This is an adaptation of a blog post I originally published on 26 March 2023. The case here melds my nostalgia for using a paper, bound notebook for note taking versus my long career in writing with a computer keyboard. Writing on a computer may aid learning with the advent of second-brain technology and even using AI to help organize our notes. The literature however supports learning by note taking done with paper, with potential benefits of going beyond the written word with drawings and relationship mapping.
Computer-Based Writing
I never having the drive or commitment to keep a diary as a child, despite having been given a couple different notebooks (including one with the lock on it), although the concept seemed interesting, nevertheless. I often felt guilty, when hearing/watching/reading about someone stealing another person’s (or sibling’s) diary that while I had the actual book, I was not very good at keeping notes within it.
By 1985-1986, I had been creating a lot of files in a program called AppleWorks, which was a productivity system for the Apple //e. You could use a mouse with it (!, yes, one that looked just like a Mac mouse with a different connector) and I was a whiz at typing. For me typing is the most easy way to get my thoughts out, easier than using dictation, and much faster than writing with one’s hands using pencil or ink.
So maybe it isn’t a big surprise that I began blogging online in the late 1990s.
Why did having a potential open audience make it different? Maybe so, there was motivation with an online publish button. I wasn’t writing for me, per se, I was writing for others. As Jason Kottke and John Gruber rightly pointed out in a recent podcast, the biggest and most successful blogging platform is Facebook. People are willing to share content and opinions about whatever is important to them, to their friends.
More recently I’ve come to follow a number of YouTubers singing the virtues of maintaining a second brain. The idea is simple: they are active readers of all kinds of (mostly) non-fiction books and don’t want to waste that time they take reading by forgetting all the nuggets of wisdom buried within each one. They instead want to transform this information into something personally useful and also leverage the power of a computer to help them esstentially have ready access to this store of knowledge at a moment’s notice.
I mean, with ChatGPT having access to the internet, wouldn’t it be nice to say “Hey, can you remind me some of my key findings I found interesting when I read that Malcolm Gladwell book back in 2002?”
The AI removed, that’s why they advocate for taking notes into programs like Notion or Apple Notes. It’s not a diary, per se, but it’s a process to help them stay focused on what they find interesting. The benefit is ease with their future work and writing; it’s not for their friends, it’s an investment in themselves.
When I first wrote about this, there were instructions for how to tag things in Notion or to link them in Obsidian. You were creating your own personal web, much like a Wikipedia article links to many other Wikipedia articles. Now with AI, you could probably ask the chabot to do the linking for you.
So there are two kinds of writing I’ve established that people do on a computer: public-facing and private-facing. One is likely designed to get a reaction from friends; the other is storage for future utility.
The Moleskine and other fancy notebooks
Back in the early 2000s, people online started speaking of the virtues of writing, but this was almost for the opposite rationale for blogging (which, at the time, was also wildly popular). Instead, you were supposed to buy this new kind of handy notebook marketed as the Moleskine, a remake of a once popular journal book. The notebooks weren’t cheap but are nice; today they have their own stores. I remember browsing one in a French train station. Nothing more romantic then boarding an SNCF train bound for the wine regions of France with a fountain pen and a new Moleskine in your coat pocket, so you could journal each wine you’d sip. If it wasn’t wine, it could be whatever adventure you can imagine. But you’d journal about it. Again, not for an audience, but for yourself.
Of course, not everyone went for the Moleskine. The aforementioned John Gruber likes his FieldNotes notebooks. I watched a video on the making of some Japanese notebooks a few months ago and was in instantaneous lust for some of those.
Then Merlin Mann introduced the Hipster PDA which was this kind of travel system with index cards and a binder clip to keep you organized when we all live without modern cell phones (the iPhone debuted in 2007). The PDA seemed clunky compared to a nice notebook that came with it’s own band to keep it closed, and a pocket, where you could stow $20 for an emergency.
I mention this because I started down this path of keeping notebooks. I have always liked pens and stationery and this new brand of nice notebook appealed to me. In 2005-2008 I wrote a lot in my first Moleskine. I figured maybe I should keep a different notebook for personal vs. work stuff; in my first one, it was all mixed up. I later would continue using notebooks for work only, a tradition that I found handy, at least to keep the notebook on my desk, to jot-down phone messages into, and to take into meetings. Then I gradually started taking notes on the computer.
Reviewing my old Moleskine from 2005 this weekend has been fascinating. I wrote down things that were important to me. Recipes, notes from meetings; plans for vacations, even my wedding. I obviously didn’t use this tool religiously, the same notebook lasted me for several years. And I will admit, as much as I love the idea of a second brain that’s organized, tagged, and ready to help me? There’s something so personal about seeing your own handwriting and the ability not only to jot notes but also to draw; to turn the notebook sideways, etc.
