but for me it's just a place where I park notes for future reference. I don't actively use it.
- lilerjee 2mo agoWriting by hand has some advantages and writing by keyboard also has some advantages. Using note-taking app or similar software is very convenient and useful in some situations.
- NidhiTiwari2026 2mo agoHi. Retention is a problem not because there is something wrong with our memory but that’s how the brain works. Science shows that we forget 70% of what you read in 24 hours. I have had the same issue and always left me with the feeling that I am not getting the best out of my reading. So I created LearnBetter. It applies learning science principles to help you retain by converting what you read into short exercises. Re-reading, highlighting or writing it yourself by creating then organizing notes won’t give you the results you are looking for. Atleast not to me. Trust me I have done them all. Try out Learnbetter. See if that helps you. It’s free. I am passionate about this problem and I want to help others who are going through what I did. It’s getlearnbetter.ai. It’s in beta so expect some minor issues here and there. Would love to hear what you think if you decide to try.
- harikb 2mo ago> If the pen’s ink reservoir is partly empty, so that it contains an air bubble, and if it’s positioned nib down, then, when you go up in an airplane, the bubble will expand as the ambient pressure drops, forcing ink out the nib. Once I figured that out, I got in the habit of making sure my pens were positioned nib up when taking off in an airplane. If I have time I’ll also refill the pen before departure, to minimize the size of the air bubble. Finally! this was one of those things that bothered me for many years, but not enough to spend time to research :) . Thank you!!
- rhodin 2mo agoYes, I've had to learn this one the hard way, too. And more than once, I have to admit.
- justinsaccount 2mo agoI'm a huge fan of N.S. and what he says might be true, but I have an aversion to writing by hand after being tortured while growing up in the late 80s. I just couldn't seem to hold a pen or pencil the right way and would always fall behind following along with the rest of the class. I was forced to spend hours at home with worksheets tracing over letters. I was led to believe that if I couldn't write properly I would be a complete failure. It turns out being able to use a computer and type quickly was a more useful skill.
- aledevv 2mo ago> when you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your brain, which is a good thing. I completely agree! Perhaps it's simply for one reason: slowness. Writing by hand slows down and the brain "breathes", calms down, and the waves of thought flow at their proper pace. We aren't made to rush always: by slowing down, our brain also has time to better process thoughts and information, one at a time, and each one is given the "time it deserves." Our brain works best when it's relaxed and has time to make all its connections. Thinking is, first and foremost, an exercise in slowness. (ps: I'm also left-handed, I wonder if this also affects the functioning of the brain...).
- deton3991 2mo ago[flagged]
- kettlez 2mo agoI've done Julia Cameron's "morning pages" exercise off and on over the years, write three full pages of flow of consciousness by hand first thing in the morning, and it's shocking how good it is for unlocking ideas and working through problems when done consistently.
- dv35z 2mo agoTotally agree. To others: The book is called "The Artists Way", and is an excellent guide to become more creative and expressive.
- beej71 2mo agoAnother recommendation for this.
- Multicomp 2mo agoI've done that for a time, then fell off for the past few years. Today, I'm getting out my journal right after I hit 'send' and I'm doing this. To whoever is reading this and may be in a similar situation, let's start the streak up again today! EDIT: I did it and am glad I overcame the inertia - it was a little over a whole year since I pulled out the journal, so if whoever out there is still on the fence, give it a shot, it's worth the accomplished dopamine afterwards!
- dv35z 2mo agoDo you keep a daily journal normally - and for the daily pages, do you have a separate notebook for them, or a folder full of pages, or what? Thanks for inspiring us!
- beej71 2mo agoNot the GP, but my daily journal goes in a proper journal book (though I find the cheapest possible one that has semi-rigid covers) and my freewrites go in cheap wide-ruled composition books. The only rationale I have for that is the journal form factor holds more words and is easier to pack on trips, when I tend to leave my freewrites behind.
- balderdash 2mo agoi like writing by hand, and definitely generate better content / thoughts. I don't like going back through my writing and putting it in electronic form (an no writing on an electronic device (ipad/remarkable etc.) doesn't is not a substitute).
- otterpro 2mo ago> you’re going to get tired faster if your muscles have to exert more force I like to handwrite, but my right hand gets tired very fast, especially as I got older. I write almost a shorthand style, and it is hard to read, but I value speed of writing things down versus the neatness or readability afterward. The author recommends fountain pen or gel rollerball pen, which I have both tried. Does anyone have any other advice for preventing fatigue? I've also tried to learn to use my left hand, so I can switch hand when my hand gets tired. But even after months (or years?) of trying, I could never get it to write, or atleast to my satisfaction.
- ambicapter 2mo agoWrite slower.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- uberstuber 2mo agoIf you're willing to try things like non-dominant hand writing, it may be worth learning something like business cursive. Most of the movement is done with your arm, and it was designed for people who had to handwrite all day for their job.
- cratermoon 2mo agoDon't hold the pen too tightly. Find a pen and paper combination that doesn't require force to write. Ball point pens on cheap notebook paper are notorious for requiring too much force. On quality paper with a good pen the ink will flow effortlessly because of gravity and capillary action. You will only need a light pressure.
- kevin42 2mo agoI'm left handed and I never really learned a good grip I could write with. So I've always struggled with handwriting. I also have an essential tremor in my left hand. As I have aged, the tremor has gotten worse. So now, I have to grip tight to minimize the tremor. I've pretty much given up on handwriting, it's embarrassing to either try to write, or have someone else write stuff for me. I ask my wife to fill stuff out for me all the time, but people probably think that's weird when they see it.
- derangedHorse 2mo ago> Removing friction by using a hard stylus on glass will actually make the process more tiring. Well since I've never written with a fountain pen, and the type of paper I write on with the fountain pen matters, I'm probably better off picking up the habit with an ipad or the like. From the source paper: > Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning I would also be interested in whether the parts lighting up are actually contributing to learning the task at hand. The 2024 paper quoted above didn't mention a test for comprehension. The prior Stanford experiment also reasoned that writing helped with comprehension because students were forced to summarize. I'd like to see an experiment that forces both groups, typing and writing, to summarize while their brains are scanned. I'd also like to see results from tests for comprehension for each group. I feel like that would make a stronger case for whether the benefit from writing is actually worth it.
- satvikpendem 2mo agoSomewhat related, I've seen more and more colleges now banning devices in class and reverting to handwritten notes and exams only, presumably due to AI. When I went to college this was actually already done, where many professors, even for CS, made you write code by hand. And it's true, it actually helps you reason better when writing it down over typing it.
- taude 2mo agoWhen i was in college, we wrote a lot of C code in those blue notebooks. And this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is probably why I don't totally didn't hate whiteboard coding tests. And when I'm trying to work with a new programming language or tool, I'm usually writing things out by hand (helps with the memory, like the article referenced).
- neovive 2mo agoI'm curious about everyone's opinion on writing "by hand" with a stylus on tablets like the Remarkable, Kindle Scribe, iPad+Pencil, etc. I like sketching and outlining with pencil and paper, but my handwritten notes are often illegible and disorganized. I know it's partly process and my poor penmanship, but digital surfaces compensate for this with built-in organization, searchability, and easier integration into projects and knowledge bases.
- mbreese 2mo agoMy handwriting is roughly legible on paper (but getting worse). It is the same on an iPad+pencil with a Paperlike screen cover. It was impossible to read on my Remarkable 2 - the resolution just isn’t there for me. I think it’s important to have that friction between the stylus and the screen. And if you have that, I am pretty happy with notes on either my iPad or paper.
- threetonesun 2mo agoI found the Paperlike to be worse than the iPad screen alone, but I've been happy with the Astropad Rock Paper Pencil as it comes with a replacement tip for the Apple Pencil that has a metal tip and generates some noticeable friction.
- cratermoon 2mo agoI think tablet handwriting is fine. I had some six weeks of down time a while back and took advantage of it to go through the Getty-Dubay book Write Now: the Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success to improve my handwriting legibility. There's a website now https://handwritingsuccess.com/ https://handwritingsuccess.com/ and for your purposes even more relevant, there's a mobile app. I'm not affiliated, in case you're wondering. As for disorganization, that's kind of the nature of early notes. There are ways to kind of organize them. One technique I use is writing them on notecards or notecard-sized paper, which I can later shuffle and organize.
- samrolken 2mo agoI tried for years to make handwriting on the iPad work, but it never clicked for me. I randomly encountered a reMarkable Paper Pro Move recently, instantly purchased it. For the first time in my life, I no longer tote a paper notebook with me. The software, simplicity, low-latency, form factor, writing feel, everything is absolutely perfect for me.
