# Writing is good for your brain Writing does more than record thoughts. The act itself changes how well we think, understand, and remember. And writing by hand amplifies all three: the slower pace and the physical movement engage more of the brain than typing. You can't write by hand fast enough to copy things word for word, so you're forced to compress meaning: to synthesize rather than transcribe. Taking notes helps encode information (i.e., store it in memory) even when you never review those notes. Writing IS processing. The words don't come out of the thinking; the thinking happens while you form the words. That's the same mechanism behind [[Writing is thinking]] and one of the (many) [[Benefits of journaling]]. Keep in mind that the tool doesn't matter. An analog notebook works as well as anything else. Perfectionism about equipment is procrastination in disguise. Just write. And when the information is valuable, don't stop there. Your brain has already processed it deeply and remembered some of it, but it's still worth making it part of your knowledge base (cfr [[Personal Knowledge Management Process]]). Write to remember, write to understand, write to think more deeply. By hand when you can. ## References - Writing by hand is good for your brain (Neal Stephenson): https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-your - Hacker News discussion about the above article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022152 - [Di Vesta, F. J., & Gray, G. S. (1972). Listening and note taking. Journal of Educational Psychology.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-24728-001) - [Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard. Psychological Science, 25(6).](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614524581) - Van der Weel & Van der Meer (2024), Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity, Frontiers in Psychology - [Di Vesta, F. J., & Gray, G. S. (1972). Listening and note taking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 63(1), 8-14.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-24728-001) - Kobayashi (2005), What limits the encoding effect of note-taking? A meta-analytic examination ## Related - [[Writing is thinking]] - [[Journaling]] - [[Benefits of journaling]] - [[Feynman technique]] - [[I never understand anything until I have written about it]]