I used to think typing out notes into digital note-taking apps was in almost every way superior to writing things out by hand.
The reasons were as follows:
- mobility: take your notes with you on-the-go, add/edit/update/delete on demand
- retrieval: search for everything you’ve ever written about
- organization: store your notes in a comprehensive, coherent system involving folders, tags, etc.
- speed of input: typing is much faster than writing by hand and I find it hard to keep pace with my thoughts when writing them out by hand
- extensibility: easy to export your notes into varying formats such as pdf, doc, html, etc., and also rendering them into web pages to reach a wider audience
- editability: nothing is permanent as I can delete, rework, move, and otherwise manipulate the text as I see fit at any given point in time
- peace of mind: feeling content in knowing that my notes are backed up in the event of a data breach or loss, etc.
Well, I’ve had a reckoning and have discovered the following benefits to writing:
- offline accessibility: you can write in your journal in places where there is no wifi (surprising I know)
- retrieval: admittedly, it is a chore having to remember in which journal and on what page(s) you wrote about x. But I’ve found that there are benefits to doing that manual search. Serendipity is bound to happen when you’re rifling through your old notes
- meditative effect: there’s something about moving pen on paper that has a soothing, calming effect that you don’t quite get when typing. I don’t have evidence to prove it, but there must be something in the act of writing by hand that puts your brain on a certain wavelength because you don’t quite get the same experience when typing
- emotive afterglow: the resonance that remains with me after doing a session of handwriting in my journal seems to be stronger emotionally than when I’ve done a session of typing. The emotions are deeper and last longer
- type of notes: the type of things I write about by hand, on the whole, tend to be more intimate, reflective, close to the vest. Probably due to the nature of digital notetaking apps being, well, digital. The ease with which you can capture stuff in your digital notes lends itself nicely to encourage hoarding. Because writing is slow and laborious, you end up avoiding capturing ephemera. Sometimes inconvenience is necessary.
- privacy: Sometimes I end up censoring myself a little bit when taking digital notes because it gets backed up everywhere and things can get hacked! I want to keep notes meant to be private, private. In this day and age, it’s ironic in me saying that a physical paper journal is more “private” than a digital notes app, but in light of all these data breaches and people out there selling our data behind closed doors, I sometimes think a paper journal is more secure
- penmanship: it’s a great opportunity to practice your penmanship
- memory & retention: according to research, writing things out by hand helps with memory retention. I intend to try this out for learning languages. I’ve relied too heavily on language learning apps like LingQ and spaced repetition apps like Anki to learn vocabulary, but I’m curious to find out for myself if the memory retention benefits are real
In my day-to-day, I capture stuff online, write out project briefs, ruminate, etc. on my Obsidian (PC and mobile) for sure, but when I feel stuck in a rut emotionally and want to calm the monkey mind, I turn to journaling by hand.
If it was previously a 95 to 5% split, I’m curious to see if doing more handwriting over a sustained period will result in palpable benefits to overall mood and mental(emotional) stability.