- thequux 2mo agoDon't underestimate the importance of a pen, ink, and paper you like. I found my pen a decade ago: Lamy Studio, in British Racing Green, with a medium nib. I found my ink not long after, from J Herbin's collection. It wasn't until I got a nice notebook from Leuchtturm 1917, though, that the ensemble came together and I started looking for excuses to get my kit out and write things down. Since then, I've moved onto notebooks from de Kempen, but the point stands
- SoftTalker 2mo agoA nice pen is... nice. But it's as easy to fall into geeking out about pens and paper as it is keyboards, knives and other kitchen utensils, tools, etc. In most cases, any pen is as good as any other. Or just find a cheap mass produced pen that feels good in your hand. They are plentiful. Then buy a stock of them. I actually like using pencils, with a thick lead because I tend to have a pretty heavy hand when writing and I will continually break a thin lead.
- chairmansteve 2mo agoPencil with soft lead works perfectly for me.
- Gecko4072 2mo agoI know this is true and all but I think a lot of people never really write anything anyways. Texting, random notes, emails. Strange to say but it feels kind of hipster and performative with the technology we have, which kind of makes it hard to enjoy. What I mean is I understand the theory but never have a chance to implement it or even want to.
- girvel 2mo agoI like writing by hand, but I don’t agree with the logic that it’s good because it recruits more areas of the brain. The less effective the medium is, the more of the brain it will recruit; chiseling on a stone tablet is probably a more complex task and it probably gives a more broad stimulus to the brain, but it does not mean it’s such a good idea. I would personally prefer to use a text editor for effective writing and then crochet for fine motor skill.
- peder 2mo agoRight, it's a false signal. It doesn't mean that more things are retained. I think what happens in these types of threads is that the people who like handwritten notes, perhaps even obsessively so, all pour in. But that population of handwriting fans isn't necessarily representative of the population overall.
- left-struck 2mo agoI agree that “more areas of the brain” does not mean better necessarily, however I do wonder about the chiseling stone thing. If you chiseled some formula or something into stone you’re unlikely to forget it any time soon. I wonder if forcing yourself to ruminate over something a bit longer than it takes to type it, in a way that can actually hold your attention or repeatedly bring it back to the topic, doesn’t indeed help.
- qiller 2mo agoAlways found that writing stuff down helps me to remember things better, whether studying something, prepping for an exam, or in general. Didn't even matter if I didn't look at those notes again, it just got "stored" better. Didn't know he is a lefty too! Fountain pens + lefty is a tough combo; we had to use fountain pens in the 1st grade and my wrist was always stained on the side. Agree with the rollerball angle, Pilot V5 is my go to now...
- pyrophane 2mo agoI've thought about how hard it must be to be a lefty fountain pen user. What is one to do? Learn to write without resting your hand on the page?
- cannonpalms 2mo agoIf you read the linked post, he covers this
- pavon 2mo agoI'm glad he posted the video. One thing he didn't mention that is striking to me is how high his hand is on the page, essentially resting above the line he is writing, with his thumb parallel to the line. Whereas as a right-hander, my hand is essentially centered on the line, with my thumb at a 45 degree angle to the line. Do most left-handers learn to hold their pen/pencil like that? If not I imagine it would be quite a transition to adapt to as all the motions are rotated - the portion of the stroke previously done by moving fingers in and out would instead be done by moving side to side, and vice-versa. Edit: Or from trying it, I guess you could just write as normal and end up with everything italic/slanted.
- a_e_k 2mo agoFrom what I've read, lefties are typically classified into "over-writers", "side-writers", and "under-writers". That video caught my attention too, as it shows pretty clearly that he's an over-writer. I myself am probably somewhere in between an over-writer and a side-writer lefty, edging slightly closer to an over-writer. Maybe a 20 degree angle to the line as my thumb wraps around my other fingers? I've never found a fountain pen that I've liked because every time I've tried one, I ended up tearing the paper as I go as I'm essentially pushing the nib across the page and so the nib snags on the paper, digs in, and makes little holes. And I left pencils behind as soon as I could in school because every day I'd come home with the side of my left hand silvered with graphite. These days, my preference is a Pentel EnerGel, a Uniball Signo, or a Pilot G-2 (i.e., gel pens like the article mentions). They can write easily without much force and dry quickly enough so that my hand doesn't smudge. For my daily pocket carry, I've also learned that I always want the capped variants rather the click kind, or else I'll end up with stained inner pockets and scribbles on my thigh. This makes the G-2s nice for home and desk use, but not for daily carry. (And though the article suggests using cursive and not getting hung up on legibility, somewhere back in grade or middle school I switched to using either print style, or an engineering-hand-like small caps style, depending on mood. Both in the interest of legibility, despite my left-handedness.)
- u1hcw9nx 2mo ago> Pains me to say it, but rollerball gel pens are about as good as fountain pens on this front. This. Don't use pencil or normal ballpoint bell with thick ink. Good gel pens are really good and not that much more expensive.
- fny 2mo agoThat was a reccomendation from a philosophy professor I had in college. By the end of the semester, I didn't even have to review my notes. I went back to school at 25, and that moment made me realize why school felt strangely more difficult, and then I remembered that we wrote down everything back then.
- simplegeek 2mo agoFor last few months, whenever I am trying to understand a difficult problem or a concept or addressing a complex issue at work or in relationships, I try to write one page by hand. Often it brings clarity or surfaces the core confusion/misunderstanding. I don't know why that works but it has been really useful.
- jeffreyrogers 2mo agoIt's ironic that the article that caused him to write this post (https://substack.com/@justindeschamps/note/c-261265212?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7y05q https://substack.com/@justindeschamps/note/c-261265212?utm_s...) is written by AI. I see this style of informational writing all over the place now.
- entropicdrifter 2mo agoI've always struggled with writing by hand primarily because I tend to over-tense my grip on a pencil/pen even with an ergonomic grip attached. I learned to touch type pretty early on, so back in school before they let us bring laptops to class I would sometimes "type" notes and imagine the text of them in my head as I typed. This still helped with my retention compared to just listening and making mental connections between the concepts being introduced. Sometimes I would type out the full detailed notes and then by hand write out tiny personal shorthand bullet points that would help me recall the general point. To this day, if I'm trying to learn something new, I will sometimes "type" on an invisible keyboard if I don't have a pen/paper or a smartphone I can write down specifics on. It doesn't work as well for things like memorizing phone numbers or like support ticket ID numbers, but I've found it helps me ingest knowledge even if it doesn't help as much with raw information the way writing by hand does. Now all of that said, I have also found, like Neal Stephenson, that a high quality, low friction pen on notebook paper tends to feel the best and produce the least cramping. To this day, when I absolutely need to take handwritten notes, I use a Sharpie Rollerball 0.5 black pen with a small notebook, primarily for D&D (and other TTRPG) prep-work, so that I can recall specifics off the top of my head better while improvising.
- k__ 2mo agoDo crosswords count?
- tim-projects 2mo agoI'd rather learn a language than write with a pen. In my life at least, writing with a pen is now depreceated. Maybe writing left handed would be worth it but I can't think of another good reason to bring it back.
- criddell 2mo agoWhy would I ride my bicycle anywhere when I have a car?
- tim-projects 2mo agoNot sure the intent of the question. Is the pen the car or the bicycle? To me bicycles are for health and for short distances. Cars are for heavy objects and long distances. I used to ride bicycles to the train station, then get a train to another city and ride it on the other side. Which kind of alters that. Essentially for me at least, bicycles and cars have entirely different uses. A pen on the other hand, is just a worse version of a keyboard. Unless I'm signing a document. Though as the years pass, that is increasingly done digitally and often doesn't even involve hand movements that anywhere near resemble pen use.
- criddell 2mo agoRiding a bicycle is good for your body. Writing by hand is good for your brain.
- allthetime 2mo agoThis applies to code as well, except, typing, instead of generating
- asxndu 2mo ago>Use cursive Any good resources to learn cursive?
- _joel 2mo agoProbably one of the best interview questions that I've been asked over the years, is to write a script (can't remember the purpose) in bash, using pen and paper. Really made me think hard.
- madduci 2mo agoThis was my personal trick at the university. I was writing down all the notes during classes, even at the ugliest of my handwriting, but after classes insat down and rewrote the whole Notes in a better and clear way, so I was directly storing information in my brain. I just needed to re-read the better notes 1 or 2 times and I could already recall the information, even at distance of time.
- keyboardtest 2mo agoGreat!
