The cognitive benefits of handwriting and the brain.
How handwriting and the brain can work together to produce efficiency, memory enhancement, and elegance.

In a simple model, the brain receives input, stores the input, retrieves the input when needed, and makes new correlations with prior inputs. The inputs are memories. These correlations between remembered inputs are connections in your brain’s long-term neural networks. When something reminds us of something else, we are accessing a prior input and making a new neural connection. The more we think about the correlation between these two memories, the stronger the neural connection becomes. This is why we do better on a test when we study. By studying, we are strengthening those connections that were initially created by learning.

Now consider the same scenario, but applied to taking handwritten notes. As our brains are making connections, we are reinforcing those connections by creating a manual record of the connection on paper. The same process occurs when typing those notes. However, when we handwrite the notes, we create additional connections that extend beyond typing. With handwriting and the brain both engaged, we create an additional visual connection as we look at the page while we write.

Sure, when we type, we may also glance at the computer screen in the same way that we look at the paper while we write. Inherently though, typing is generally faster than handwriting. Typing is taught and is most efficient when the speed of typing increases. Typing is explicitly meant to be faster than handwriting. However, the faster we type, the less time is spent visually observing each word. With handwriting’s slower speeds, it’s inevitable that we maker stronger visual connections with the information.

If we now incorporate the skill of penmanship, our brains further strengthen the connections by adding an additional cognitive layer. This additional cognitive layer is the learned mechanics of clear and legible handwriting. So, we know have the initial connection in thought, the secondary visual connection, and the additional connection made between the letter we intend to write and the bio-mechanical formation of the letter with our hand. In this process, handwriting and the brain create stronger connections in our memory.

Just think of the even stronger connection made when we use the fine penmanship skills required for cursive. Cursive also adds elegance to anything handwritten and is definitely more elegant than anything typed.

My personal experience with handwriting and the brain.

I’ve always been a big fan of online productivity tools. I love task managers like Todoist, Trello, and cloud file services like Dropbox and Google Drive. Another godsend is integrated services like Microsoft Office 365, with its Exchange email, Teams, Groups, and shared team spaces like SharePoint.

However, I haven’t used the oldest productivity tools, the pen, and paper until recently. A few years ago, I started occasionally taking handwritten notes. I started small, outlining significant projects. It was sort of an unorganized list of my projects and goals. It was not necessarily to be in order or by subject, but it was handwritten with pen and paper.

After a while, I started handwriting notes daily. I began noting conversations I had or action items that came up in meetings. The more notes I took, the more correlations I saw in all the unorganized events in my day. I started using a notebook dedicated to these dated notes. Not just separate pieces of paper with scribbles on them, but a single notebook with dated entries.

The notes helped me tie together all my online task lists, shared documents, emails, and meetings. This didn’t mean that I stopped using my online productivity tools. On the contrary, my handwritten notebook had a section for projects that tied together all those separate online tools. It had a page for each project, a page that mentioned the various sources and locations of information, thoughts, and quick notes of relevant conversations.

The most important aspect that led to the utility of the notebook was that it was handwritten and only in a single physical notebook. That meant I had to distill large amounts of relevant information into a few carefully selected words. The handwriting slowed me down and forced me to think about each word I wrote. I certainly couldn’t write fast enough to cover everything, nor did I need a recount of everything. I needed a well-organized summary of everything, that was distilled into the smallest number of possible words.

Handwriting definitely slows me down, which is precisely what I need in the current era of mass information. Handwriting allows me to be more precise with my thoughts. It helps me take all the information that is presented to me in emails, online articles, project management apps, and daily meetings and allows me to carefully choose how to summarize that information. The resulting notebook infinitely saves me time in allowing me to multi-task in an organized and effective manner.

Handwriting, at its core, is the hand translating thoughts onto paper. It’s my mind formulating my thoughts and slowly translating those thoughts into symbols on a piece of paper. It’s a deduction from the mass information I receive externally, to my thoughts that can be organized and categorized, and finally to the piece of paper that slowly materializes those thoughts. So, in practice, I’ve analyzed the information three times; Gathering the data, correlating and categorizing the data, and concisely summarizing the data. It’s the handwriting and the brain working together.

In essence, it’s the inverse of why cursive handwriting slowly backed away from the school curriculum. In the mid 20th century, when the typewriter was trying to speed up the creation of information content, the pen was too slow. Now, in the 21st century, information is growing exponentially, and it has become increasingly more challenging to manage our own information. Even more difficult, is keeping track of what information is needed, when it is needed, and how it relates to other information.

My goal with handwriting
I still utilize several online resources: Feedly, Todoist, Office 365, Instapaper, Dropbox, Google Calendar, and iCloud. Feedly is vital to managing news content feeds. Todoist is arguably the best personal task management app. There are several competing task management apps, but I think Todoist is the best for personal task management. Microsoft’s Office 365 product umbrella includes a vast array of well-integrated work tools, like business-class email and calendar, Team coordination apps, project management apps, and several avenues to communicate with fellow employees.

For saving articles or anything else I find online that I want to reference or read later, Instapaper is invaluable. Dropbox has a very competitive entry-level price that comes with 2TB of storage. For my personal Android tablet, Google manages my email, backup storage, and calendar in a single account. For my iPad, the obvious backup, storage, and app syncing tool is iCloud.

My key to managing all those online resources is grouping all my activities into goals, projects, and hobbies. The idea of grouping becomes necessary when a single project could involve numerous online tools. The work journal is my quick tool to summarize a project and note which online tools are being utilized for this project.

For me, the goal became translating all the information I received into a consolidated, summarized, relevant, and helpful set of notes. It was handwriting and the brain. For me, handwriting has given me a way to rethink the larger picture and record it in the most thoughtful way.

–A more detailed article on cursive handwriting style.

–An article about digital notetaking.