Hi, this is Ray.

Today I want to start with a moment of pure hypocrisy from my own life. I'm someone who writes about learning for a living. I read learning research constantly. I know exactly what the studies say about how brains encode information. And for about five years in my early thirties, I convinced myself that reading books on my Kindle and taking all my notes in a notes app was just as good for learning as physical books and paper notebooks… maybe better, because everything was searchable, portable, and organized. I evangelized this position to friends. I looked at people still carrying paper notebooks with a mixture of affection and pity, like I was watching Jean-Luc Picard trying to send a fax.

Then I actually started tracking what I was retaining from my reading. And the data was humbling. The books I'd read on my Kindle were leaving essentially no trace six months later. The notes I'd typed into apps I'd stopped opening. The information was technically stored somewhere, but it wasn't in me. Meanwhile, the physical books I'd read years earlier, with margin notes and folded pages, were still living in my memory in a way that the digital versions weren't. The notebooks I'd carried, with their coffee stains and torn corners, were more useful references than any of my perfectly organized digital archives.

The research, when I finally started paying attention to it, has been telling this same story for years. For learning specifically (not for entertainment reading, not for reference lookup, not for general information consumption) physical materials appear to have consistent advantages over their digital equivalents that most of us have been underweighting. The advantages aren't dramatic in every situation, but they're real, they're replicated, and they add up over years of accumulated learning. Today's newsletter is about that. Why physical books and notebooks still beat screens for learning, what the research actually shows, and how to use this without pretending it's 1985. Let's get into it.

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Let me start with the data, because this is one area where the research has been converging on a fairly clear conclusion.

The most-cited work on handwriting versus typing for notes is Mueller and Oppenheimer's series of studies, which have been replicated many times. The core finding: students who take notes by hand perform better on subsequent tests than students who type notes, particularly on conceptual questions. According to one recent review of this literature, there was a clear benefit on performance for handwritten notes compared to typed notes. The researchers calculated how the strength of the benefit would translate to grades in a hypothetical scenario and suggested that 9.5% of the students who take their notes by hand would achieve an A whereas only 6% of the students who type their notes would achieve an A. Same lecture. Same students. Different note-taking method. Measurably different outcomes. The effect isn't enormous (we're not talking about a transformation), but it's consistent enough that it's genuinely showing up as a difference in grades.

A 2021 study out of Tokyo went beyond behavior and looked at what was actually happening in the brain. According to coverage of the research, writing on physical paper can lead to more brain activity when remembering the information an hour later. Researchers say that the unique, complex, spatial and tactile information associated with writing by hand on physical paper is likely what leads to improved memory. The study compared people writing with pen and paper to people writing with a stylus on a tablet. The paper group showed measurably more brain activity in memory-associated regions during recall. This is notable because both groups were physically writing… the difference was purely the material they were writing on. Paper produced more brain engagement than tablet, even when the physical motion was similar.

A 2024 neuroscience review examining the difference between handwriting and typing found consistent patterns. According to the researchers, handwriting engages a broader network of brain regions compared to typing, including areas involved in motor control, sensory processing, and cognition. Typing engages fewer neural circuits, resulting in more passive cognitive engagement. Despite the advantages of typing in terms of speed and convenience, handwriting remains an important tool for learning and memory retention. The brain isn't doing the same thing when you handwrite versus type. Different circuits engage. Different depth of processing happens. Different learning results.

The findings extend to reading. Research on physical books versus e-readers has found that readers of physical books tend to remember more of what they read, particularly regarding plot sequences, spatial relationships within the text, and details that require holding multiple pieces of information in mind simultaneously. The mechanism appears to involve the spatial and tactile cues that physical books provide… you remember where in the book something was, which page it was on, which side of the page. E-readers strip these cues out. All pages look the same. Your brain has less to hang the information on.

Let me get concrete about why physical materials produce these effects, because understanding the mechanisms tells you when the effect matters most and when it doesn't.