- UtopiaPunk 2mo agoDoes anyone here handwrite a blog? I've been thinking about doing that, but I'd be interested in how people accomplish it. Personally, I'd like this to be a hobby that gets me away from screens, so I'm looking to focus more on handwriting and minimize how much I'd need to interact with a digital device. "Paper Website" seems appealing, but I haven't tried it yet: https://paperwebsite.com/ https://paperwebsite.com/
- tadfisher 2mo agoNot a blog, but I handwrite presentation slides sometimes. And, of course, pages of notes. I use my ReMarkable 2 for that, so it's pretty easy to import to desktop and run scripts.
- coffeeaddict1 2mo ago> It might then seem reasonable to think that writing with a stylus on an iPad or similar would be best, since no force is needed and friction is minimized. I don’t think this is true. A small amount of friction is actually desirable. I find digital handwriting quite pleasant and almost better than writing on paper. Friction is indeed an issue, but you can just buy a dedicated screen protector to address this problem.
- nighteous 2mo ago[dead]
- tdesilva 2mo agoYeah especially for doing math, I've found it's really helpful that I can just select some equations I wrote and shift them down (or insert more space). It helps with adding derivations or additional notes after the fact. However I'm considering moving back to handwritten notebooks for some things, purely due to the simplicity (no worry about battery life, technical issues, or the difficulty in switching back and forth between my book reader and my notes app).
- HardCodedBias 2mo agoI don't think that the research is as conclusive as the article makes it out to be ( I know he links ). I would consider this: maybe useful, do it if you find it entertaining.
- drivers99 2mo agoI'm a convert to the idea of just having a cup full of Bic Cristal (cheap, ubiquitous, reliable, replaceable, 76 year old design) ball point pens. Whenever I temporarily misplace one, I just grab another from the cup as I find them. When I'm cleaning up, they all go back to the cup. However, his point about how hard you have to push to write is making me reconsider. On the other hand, I'm also not writing 42 inch high stacks of manuscripts like him.
- exmadscientist 2mo agoThe modern version of this is the Pilot G2. Scatter 'em around everywhere! 80% as good as fountain pens at 1% of the fussiness. I have a Lamy 2000 (well, more than one...) that I adore for writing anything with any actual length. But I still scatter those G2s around.
- drivers99 2mo agoI used to be a fan of Zebra Sarasa (retractable, not one of the variations) which I thought was better than the G2, but it wasn't always reliable (maybe they changed something), was more expensive, hard to find in stores (G2 are everywhere though), and accumulates a glob of ink when you draw a line across the page, which ends up wherever you next write something. I happen to have a G2 next to me so I'm testing it for the same problem now, and ended up with a glob somewhere along the long line. I cross things off of todo lists a lot or draw dividers between sections of the page so that happens all the time. Still, it might be a good compromise for the pressure issue for writing sentences. Not that I'm that price sensitive, it is kind of nice: Sarasa ($2+ each, if you can find it), G2 (~1.25 each), Cristal ($0.10-$0.25 each)
- exmadscientist 2mo agoThe G2 definitely does glob. That's one of its bigger faults. (Others being that I, personally, prefer a line width between the 05 and 07 options -- obviously this is world-stoppingly critically important -- and that really old ones, I mean really old, tend to get disgusting sticky grips.) Mostly they're just nice for being fairly rugged and reliable in a way most nicer pens just aren't, for carrying loads of ink, and for being ubiquitous. They're far from perfect. They're just... Good Enough™. And that's good enough!
- thecombjelly 2mo agoI still hand write a lot of code, and especially when starting out on projects or making more fundamental changes. I find it leads to better architectural solutions. My thinking has been that writing it out by hand can be slower so my brain is incentivized to think through the options and come up with more concise solutions. But maybe, as the article suggests, there are other small factors to hand-writing that lead to an improvement as well. I also use then go through the hand-written code to "execute" programs in my head and I think this also leads to higher-quality code. I encourage anyone that wants to be genuinely good at programming and software engineering to give it a try.
- patrickscoleman 2mo agoI like writing by hand and now it’s easier than ever to just take a picture and give it to an LLM for a transcription if you need it on your phone/computer. Small local models work well for this too.
- pyrophane 2mo ago> "don't use a gadget" I agree with this but for a different reason than what the author gives. When you write in a notebook you can see where what you are writing is within the notebook (e.g. ~1/3 of the way through, etc). That seems like a small thing but I think it really helps with anchoring the memory when writing, as well as with referencing it later. And of course you can also add all sorts of tabs and page markers to help even more. The same is true when reading a book.
- Varelion 2mo agoWhen learning new languages, frameworks, or systems, I've learned over the last ten years that I -- as ADHD riddled as I am -- retain and engage with information a lot more when I write by hand, even if I am not medicated.
- tccole 2mo agoHere’s my question, what if the writing looks like handwriting?
- daedrdev 2mo agoI’d like to point out that basically all education research is only partially reproducible or not reproducible at all. So even though this study says it’s good for your brain. Have some skepticism.
- ihteshamit 2mo agoI wrote this reply by hand and then used by keyboard which is connected with my mac mini using Bluetooth to type it here so you guys can see it. "I write all my notes and letters by hand and I started writing them like 2 months ago when I was researching on something and found out the benefits of writing by hand. My post went mega viral on X (@ihteshamali) you will see it here on X and it got like 120k likes and people really loved it. And most people said they will now turn back to writing by hand which is nice."
- RobThePCGuy 2mo ago[flagged]
- dsign 2mo agoI have had, and continue having, way above average use for my handwriting. It works for all sorts of math, quick diagrams on anything from geometric reasoning to electronics, composing tricky fragments of text, taking notes on something I'm doing that requires a myriad of easy-to-forget details, and so on. But my 1st grade teacher and my 1st to 12st year classes variously agreed on how atrocious my handwriting was. Famously, my 1st grade teacher told my parents, "there's no hope". She was right. And, four decades later, it irks me to no end that every time I grab a pen and start writing, the ghosts come to look over my shoulder and judge. "Look at it, he's at it again. That 'f' looks like anything but... That's not a proper uppercase 'I'... you could summon a demon with it, but it would be a pitiful one. That 'g' is vicious. Is that a '1', a '3' or a '7'? Didn't we fail you enough times in basic arithmetic for that? Also, that line of text is sagging as much as your sitting, boy..."
- ourmandave 2mo agoDecent article. No notes.
- brian-dewey 2mo agoAs some have noted, if you like writing by hand for all of the benefits listed in this article but also want a digital copy for search, taking a photo and having an LLM read your handwriting works really well. To streamline this process I wrote an iOS app that does exactly this. I used it to digitize my handwritten diaries, but it works for any handwritten paper. https://inksightful.app/ https://inksightful.app/
- snorbleck 2mo agonot only writing, but drawing, art, putting a pen or pencil to paper/tablet and just flowing is great to keep the brain muscle active.
- ssttoo 2mo agoI don’t know about the brain but it’s good for the final results in my experience coding, writing and composing (orchestral music). The results are better and it takes less time if I start with pen and paper before “committing” to the computer. One of my favorite authors Jennifer Egan also writes fiction on paper (non-fiction articles still on the computer). More thoughts: https://www.phpied.com/starting-in-the-analog-domain/ https://www.phpied.com/starting-in-the-analog-domain/
- a-dub 2mo agoi'm not totally sold on writing prose by hand. it's still a little too uncomfortable for me. but, for doing mathematics or memorizing things, i have specific rituals built around handwriting that i finally figured out how to make work quite well. i have funny hard requirements though: a) clean, white printer sheets only, absolutely no lines, they are distracting b) mechanical pencils only c) a flat, hard, stable and clear writing surface is a must d) a real eraser must be available my technique for memorizing things involves a handwritten spatiotemporal reproduction from memory (put everything in the same place on the page in the same order) with spaced repetition that exploits sleep cycles. took me forever to figure it out, but once i did things like exams that build on toolboxes of rote memorization became a lot easier! i guess i should also mention that i have long had an interest in reproducing the causal nature of handwriting for composing text on the computer. things like write only editors that attempt to encourage that same sort of causal flow.
- asow92 2mo agoAs a child I was diagnosed with a condition known as dysgraphia, which makes it difficult for me to make my hand write what my mind wants it to without straining myself. Typing doesn't seem to be as affected for me for some reason. Sometimes I'll skip whole letters in a word without thinking and need to go back fill it in. Sometimes my baselines will drift as I write a sentence despite the paper _being lined_. Cursive is nearly impossible for me without extraordinary effort, despite me thinking it beautiful and wishing to improve my abilities there. Dysgraphia for me makes it difficult to write for extended periods of time, and results in very poor handwriting. In fact, the reason I first got a computer as a little kid was so that I could type school assignments, and this was in elementary school in the 90s when everything was still handwritten where I grew up. I even typed my math homework with awkward notation in College (my professors hated me). All of that said, I still find that I agree with the sentiment of this post, and I do keep notebook. It's laborious for me to write, but I still find that the intentionality and forethought that it demands produces (think about it, you're committing something immutable in the real world with ink and paper) something we're losing: deeper introspection. I know this might sound silly or pretentious like hipsters and vinyl records, but I think there's something in physical writing worth keeping despite its inconveniences.
