[coldcity_again]

I love taking notes by hand for better retention, but (my) longhand is just too slow. It's also an inconvenient format for representing a hierachy or graph of connections.

Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)?

They're still my primary paper-based realtime note taking method. They seemed to get a lot of attention a couple of decades ago, but I don't hear them mentioned much recently.

Lots of online/local Mind Map tools available, but I've never really gelled with them (though you do get self-organisation of the nodes!). Once in the digital realm I'm more likely to make notes in Markdown.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

[WhyCause]

The slowness is a feature, not a bug. It gives your brain time to chew on it a little bit, digesting the information and storing it away instead of just copy-pasting.

Speed-hacks like shorthand and stenographers' machines are for copying exactly what was said, not consuming and understanding it. I would be very surprised if there were not very old studies moldering in a paper journal somewhere investigating the information retention of secretaries / stenographers compared to "naive" note-takers.

[Zancarius]

I recently started journaling by hand and was somewhat frustrated with the excruciatingly slow speed versus typing. Eventually, I realized that the slowness was, as you said, a feature. It forces you to think. You have no choice but to take time with your words. Sometimes brevity is a gift (one I usually don't have).

I migrated to fountain pens and haven't looked back. Partially, it's because I enjoy the experience itself as much as writing, but partially it's because they've forced me to become even more deliberate.

I'd highly recommend it!

[flkiwi]

Same principle applies to, e.g., Leica cameras. Yes, they're pricey (absurdly so), but the lack of features, the slow speed, and the lack of configuration contributes to me improving my photography. It doesn't make me a better photographer, but it gives me the time and space to focus on being one, rather than just firehosing my camera at whatever is in front of me. It makes my photography intentional rather than reactive.

[SoftTalker]

Any old rangefinder camera will do that at a fraction of the price.

[Zancarius]

I think you just explained the opposite—that, yes, it does make you a better photographer. You've just described everything that it has done, which is continually improving your skill set and your thought process(es) that go into your creative work. Now that I understand the process, I love reading stories from others who have learned the same lesson: Deliberate slowness gives you time to think, time to plan, and time to breathe.

That is an experience you can't get any other way. That experience, also, pays forward in other areas of life.

I'm noticing the same thing with journaling. I still enjoy writing on my computers, of course, because I'm a much faster typist. However, I've noticed the deliberately slow pace of writing by hand has become transformative (slowly) over time. I'd imagine you're noticing the same thing. It's about self-improvement more than the hobby itself.

For me, it came at an opportune time: I started teaching an adult Bible study last year, and between journaling with fountain pens and teaching, it's forced me to get rid of some annoying habits that I might have held on to otherwise.

[uxcolumbo]

Or get an Canon 5d MKI or MKII. Not many features and great kit and can be bought for less than $500.

[ainch]

A sidenote along these lines - I've recently done an MSc, and found that the default approach to lectures is now to present slide decks. One of the profs, however, delivers a more traditional lecture, writing everything on a blackboard. I've found the second style far more effective, largely because writing caps the rate at which information can be conveyed. Because slides have no such bottleneck, I've found they're often misused and overladen with information which is skipped over too quickly.

[MengerSponge]

+1 Deciding what to write is the critical step. You can get it with careful typing, but it's harder because you can type fast enough to skip that step.

[Ferret7446]

It gives your brain time, but reality may not give you that time.

Someone who is typing a fast paced one time lecture, who can then take their time afterward to digest, is going to do much better than the "slowness is a feature" hand writer.

I've seen this first-hand with people taking handwritten notes in meetings

[helterskelter]

You could look at an alphabetic shorthand such as Orthic:

https://orthic.shorthand.fun/

The learning curve is very gentle, you could learn it in a day. Honestly the hardest part is getting used to reading it fluently.

You can also look into various systems of abbreviations developed for telegraph (Evans basic English code), or you could look into using Yublin, which is basically taking all 2-letter combinations and assigning the most common 676 English words to them. Personally I like the idea of Yublin, with the addition of suffixes to modify common words so the word "add" might be "ad" in Yublin, but to make it "addition" you might turn it into "adn" and to further modify it to "additionally" you could write "adnly". This way you get more words out of your limited number of bigrams instead of polluting it with a word plus all it's commonly used variations. Write that shit in Orthic and you'll be flying.

Food for thought.

[pch00]

> Anyone else into what my high school biology teacher loved referring to as "pseudo-arachnomorphic diagrams" (Mind Maps[1] / Spider Diagrams)?

Yes! Nearly all my notes are mind-map-ish. I’m a visual thinker/planner with ADHD and mind-map style “spatial notes” are the only ones that make sense to me when writing and reviewing later. I’ve tried a few methods of moving this process to digital over the years but nothing sticks like pen & paper.

[cratermoon]

There are ways to write that are faster and more legible. I recommend looking into the Getty-Dubay style.

[coldcity_again]

Thanks, though I think part of longhard feeling labourious these days is RSI sadly. I did try to correct my scrawl for effort and legibility a while ago, but it just wouldn't stick!

[mrexroad]

I had pretty terrible RSI (and even more terrible handwriting) and could write much without cramping up or pain. What helped for me was teaching myself proper cursive and fountain pens. Rather than clutching a ballpoint and marking with jerky finger/wrist movements, I now use my arm for larger movements and let the pen glide. It’s helped tremendously. It’s slow going at first but keep at it. Plus fountain pens are pretty fucking cool. Also, paper matters too; but paper and notebooks are another fun rabbit hole.

[cratermoon]

Ballpoint pens are the worst, especially the ubiquitous cheap ones. Gel pens are better if you're not quite ready to make the leap to fountain pens.

[abdullahkhalids]

1. Obtain a good fountain pen.

2. Obtain paper and ink that works well with the pen.

3. Practice cursive handwriting.

Possibly get a 2x improvement in speed.