Writing by hand rather than on a computer has a number of benefits. Some studies have found that writing by hand activates more areas of the brain than typing, leading some scientists to argue that it promotes "deep encoding." Students who took notes by hand were found to remember more of what they recorded; those who typed their notes tended to transcribe rather than take notes and were less likely to process the information in the same way as those students who wrote by hand.
Writing by hand forces us to slow down and write and take notes more mindfully, and to think more carefully about what we want to say. The friction is productive.
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Citations
Tank, Aytekin. “The Psychological Benefits of Writing by Hand.” Fast Company, November 23, 2020. https://www.fastcompany.com/90578555/the-psychological-benefits-of-writing-by-hand.