- friarpuck 2mo agoYep. Same here. But I don't do notebooks. Any gain I might get from the writing is outweighed by the huge discomfort that writing gives me. I'm well shot of it.
- stronglikedan 2mo agoI hand write my notes so that I don't have to find them again when I need to remember them. I used to study the same way - just summarize everything I'm reading into hand written notes, maybe read them once more before the test if I had time, and pass the test. It's nice to see that my successful practice is now backed by research.
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoI <3 Stephenson's earlier works: Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and even the lesser stuff (the university one, In the Beginning There Was the Command Line, etc.) were all incredibly well written, and I'd strongly recommend them. But Cryptonomicon started to go in the wrong direction (though it was still good), and after that he completely lost me by writing 1000 page books that require you to learn half of an entirely new language he made up! His success seems to have made him completely lose the magic (of writing well) that he once had. As such, I'd take any advice he gives with a mountain of salt. It's like getting advice from a "has been" former athlete: it might be good advice from their glory days, or it might just be junk they spew in their obsolescence.
- andruby 2mo agoMe too. I love Snow Crash and re-read it recently. I started Cryptonomicon, but didn't even get 1/4th before giving up.
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoI swear, early on he wrote well, which means he wrote 1000 pages and edited them down to a normal book. Once he got popular I imagine he was like "I'm popular, screw that editing stuff, I'm just publishing every word I write" ... and that is not how you make a good book.
- apparent 2mo agoI find his dismissal of iPad writing to be unconvincing. He talks about how we have calibrated our writing utensils over centuries to involve the proper amount of friction, and how that knowledge goes out the window when you're writing on an iPad. That may be true, but it's not like you can't just re-acclimate to the experience of writing on an iPad. Most people don't handwrite much, period, so if they start handwriting again they're going to have to have an adjustment period either way. I personally would think that the the benefits of digital writing (searchability, portability, infinite canvas, handwriting cleanup, digitization) would outweigh his friction quibbles. I personally don't find it to be tiring to write on an iPad, even without a screen protector (which some people use to increase friction). Also, e-paper devices tend to have more friction-y feedback, but he doesn't address this at all when dismissing all "gadgets" outright.
- MSKJ 2mo agoFriction is also variable, with pen and paper type. Although the iPad is a bit too slick, it gets very fatiguing (I did most of my HW in college on the iPad)
- apparent 2mo agoIt may be the case that the iPad is slicker than ideal for some people, but even if that's the case it doesn't relate to his point about centuries of adaptation or whatever. In the past, we were limited by the laws of physics and the materials available in our environment. If people could have had whiteboards 200 years ago instead of chalkboards, they would have taken them (easier to erase, no chalk dust). But they didn't have them, so they didn't use them.
- cyberax 2mo agoiPad is terrible for hand-writing. It's (relatively) heavy, so you can't hold it and write on it. It's slippery, and the friction between the pen and stylus is bad. The pen itself also produces gigantic strokes.
- apparent 2mo ago
- ourmandave 2mo agoI don't doubt the premise, but this sounds like another in a long series of Doing X May Delay Onset of Alzheimers articles. Most of which includes the author's favorite mental task, food, or exercise.
- jambalaya8 2mo agoThere was a study with nuns in the early 2000s which found them doing crossword puzzles daily....
- TomMasz 2mo agoI keep a handwritten journal and write in script. My penmanship isn't great, but it's good enough. For exams in my intro programming classes, I allow students to bring a handwritten notes sheet if they wish. I get anything from a few sentences to a sheet so full of writing it almost looks gray. From what I can tell, students who really put effort into their notes sheet look at it less frequently but tend to score higher. This tracks with the studies I've seen on handwritten notes.
- ReDress 2mo agoMore like old habits go hard - heh
- achrono 2mo agoWell, sorry but look at the methodology on this. The study the post leans on did not study learning. 36 adults went around copying familiar words, and their "typing" is key presses using one index finger (!). I'm afraid this one's close to going down the replication crisis whirlpool. According to Sol: "Direct replications found no reliable learning advantage, while a 2024 meta-analysis found only a *small* handwriting benefit but a far larger typing advantage in information captured." Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis” by Abraham E. Flanigan and colleagues, published in Educational Psychology Review on July 12, 2024
- chermi 2mo agoI am really trying to get everything digital. But I much prefer writing by hand, especially when doing math. I got Samsung s10+ and have 2 problems: the pen is too damn small and my handwriting sucks for recognition so it's mostly PDFs for now instead of fully digitized. Anyone have similar problems with solution?
- BiraIgnacio 2mo ago> Don’t worry about conserving paper The best suggestion, thank you
- cubefox 2mo agoI'm surprised he didn't mention editing. On a computer this is trivial; on paper you need an ink eradicator, correction tape, or correction fluid. And even those are only good for small corrections. If you want to insert a sentence or paragraph somewhere, that's not really possible with paper. Also, if you want your text to be published online or printed, it needs to be digitized somehow. Which is a good OCR tool for handwriting, especially if it's not very legible? Just feed scans into Gemini perhaps?
- hungryhobbit 2mo agoI suspect it's because Stepenson stopped editing his work a long time ago. He used to write a ton and edit it down to a normal-sized book, but once he got popular he just decided to (seemingly) publish everything he wrote, without editing.
- DamnInteresting 2mo agoAgreed. As someone who frequently rearranges the structure and order of sentences as I go, I don't even know how to attempt writing by hand. It would be a complete mess. I expect that the common refrain would be wait until the second draft to make such rearrangements, but it's often the bones of the story I'm trying to set properly, and if the bones are broken, there's nothing for the meat to dangle upon. But maybe it's different for me, since I write nonfiction?
- cubefox 2mo agoI think writing by hand trains you to be more deliberate when writing. You can't easily go back and make changes, so you have to think ahead more before you write. For paper it also helps even more than digitally to outline the logical structure of a text before you actually write down full sentences.
- lvl155 2mo agoWhat if I told you writing in all caps is even better for your brain.
- nephihaha 2mo agoIT VVORKED FOR THE ROMANS I SVPPOSE.
- lilerjee 2mo ago"Writing by hand is good for your brain", but it does not say the habit or behavior can help you achieve some success, many achievements, especially the more significant ones need a complicated system and long-term hard work (remember 10000 hours theory?)
- oldsklgdfth 2mo agoI agree with the content of the post. It does feel like a post stating things that are obvious, were someone not blinded by technology. Curious if others have noticed a trend of going back to "old school" methods, once there is research etc around it. Seems like you can have just not used the new flashy thing.
- rgbrgb 2mo agotoday I posted a show HN that got insta-flagged by an AI detector. I had written the post then gone back and forth with claude, getting to a refined version I thought was much better. claude said it would hit way better with hn (me?). after getting flagged I found the original, reposted, and it is actually so much better. not polished, not a masterpiece, I'm nowhere close to a professional writer. But it's like a human story with the marks of human care. i fear my brain's getting smoothed down by reading all the generation and I need to drop the AI crutch for a while, at least for copy/writing.
- adamweld 2mo agoYour brain _is_ getting smoothed by this behavior. Don't use AI for writing or your thinking will suffer. Of course Claude told you its version would land better, that's what how it is trained, but that doesn't make it true.
- imp0cat 2mo agoDid you use a fountain pen to write and refine the post? ;)
- Dependance 2mo agoI have always found interesting that we thing as equivalent "different parts of the brain light up" and "good for the brain". I say this as someone who has an tiny knowledge of neuroscience, but wouldn't you want sometimes to have low brain activity, for certain things? Having the brain making more connexions and using more resources to do the same thing could be seen, from one point of view, as waste ? Not that I disagree with the article, of course. Test results speak for themselves, but for example, when I am writing stories, do I need to "better remember" them, or do I need to go faster through my first draft ? (3 years and counting at the moment...wish me luck !)