I also think it’s great to put everything into one place; don’t keep a food diary in one book and wine tasting in another? All these things are mixed about in our lives; let the notebook reflect that.
Today I started writing about a book I’ve been reading into the book. Not sure this will be a regular thing; there is some merit in putting books, movies, and things I may want to reference later into a digital notebook. But there is also the magic at play at writing those things out and putting them deeper into your consciousness as you take the time to form the letters with ink on paper. I do believe taking notes on paper is more effective at getting us to remember.
So what is the point?
For me, the 2005 journal was an awesome memory tool, at allowing me to see what rose to the top of my interests and concsiousness so many years ago. I want to continue that, although it is now 2023. But in 2024, -25, or maybe -30, I’ll find the minutae of daily life today interesting, one can hope, through the lens of time.
The delight of trying this was assured when I turned through each page. It’s a shame I didn’t have this fancy journal when I was younger.
Writing and Learning
Through high school, I took a lot of notes in 3-ring binders. I’d been taught to do this through a class we were required to take, one of the more valuable ones for ensuring success after high school in college.
I continued this system in college.
Research suggests that taking notes by hand, rather than typing them on a keyboard, can improve learning, comprehension, and long-term memory retention. A frequently cited 2014 study by psychologists Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science, found that students who took handwritten notes performed better on questions requiring conceptual understanding than those who typed their notes on laptops. The researchers suggested that handwriting encourages deeper cognitive processing: Because writing by hand is generally slower than typing, students must actively select, summarize, and reorganize information rather than simply transcribe it verbatim. This process can strengthen understanding and help students encode information into memory. The findings are detailed in their study, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking.
More recent research reinforces the educational value of handwriting. A 2024 meta-analysis published in Educational Psychology Review examined 24 studies comparing handwritten and typed lecture notes among college students. Researchers found that students who took and reviewed handwritten notes demonstrated significantly higher academic achievement, even though students using keyboards typically recorded more information. The findings suggest that the quality of cognitive engagement during note-taking may matter more than the quantity of information captured. However, the evidence is not entirely uniform: A 2019 replication study did not consistently reproduce the advantages of handwriting. Taken together, the research supports encouraging students to take handwritten notes, particularly when learning complex concepts, while emphasizing that actively processing, organizing, and reviewing information remains essential regardless of the note-taking method.
If I were going to college today, I’d no doubt be a laptop notetaker. However, I’d be inclined to create a second-brain type approach rather than what I do now for work notes, which is to simply make a collection of Markdown files. But for work, it’s not about learning, it’s literally making something I might refer to later. For school, I wanted to keep that information inside my head.
Mindmapping and Sketchnoting
Some years ago I was introduced to sketch-noting at an Apple Distinguished Educators event and before that had been introduced to mind-mapping. The evidence is particularly interesting because these techniques encourage students to organize information, identify relationships, and represent ideas visually rather than simply transcribing what they hear.
A 2002 study published in Medical Education examined the effectiveness of mind mapping among 50 medical students. Researchers found that students using mind maps demonstrated approximately 10% greater factual recall after one week compared with students using their preferred study techniques, although the difference had some statistical uncertainty. More recently, a 2025 systematic review of six randomized controlled trials found that four studies reported significantly better academic performance among medical students using mind maps or concept maps. The researchers concluded that these visual strategies can support comprehension, knowledge organization, and retention, although evidence of long-term benefits remains limited.
Research into what psychologists call the drawing effect provides evidence supporting the use of sketches as memory aids. In a 2016 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade, and Myra Fernandes conducted seven experiments examining whether drawing information improved memory compared with writing it. They found that participants consistently recalled drawn information more effectively than written information. The researchers demonstrated that drawing engages multiple forms of processing, including visual, motor, and semantic activity, which may create richer memory representations. These findings provide a theoretical basis for sketchnoting, which combines words, symbols, diagrams, and illustrations to capture information. However, the experiments tested drawing individual items rather than taking sketchnotes during instruction, so they do not directly establish that sketchnoting improves classroom achievement.
Takeaways: An important distinction is that the benefit appears to come from the cognitive work involved in creating visual representations, not simply from making notes look attractive.
Mind mapping requires students to identify central concepts and organize relationships among ideas. Sketchnoting asks students to translate information into visual representations, potentially strengthening their understanding and recall.
Both approaches encourage active engagement with information rather than passive transcription.
For classroom practice, the evidence supports teaching students how to create meaningful visual representations of what they’re learning, while recognizing that neither technique has been conclusively established as superior for every learner or subject.
One particularly useful takeaway: Students don’t need artistic talent to benefit from drawing. The drawing-effect research suggests that the cognitive process of constructing an image matters more than its artistic quality.
But what will they need? Sure, you can use a tablet with a digital pencil. But it’s one more reason to advocate for a paper notebook.