[jholman]

It's worth noting that they were speaking about their personal experience in that paragraph. So probably for them, the "how do you get to that conclusion" is "trial and error".

But I've noticed that many many many people report the same effect, that there's something about pen-and-paper writing that's more effective for thought-lubrication. I resisted for a long time, but now I too am a convert to this school of thought.

Similarly almost everyone notices the downside: it's easier to reorder, reorganize, cross-link, etc, those thoughts, in a text editor (to say nothing of more sophisticated software tools). Some people have systems for doing complicated things with paper that they say mitigates this downside, but I am not currently one of them.

I guess it's possible that your brain just doesn't have this pattern in it. (That is, the pattern of finding pen-and-paper more effective for getting the thoughts to flow.) I mean, for all I know, maybe the huge silent majority doesn't have this pattern.

[saint_fiasco]

> there's something about pen-and-paper writing that's more effective for thought-lubrication

In my personal experience, a helpful feature of pen and paper is that it is less effective than keyboards, it takes me more time and focus to write things down. Maybe this gives the rest of my brain more time to catch up and understand the things that I am writing.

Written text is also less efficient when it comes to searching. This forces me to organize my thoughts better because I know I won't be able to CTRL+F random keywords later.

[hyperthesis]

Another benefit of text is search, especially across documents. Also great for spellchecking and rearranging phrases, sentences, paragraphs.

But writing enables arrows, lines, crossing-out, small-text notes, circling, variable pressure, colour, etc. Richer than ordering/indenting text. Also higher contrast.

[albert_e]

I will go even further. The physical sensation of pen on paper ... including the texture and pressure you apply to key words, capitalization, underlines, etc ... all of it being fed back though your muscles into your brain and getting processed/stored/intertwined with those very ideas and thoughts you are putting on paper ... and the mental faculties you allocate to aligning the text against the margins, ensuring neat spacing, etc ... puts your brain in a zone better tuned to the task at hand IMO.

Some of it may be just ... overload your brain so it cannot think of anything else ..so you stay focussed for lack of choice.