- 8s2ngy 2mo agoPerhaps there is a balance to be struck? I have thought long and hard about this, and I have settled on taking notes by typing on my laptop. The benefits are far too many: I do not have to carry my notes around to read them on the commute; I do not have to worry about losing them; I can rewrite them to my heart’s content without messing up the layout; and I feel that I type faster than I can write. I do partly agree, though. When I am studying a new concept or reviewing old ones, I tend to scribble my thoughts down. I have not been able to replicate brainstorming while scribbling and doodling on an electronic device. The friction of my pen on paper seems to actually wire the pathways in my brain.
- BeetleB 2mo agoI always wrote by hand - probably because I spent over a decade in academia dealing with equations. I always have a pen in my pocket (without a pocket protector!) About a decade ago I went back to writing with fountain pens after a nearly two decade hiatus. Oh, the joy! But very sad he has no (real) tips on dealing with hand fatigue - other than to write in cursive. I always had hand fatigue for writing long stretches of prose - even back in my school days. A few years ago, I simply had to change how I grip the pen to reduce the pain, but I still can't write many pages without significant pain and the need for breaks. I can't imagine writing a whole novel that way. Also, I wish he told us how he gets that handwritten stuff into digital form. Does he just mail handwritten stuff to the publishers? In the past, I'd write twice: Once by hand, and then I'd type up anything worth saving to get it in digital form. A royal pain! Then with Whisper and LLMs, life got a lot better. I would simply read what I'd handwritten, and get an LLM to clean it up. I only occasionally needed to fix it up after that. Now LLMs are so good at it that I simply take a picture and send it to the LLM for transcribing. I don't care how much people hate AI - for me it has quite literally reduced physical pain in my life.
- hurril 2mo agoI also write with fountain pens these days. Do you have a favorite model?
- BeetleB 2mo agoIt changes every few years. My first was the Pilot Metropolitan. Still a solid pen I recommend. My next favorite was/is a PenBBS - perhaps the 309 - I don't have it on me at the moment. I replaced the nib with a Goulet nib, and somehow made it extremely smooth. I've not been able to make any other Goulet nib that smooth - somehow got lucky. These days I'm heavily using a Platinum Plaisir which is also surprisingly smooth (no modifications). Every time I've paid more than $50 for a pen, it hasn't been worth it. I can't get the ink in my Opus 88 pen to flow consistently. I'm sick of it. I'm partial to Faber Castell nibs, but the pen I bought had a grip that I didn't like, and I don't want to spend the money to try their other pens.
- balls187 2mo ago
- joskvw 2mo agoI hated paper until I found a decent pen (frixion erasable, mediocre) and paper (Lemome grid notebook, very good). It's still harder than typing, but I've found nothing better for thinking through challenging problems.
- ACCount37 2mo ago"Sure, doing X the old-fashioned way is slow, inefficient, and inconvenient in a hundred minor and major ways - but haven't you considered that it might, on an incredibly shaky connection with low effect sizes and uncertain causality, be better than your brain?" Sorry, but no. I trust that "the Old Way is just Better in an invisible, unproven way" about as much as I trust any other "appeal to tradition". I like Neal Stephenson's writing, but I wouldn't take this advice seriously.
- Wowfunhappy 2mo agoI'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 an efficient way to program, nor that coding on a unicycle is better for learning. I know lots of people do say they learn better when handwriting, just like some people say they learn better while going for a walk. This does not translate into a universal theory of learning.
- WillPostForFood 2mo agoRiding a unicycle and coding are not complementary activities - you are multitasking. Writing is aligning different parts of your brain to the same task, perhaps it is just creating additional focus.
- Wowfunhappy 2mo agoThere is no logical connection between moving a pencil to construct letterforms and deciding what you want to say. They have traditionally happened together, because before computers (or to some extent before typewriters) there was no better way to do one without the other.
- bigbuppo 2mo agoYou think about words, those words become physical movements, those physical movements create a mark on paper, the brain reads those physical marks, which causes it to think about words, which become physical movements, which become physical marks, which are read, which causes... I'm sure if you drove the unicycle through a trough of paint and then used it to make words you'd have a similar experience.
- odkckwjckw 2mo agoYes, there is. The act of writing requires you to think about the words, focus on them, think about their shapes and how you must move your hands to form them. You are actively and methodically engaging with the vocabulary as you write the words down. This is nowhere near the same as doing to completely unrelated activities at the same time.
- arendtio 2mo agoThat is why I call good pens like my Fink [1] a thinking tool. I always wonder if it is nature or nurture, but I am sure that writing helps me to think in a straight line. [1]: https://www.stefanfink.de/en/writing-instruments https://www.stefanfink.de/en/writing-instruments
- edverma2 2mo ago> I use a lot of moleskine notebooks and Mead comp books, which I can buy in bulk online. Moleskine notebooks are beautiful, but I always felt they were far too expensive. Would love to learn where they can be bought in bulk for a more reasonable price.
- gokuljs 2mo ago[dead]
- philipallstar 2mo agoI really like this talk[0] by Big Suze from Peep Show on how children learn better with physical writing than with typing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6nucKFK88
- crashbunny 2mo agoI've always love stationery. Over the years I've looked up pen reviews and tried out many different types including fountain pens. I watched a video recently from someone, from memory the creator behind the youtube channel vsauce. Very briefly, he lost some notes to water. His words, thoughts and ideas vanished. His solution was switching to pencil. I found the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY2JACiDGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY2JACiDGU I'm addicted to people talking about pens and pencils. Adam Savage also has done a few videos on his favourite mechanical pencil. Apparently Stephenson loves fountain pens and reluctantly gel pens. In general, those are water based inks and will wash away with water. There are one or two fountain pen inks designed to be more permanent and won't wash away with water. Just something to keep in mind if you're currently writing or want to start.
- codazoda 2mo agoI did some fade tests with several pens and a pencil on a laser print. The pencil and toner were the only things that hadn’t faded in direct sunlight after two years. Even high end pens faded. To be fair, your notebook probably won’t get light like that, but pencils are pretty archival.
- crashbunny 2mo agoInteresting. I wonder if in 100 years time Stephenson's fountain pen writing will still be around. No doubt they are all scanned, but, maybe the originals will fade. I saw another video about someone's favourite pen and he gave the reason as check fraud. Apparently the uniball 207 is pigment based ink and doesn't wash away in acetone. I just searched then on youtube for acetone pen check fraud and it looks like there's a 13 year old video about it, and a million copycats. Either copycats are lazy, or the 207 is still $2 13 years later.
- codazoda 2mo agoI 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 day.
- Quimoniz 2mo agoI 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?
- stillpointlab 2mo agoI was cleaning my office a couple of days ago and found stacks upon stacks of paper. I've had a habit for over a decade of taking printer paper, folding it half length-wise, and scribbling notes on it as I work. I use it like a temporary scratch pad. It is an ingrained habit at this point, as soon as I have difficult focused work to do I reach for the paper and pen. Urgent site-wide outage? Start scribbling. Big feature decomposition? Start scribbling. So I have this massive stack of notes that I glimpse at before shredding or whatever. Nothing of permanent value, nothing that I look at even 24 hours after it is written. But the sheer volume of the writing like that I do surprises me ever time I clean it out. It's like a novella sized stack of paper with server names, sketchy diagrams, peoples names, dates, commit hashes, debug messages. Lots and lots of lists. Things underlined, circled, stars, strike through, arrows, etc. It is such an ingrained habit that its almost a compulsion, like someone is tying my hand behind my back if I don't have access. It is like my brain needs reassurance that some detail I just noticed won't be lost, at least it will be on the paper if I need it in the next 5 minutes. Like an extension of my short-term memory. I have also kept a journal for 20+ years, mostly on paper. I often use a fountain pen (Lamy 2000) and notebooks with high-quality paper, but I am not super picky about it. I've used the cheapest school notebooks to the finest Japanese boutique papers. I'm a fan of the Pilot G2 and pens that have a similar feel. I'll also journal in Google Docs, Apple notes, or text docs in VS Code. It is hard for me to disentangle the supposed benefits from the sheer weight of habit. It is just something I do, part of who I am.
- FranklinMaillot 2mo agoI literally can't think without a pen in my hand. Especially when I'm stuck, writing anything, or even better, drawing, activates my brain cells. Typing forces you to think linearly, it feels constrained. That's not how the brain works.
- bruno_h 2mo agoI'd like to go back to writing with pen and paper, but my bad handwriting bothers me. So any time I start writing something, part of my concentration is wasted on trying to make it look good.
- dabinat 2mo agoI’ve recently gone back to writing by hand, at least for text that is of a reasonable length. The workflow that works for me is a third-party app on my iPad that converts my handwriting to digital text that I can then paste somewhere. I’m sure, as the author says, it’s not as good as the real deal of writing with an actual pen, but I need it to be digital text eventually and don’t want to waste a lot of paper. I have found that I’m more creative and enjoy writing more.
