Writing by hand is good for your brain

Article URL: https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022152

Points: 304

# Comments: 119

Hacker News 讨论

314 points · 123 comments · 查看原帖

postalcoder
A 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.
qiller
Always 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
> "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.
thecombjelly
I 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.
losvedir
Wow, 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.
drivers99
[delayed]
clivestaples
I 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.
patrickscoleman
I 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.