- godwinson__4-8 2mo agoSpeaking of ancient practices coming back into favor: Are other people thinking meditation would be useful as they wait for their LLM to finish? I've incorporated back writing by hand some time ago but find as models get smarter and I throw more at them they have also been taking longer. In these moments even a notebook can register as something of a distraction. I already aim to keep my phone far away but I'm curious about trying to commit to meditating between prompts. Part of me feels like it would be a little silly. But maybe not. Doodling in a notebook feels preferable in these moments but also feels like a context switch when the agent is done. Then again perhaps I need to just refine my process so notebook planning can feel like it is working more in parallel with the LLM rather than us blocking each other...
- justthehuman 2mo agoSo I should buy a drawing tablet for my laptop so I can hand write my AI prompts? Got it! (/s if not obvious!)
- spike021 2mo agoDoesn't work for everyone. I have essential tremor and my handwriting is abysmal.
- nephihaha 2mo agoI had to learn to type early on due to my handwriting, but I can read my own. I definitely process things differently through handwriting. When I write stories, my style changes when I type!
- Anduia 2mo agoHaving 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!
- pillmillipedes 2mo agoI'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?
- TheMagicHorsey 2mo agoI have about 20 or 30 fountain pens. I do system architecture diagrams, with notes in the margin, using pen and ink. It does help me think. I actually find it relaxing and fun.
- t1234s 2mo agoIs 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?
- msum 2mo ago[dead]
- miladyincontrol 2mo agoSurprised honestly we haven't had similar claims for typing on keyboard versus typing on screens or dictation.
- MinimalAction 2mo agoAs an academic, I concur with the findings. However, some points for discussion: 1. I don’t believe iPad doesn’t offer the same benefits of writing with pen on paper. I mean iPad writing can be made to be almost as realistic as pen on paper with good accessories. It can be slow, doesn’t waste papers, you can edit, color code it, annotate in a way that’s backed up. I definitely like writing on paper, but I don’t see too much of a difference with iPad. 2. I absolutely love using Pilot V5 RT pens, and haven’t found something that is as smooth and satisfying when put on paper. What are your favorite pens? Are they available on JetPens for trying? Thanks!
- exmadscientist 2mo agoIf you love the V5, then the next step is definitely a fountain pen. There are plenty of guides out there, so I'll not waste time doing an inferior job of making a specific recommendation.
- andunie 2mo agoMy hand hurts when I hold a pencil for too long, it has always been that way since when I was young. The computer saved my ability to write longer texts.
- Pay08 2mo agoAre you left-handed by chance?
- Tomlmmrs 2mo agoWriting by hand, marking stuff and seeing the paper come to live is very rewarding when looking back at what you've done. But at the same time its so hard to organize, archive, and find previous notes, that's mainly the reason why I take digital notes more often.
- fxde 2mo agoOn the topic of left handed writing: Switching to the uni-ball jetstream (RT SXN-210 or Sport SXN-150S) was a noticeable improvement for me. I did not search for other alternatives but would be interested if there are similar quick-drying options that work well. I tried the Pilot G2 before that because it got recommended often, but for me it was way worse.
- mindfulbun 2mo agoI love handwriting. I do daily logs of my workday. I just write what’s happening, what I’m doing during the day, what tasks are coming in, and so on. Surprisingly, it works well for a person with ADHD. It’s a method to ground myself and avoid slipping into ADHD hyperfocus. The only problem I have is doing it comfortably. My desk is cluttered with a keyboard, laptop, and monitor. There’s barely any room to write with proper posture, and shuffling things around every time just isn’t practical
- Quimoniz 2mo agoHuh. Sounds just like me :D Depth helps there. Since I started working mostly on desks with a depth of 80 cm in front of me (or 31 inches that is) it's gotten usually pretty easy to squeeze in a notebook or a paper (also hanging the monitors on the wall, so that no foot is on the desk any more, gives another extra 10 cm).
- mindfulbun 2mo agoI actually have around 70 cm, but for some reason it still doesn’t feel right. Maybe removing the monitor foot is key. After reading your comment, I tried moving the monitor as far as I could to free up space. And it’s actually better. Notebook is next to the keyboard on the right side, not sure if that’s optimal when looking back and forth
- iammjm 2mo agoYou need more desk space, you need mega desk: https://youtu.be/nwoIJxDRu8M?is=P5Z1Zi4qas1Wi2BM https://youtu.be/nwoIJxDRu8M?is=P5Z1Zi4qas1Wi2BM
- hypertexthero 2mo agoGo a bit further and use pencil or charcoal so you can smell the wood and lead and feel the texture of the drawing surface, helping your brain make more connections. It also allows you to make more mistakes, which can lead to surprising directions. And the team who makes the most mistakes usually *wins*! See also: The Hand - How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture By Frank R. Wilson Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain by Betty Edwards Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wood You Matter More Than You Think by Karen O’Brien with illustrations by Tone Bjordam
- luciana1u 2mo ago[flagged]
- chris_money202 2mo agoMy thoughts on this is there is a deliberate act going on that is doing more for retention than just the simple act of using a (fountain) pen. If I am in a lecture and I am writing down everything I hear as fast as possible in one ear, on paper, out the other style I don't think writing is any different than typing the same way. If I am in lecture and I am trying to stay deliberately between the lines of paper, then I have to take the info in, process it in a way where I analyze and summarize it, and then put it on paper neatly. I have to do that for brevity and to keep up with the lecture. Its not the act of just writing, its the analyzation that occurs before the words hit the paper. This can be achieved with typing as well if you deliberately style your notes. I think sometimes we correlate this in too simple of terms to use pen = better, the pen forces the deliberate action of analysis easier than typing does.
- jehnnysmith 2mo agoHN should add downvote option.
- erelong 2mo agoIt exists I think, they just require you to score a certain amount of points before you obtain the privilege
- ymolodtsov 2mo agoIn fact, there's no scientific consensus research-wise on whether writing things by hand actually helps in any way. Anecdotally, it never helped me to remember the stuff I was writing down.
- maipen 2mo agoSame. While writting I think there's a very fine line that separates external storage from memorization. What I mean by this is that sometime we write ideas so we can avoid forgetting and be able to come back them (David Lynch), or as we write and develop a thought or subject, we are actually creating memories. I think the point of writing stuff down is mainly organization, storage and exploration and not a memory exercise.
- hneqy2wqls 2mo ago[dead]
- fridder 2mo agoAll well and good for folks without hand issues.
- ShipVoicedev 2mo agoI completely agree with this, but where do I start if I have terrible handwriting and never really learned cursive properly?
- fridder 2mo agoAt least in high school I was the opposite. If I had a class with a teacher strict about notes I didn't absorb the material as well because I was more focused on getting the notes correct than engaging with the material
- randomImmigrant 2mo agoWhat the research shows and what Stephenson is alluding to also points to the way the design of digital technology has flattened human-computer interaction by prioritizing speed. It is not impossible to design digital products that achieve the same balance of fountain pen on paper. But having used the iPad for journaling with a good toothed screen protector, I think we are still far from it. Even with the barrel rolling and pressure sensitivity, an actual pen just writers so much more expressively.
- EdwardAF-IT 2mo ago[dead]
- beej71 2mo agoIf you're like me and lose things and want cheap pens that offer water resistance, try the PaperMate Inkjoy ballpoints. They roll much easier than other ballpoints, in my experience.
- jlarcombe 2mo agoUsed to write all meeting notes by hand to help me focus on the meeting and actually retain information. Fell out of the habit but must get back into it! Definitely helps especially if it's not a topic that's naturally gripping to me.
- msum 2mo ago[dead]
- globular-toast 2mo agoI 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.
- slashdave 2mo agoThis post makes me feel old
- boogieknite 2mo agoim right-handed and was taught to write by a left-handed parent so i have a goofy technique where i have my hand above the line like a lefty. this causes me to write the letter "s" backwards, from bottom to top
- jvandonsel 2mo agoAs another fountain pen aficionado, it's reassuring to see that Neal's handwriting is as bad as mine.
- k9294 2mo agoI'm a huge fan of fountain pens, it's a very satisfying experience to write with a nice pen on a proper paper. I use platinum 3776, it's quite expensive one, but it's just amazing. I originally bought it for sketches, but ended up using it for journaling. Ended up buying one to my wife, she said I'm crazy to spend so much on a pen (200$) but few weeks after the gift she said that it's amazing and she enjoys it a lot.
- agumonkey 2mo agoThis is gonna open up the science of stimuli necessity. Everything we do is effort then reward, we need to do things on our own.
- sbochins 2mo agoOut of all the things I’d consider to help me improve or be more productive, this has to be at the bottom. I actually used to write notes all throughout college, mostly because I couldn’t afford a laptop and would use the school desktop computers when actually writing code. But, I don’t see any degradation from moving to a workflow where I never physically write anymore. I also don’t understand his stance on using cursive. Everyone that writes quickly develops their own scribble, which they can easily read and doesn’t involve taking the pen off the paper. What’s the point in relearning proper cursive?
- 1saadcodes 2mo agoI wonder how much of this is handwriting versus simply removing distractions. A notebook doesn't have notifications, tabs, or an autocomplete constantly trying to finish your thoughts. I hope to to see studies comparing handwriting with typing on a distraction-free device
- cratermoon 2mo agoStephenson mentions the Pilot G-2 Gel, and it is a great pen, especially for left-handers. I've found one that improves on it: the Pilot Acroball. It's a better G-2 and though it might be a bit hard to find at retail it can be found online in all kinds of variations.
- LAC-Tech 2mo agoAnecdotally I find I connect more with what I write by pen as well. Ultimately I want things to in text documents though (typst for me these days). If there was a non-slopware solution to ocr scanning to a typst doc, I would do it a lot more .
- mimo84 2mo agoI 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.
- TheBigSalad 2mo agoWriting by hand is in no way good for your brain.
- pclowes 2mo agoThis is something you don’t need to argue about. You don’t need a cite studies. The studies are not geared for a sample size of one there is only one you. Just… Try it. You can just do things. They don’t have to be rational, the best things rarely are.
- ezoe 2mo agoSo, why nobody write a code by hand using pen onto paper right now? If it's that good, shouldn't we?
- mimo84 2mo agoI have been experimenting with more hand writing notes as well. What I have been finding is better retention and more focus on what is that I'm following, wether is a book or a meeting. I recently also started to review flashcards by printing the cards due today and writing down the answer opposed to reviewing them on a screen, and I have noticed a much higher retention as I am not distracted by the mere presence of the device.
- 0xff2109 2mo ago> I want to again live in a world where application developers use public, community driven standards to create interoperable applications with common data standards. Has this ever been the case? Also common data standards in a way restrict innovation when the standard body can't move fast enough.
- erelong 2mo agotbh the value of this seems overstated and overhyped imo I've always dabbled with this but gone back to just typing instead of writing by hand as it seens to possess many more advantages The closest thing I have to this is more like speech to text or notes on a phone which seem more manual (speech) or slower than touch typing (phone)
- thenobsta 2mo agoI loved reading the writing-setup guidance. After a lot of writing myself (mostly throwaway stuff) I've settled on a fountain pen with a small stack of decent printer paper on top a stainless steel clipboard. I skip the clip and use four magnets on corners of the paper to hold it in place. The magnets are either small enough or slide around easily enough to give me the space I need to write but hold enough to keep the paper in place. Importantly, the magnets don't cause any ripples or rising of the paper as the clip does over it's backing. Writing on this setup feels uniformly smooth. Once I settled on this method, other writing setups felt unsatisfying. Maybe others will enjoy this setup as much as I do :)
- dhosek 2mo agoOn 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 precious about writing tools. So many people have drawers full of fancy notebooks with something on the first few pages and the rest empty. Get something and use it. Don’t matter if it’s a dollar-store spiral notebook or a fancy Leuchturm 1917 notebook, just as long as you use it. Same with the writing utensil. Pencil? Ballpoint pen? Whatever. I find these days I prefer to write using a cheap mechanical pencil (the kind they sell in bags of 20 at the supermarket), but I’ll use whatever. I used to be really precious about these things. I only used college-ruled 9½×6 150-page spiral bound notebooks and wrote in 0.4mm fine-point felt tip pen. Did all my first drafts by hand. It ended up being an excuse to not finish stuff. I do most of my first drafts typing now, because it lets me get s⸻ done (although I still take notes by hand because that helps me remember what I took notes on better). I don’t buy the cursive thing, mostly because I write slower in cursive than in print (although I have a handful of ligatures and abbreviations I use to speed up some things).
- annzabelle 2mo agoI think you're right. It's very easy in any hobby to make the gear side of the hobby be disproportionate to how much you actually do the hobby. Think someone who's spent $3k on camping gear and constantly researches gear, but rarely camps. On the other hand, if you do actually camp a lot, it is nice to have the lighter weight higher performance gear, up to a certain point. So, Stephenson, as someone who does actually write a massive amount, is right to be using high performance gear, but for someone just getting started, getting into fancy pens/paper is a distraction from actually writing.
- galangalalgol 2mo agoIf you are writing a lot and have dysgraphia, a cheap fountain pen like pilot varsity ($2) or platinum preppy ($7) can help you fight the excessive pressure we tend to use leading to less hand cramping. Using tools that make you write more because it is more enjoyable is good, using tools that make you spend time thinking about tools is bad. I really liked those tiny comp pads cvs sold, but I haven't seen them in a while and I don't like the dollar store ones. I just grab random pads that aren't bigger than my phone so they sit nice in my pocket.
- Jansss 2mo agoI remember when pretty much everyone knew how to write cursive. Imagine how surprised I was when my 12 year-old nephew didn't even know what cursive was. Makes you realize how much things have changed.
- jianfenglin 2mo agoThis is why Microsoft created Tablet PC and later Surface with handwriting pen: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/surfaceitpro/thinking-by-hand-digital-inking-with-surface-pen/4419759 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/surfaceitpro/thinki...
- jibal 2mo agoNo, that's not why. And it's good for your brain to read the whole article, not just the title: "Don’t use a gadget"
- hasmolo 2mo agofeel like he is saying 'do not use a frictionless writing surface' and generalizing that as 'gadget'. my remarkable is very similar to real pen and paper and has helped me immensely in retaining course material when taking notes vs my laptop
- nttylock 2mo ago[flagged]
- altairprime 2mo agoI’m 2.5 years through college in pencil and paper. I’m 45 and the Apple Pencil sucks compared to regular paper and pencil. It was fun for the procreate course but I would never depend on it for actual note taking. My retention is off the charts compared to my fellow students who are largely not taking notes that I can tell, at least when they’re younglings rather than my middle aged self. Apparently the biggest problem with modern students and note-taking is that they cannot handwrite rapidly because they never learned cursive. Don’t be involuntarily incapable like your peers, kids. If your school didn’t teach you cursive, teach yourself ASAP. Not calligraphy, not oblique italic roundhand, just pick a cursive and do an entire drill book end to end and make sure to take hand breaks whenever it hurts for 5min.
- balls187 2mo agoI exclusively take notes by hand now, and have amassed a pretty interesting collection of pens, paper and notebooks.
- runtime_lens 2mo ago[flagged]
- dennysora-main 2mo ago[dead]
- hwj 2mo agoThis reminds me of Donald Knuth writing drafts by hand.
- g_nexrelate 2mo agoAbsolutely. It helps me a lot, especially when it comes to remembering important tasks or planning my days.
- cadeos 2mo ago[flagged]
- amai 2mo agoThis is a good pen: https://schneiderpen.com/uk/ballpoint-pen/slider-rave/132503 https://schneiderpen.com/uk/ballpoint-pen/slider-rave/132503
- amai 2mo agoBut how do you convert your handwritten notes into Markdown blog posts or LaTeX or Typst? Can multimodal LLMs do that?
- chrischen 2mo agoWhew... reading just the title I thought this was about me having to write code by hand.
- thoopring 2mo agoThese days, you can easily take notes and mark things in digital books. I wonder if that would be helpful, too?
- metalman 2mo agoeverything by hand is good for the brain! writing of course, but inducting a younger person working the till, into the dance of correct change, or an aproximation that leaves them with a float, and/or not getting a pocket full of coin, and watching the light go on as they activly get into the game of useing simple math in a practicle way for the first time, big grins all round, or some few mildly enraged and uncertain as to what just happened, this bieng a common experience as I use cash for most of my personal expendature, which more recently is getting comments from other customers and employees, but I like it, pay and be done. I also dabble in scrap and precious metals, back woods deals for a wide variety of primary building materials, supplys, feed, manufacturing equipment,etc, which is all done with cash, live, right now, on your feet, make a deal, be good with it, done and on to other things.
- yokoprime 2mo ago"don't use a pencil" i stopped reading there. That's a completely invalid and stupid thing to say. Pencils are superior to any and all other writing instruments.
- jagadaga 2mo agoAnother article from that substack.com - this website has terrible UI, please stop using it. And I noticed that usually if an author uses substack - the article quality is bad. Regarding the topic - "more brain activity/connectivity" does not automatically prove better long-term intelligence or brain health.
- infinite_spin 2mo agoI think the article offers some good advice, at least advice that the author believes in, and from my own anecdotal experience it seems to hold water. Writing by hand, on physical paper, does indeed seem to offer some advantages over typing or using a tablet/stylus.
- macleginn 2mo agoWhat about writing code by hand?
- 28304283409234 2mo ago> The paper will bear a visible imprint where it was pressed down by the writing instrument. Can I have your pencils then? They must be made of titanium. My 2mm nibbed pencilpoints break off if I put any pressure at all on them. :-D
- samrus 2mo agoI need good handwriting OCR. Like perfect. Because id love to write things like blog posts on a remarkable or something, and then be able to just export it to text and publish
- TyrianPurple 2mo agoBack in uni, I used to write down notes both in class and during my own revision. It truly helped me pass tests. My go to was the Pomodoro technique. 25 minutes of reading and writing then 5 minutes of rest. Did this for four 25 minute sessions. By the end of the day I had short notes of what I had read that day.
- OhMeadhbh 2mo agoSomewhat apropos... I started re-learning cursive about two years ago. I'm old enough to have been taught cursive when I was young, but my dad preferred block letters (he was trained as an engineer) so I took after him when I entered college. My handwriting was never going to win any awards (either cursive or block) but with attentive practice, my cursive is up to about where it was in 9th grade. I wonder what my brain would look like writing cursive instead of block two years ago vs. today? If you're comparing type-writing with cursive penmanship in a sample that doesn't control for how much experience individual test subjects have with cursive, I suspect you may not get the results you're looking for. I don't have any data for this assertion, but was disappointed to see the research not control for this variable. Not to say the research wasn't useful... In fact, were I to have control of the research budget, I would give them more money for a larger study that controls for more variables including age, experience with cursive and (what the heck) socio-economic background. So... I recommend trying to (re) learn cursive. It's sort of fun to watch the faces of people when they realize you've reverted to jr. high school penmanship.
- haritha-j 2mo agoThe core idea is really solid, but isnt half the article about finidng the right type of paper and taking care of fountain pens? I don't think my setup (free notebooks from events + ballpoint pens) will reduce yourt brain activity compared to a fancy fountain pen and fancy italian paper.
- wjnc 2mo agoDon’t wait for the right equipment to start writing, _but_ there is a little joy in just splashing a little on a nice pen and nice paper. A few decades in life and I’ve assembled a set of multiple fountain pens, in different colours and sizes with different inks and colours. It adds to the fun like herbs add to a dish.
- nextlevelwizard 2mo agoI don't think there is an argument in the article that contradicts you. The part about choosing a pen is to point out that pencils and cheap ballpoint pens require more effort than fancy fountain pen. Which is true, but it is mostly commentary about "writer's cramp". The part about choosing paper is about fountain pens being blotchy where better quality paper helps. You can write with anything and on anything, but just like how it is much more enjoyable to type on a fancy mechanical keyboard it is more enjoyable to write with fancy fountain pen. Although I prefer gel pens since they are just easier to have a bunch around.
- toxik 2mo agoHard disagree on both accounts. Mechanical keyboards are obnoxious and tiring to use because of the insane travel. Fountain pens are nice when they work, but the ink evaporates, the nibs clog up, and accidentally bluing yourself is not uncommon among fountaineers.
- nextlevelwizard 2mo agoTo each their own. I love my mechanical keyboards and I have never had problems with fountain pens. My guess is cheapest versions of each are the problem
- sinameraji 2mo agoi've been writing since i was 8 and always felt there must be something special about writing by hand. nice to read this post and see the science behind it. i recently bought my first fountain pen and some nice ink and paper and it's even nicer that way :) highly recommend it
- lsaret1257 2mo agoI have used fountain pens for the past 30 years. To me, writing with a good fountain, pen and quality paper feels like an air hockey puck floating on an air hockey table, smooth and effortless, and it allows me to get into the zone and think much better than I can by typing and to a lesser extent writing with other types of pens. Whenever I have something really important that requires deep thought I always use fountain pens. They do require maintenance in the form of periodically cleaning them, but the benefits of improved thinking outweigh the minimal maintenance cost.They are inexpensive and I find the quality of the paper is also important which I did not originally appreciate. Personally, I like Pilot fountain Pens, which start at about $15-$20, and Maruman paper. Both are readily available on Amazon or from specialized sources.
- toxik 2mo agoMy big problem with the fountain pens is that the ink evaporates over a few weeks. Like bone dry, needs a refill.
- lsaret1257 2mo agoIf you use cartridges, you might try buying a converter and using bottled ink. Takes about 10 seconds to fill and the flushing of the pen by filling makes it right smoother longer before having to flush out with water. I’ve only had that happen when I left a pen for several months and forgot about it. An incidental benefit, as there is an almost infinite variety of types and colors of inks. If you go to a site like jet pens, or Goulet pens, they have a whole range of inks you can choose from
- alexpotato 2mo agoWacom tablets come with a stylus that simulates a pencil lead. It actually wears down over time which may sound like a bug/trying to get you to buy more but I have to say that it really does feel like using a pen. There is just enough drag to give you the sense of moving without it feeling like drawing on glass (like an iPad). A lot of people reading this may say "But I'm a SWE, not an artist. Why would I ever need this?" My response is that if you ever used a whiteboard and now you work remotely, you would be surprised how much faster meetings can go when you can quickly draw out a data flow. I'm a DevOps/SRE and I've also used it during outages to explain to management or other teams "ok, here is how it's supposed to work and here is what's broken" If you get one, I highly recommend the Medium [0]. The Small is very portable but feels a bit cramped and the Large is too big for someone who isn't using it all the time. The Medium is just big enough to be comfortable but easy to put aside when you are using the keyboard. 0 - https://amzn.to/4bbT6lM https://amzn.to/4bbT6lM
- hliyan 2mo agoKobo stylus is similar. Closest experience I've had to actually writing on paper. Quality of thought too, is closer to that of actual paper writing, compared to typing.
- wodenokoto 2mo agoSince this is more about tools than the purpose I’d like to add my favorites: Pilot friction pens - the four color versions. I find multicolored notes great and they are erasable. Muji spine notebooks - hit the perfect balance between cheap and nice to write on. For me, a moleskin becomes “too nice to waste on this meeting” - the spine version lays flat and it is easy to rip out a paper if someone needs a sheet or you are really unhappy to keep some scribbles around. It scores bonus point for cardboard cover making it easy to write on the outside Added bonus points for no spills, blobs or airplane worries.
- spacecadet 2mo ago20 years ago when I use to instruct a 101 class on programming, in the first 2 weeks, I made everyone write simple programs with paper and pencil. Students thought that was insane, I would catch them mocking it. I always had the last laugh... those who took it seriously always performed the best and went on to have more successful careers.
- jacoueszzx 2mo agobunun ilerde işe yarayacagını düşünüyorum
- dysoco 2mo agoI've no idea on the state of research about this topic but I've always wondered if this really has to do with the locomotion side of it or if it's more about the fact that writing by hand takes a bit more effort and time. For example, for taking math notes it's easier for me to write by hand rather than take notes in my laptop (because writing LaTeX takes time). If I spend more time on my notes in my laptop, would that improve retention?
- smcg 2mo agoI can't remember the last time I wrote something significantly long and it didn't hurt my wrists. Maybe in middle school.
- crabbuh 2mo ago0.7 Energel pens ftw. There are subtle difference but I favor Made in Japan.
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- celurian92 2mo agoSilly question, if we believe the concept of evolution then we evolved to write by hands to materialize our thoughts. But as in some future we might not have paper to write on ( though we have writeable devices) this gives me a question like when would our brain think its time to evolve from handwritting to typing and then typing to Brain computer interface so that we can write at the speed of thought?
- chrismartin 2mo agoBest feature of paper notebook: no web browser, no chat apps.
- Alan_Writer 2mo agoAs a writer, I used to love to handwrite; it was practical, easier, faster, with no misspellings. But now, I had to adapt to the new format, and I think I'm good at it too. If I write something by hand now, I must think of putting it on digital, and that's overwork and time-consuming. I also tried using OCR apps, but it never feels the same, and the outcome might be wrong sometimes too, which means you have to edit that work. But I still try to write lil notes by hand when possible and practical. But yeah, I miss using notebooks for handwriting. Feel nostalgic now.
- writingsmart 2mo agoCan confirm, started writing every morning, am smarter.
- danirogerc 2mo agoI have been using every ipad there is with Notability and Goodnotes. You don't need anything else.