Spatial memory engagement. Your brain has powerful, evolutionarily-old machinery for remembering spatial relationships. Physical books and notebooks give this machinery something to work with. You remember roughly where in the book you encountered an idea. Left page or right. Top or bottom. Near the beginning or the middle. These spatial cues become retrieval hooks that help you get back to the information later. As the Tokyo researcher who conducted the paper-versus-tablet study explained, if you remember a physical textbook printed on paper, you can close your eyes and visualize the photo one-third of the way down on the left-side page, as well as the notes you added in the bottom margin. Digital pages don't have this spatial specificity. They all look and feel the same. The retrieval hooks disappear.

Motor engagement. Writing by hand engages more of your motor system than typing does. Each letter requires a distinct set of movements. Your brain has to plan and execute a unique physical sequence for every character. This motor engagement appears to strengthen memory formation, in ways that the mechanical, uniform motion of typing doesn't quite replicate. As one research analysis put it, handwriting increases retention due to an increase in the spatial and temporal components of processing, regardless of semantic processing. This increase creates more contexts for the material learned, and these components of processing are simply not found with typing. The extra motor and spatial context is doing memory work.

Forced selectivity. Handwriting is slower than typing. This is often cited as a disadvantage, but it's actually part of the mechanism. When you can't type everything verbatim, you have to decide what matters. That deciding is itself cognitive work that produces learning. The typist who captures the lecture word-for-word has done less cognitive work than the handwriter who had to identify the important parts as they went. The words are captured in one case, and understood in the other. Different processes. Different outcomes.

Reduced distraction. Physical books and notebooks don't have notifications. They don't offer the option to check something else in a different tab. They don't invite the constant micro-distraction that digital devices do. This isn't a small thing. The attention preserved by using non-connected devices adds up over sustained study sessions. As one training research summary noted, print helps learners stay focused. Unlike screens, it doesn't ping or pull attention away. It's just the learner and the page. The absence of distraction is part of what makes paper effective.

Tactile permanence. Physical materials have a fixed physical existence. The notes you wrote yesterday are still in the notebook where you left them. The book you read is on the shelf. This tactile permanence creates a different relationship with the material than digital storage does. Files can be lost, moved, corrupted, forgotten. Books can't. There's something about the physical presence of learning materials that seems to keep them alive in your mind differently than digital versions do.

Dual coding through drawings. Handwritten notes tend to include more drawings, diagrams, arrows, and visual elements than typed notes. As one learning research summary noted, handwritten notes contain more drawings and images than typed notes. Thus, producing notes by hand capitalizes on dual coding processes, enriching learning by combining visuals and words, which are conducive for memory retention and comprehension. The visual elements add encoding pathways that pure text doesn't provide. This is one of the specific mechanisms by which handwritten notes outperform typed ones.

Honest section. Digital tools aren't universally worse. Some things they do better, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Knowing when to use each matters.

Reference lookup. When you need to find a specific piece of information you know exists somewhere, digital search is dramatically better than flipping through paper. If your goal is finding a fact you've stored, not learning something new, digital is often the right tool.

Sharing and collaboration. Digital notes can be shared instantly with study partners, teachers, and colleagues. Paper notes can't. If collaboration is central to your learning process, digital has real advantages.

Portability. You can carry hundreds of books in an e-reader. You can't carry that many physical books. For travel, commuting, and situations where you need access to a large library on the go, digital wins.

Editing and revision. Written work that needs multiple drafts is dramatically easier to produce digitally. Trying to write a research paper entirely on paper would be tedious. For work that's fundamentally iterative, digital tools serve better.

Multimedia integration. Digital notes can include recordings, videos, images, and links in ways paper can't. For material where these matter, digital has capabilities paper doesn't.

Accessibility. For learners with visual impairments, motor difficulties, or other accessibility needs, digital tools can be far more accessible than paper. This is a genuine and important consideration.

The picture that emerges: use paper for the ENCODING of new learning. Use digital for reference, collaboration, and revision after the learning has happened. The two aren't mutually exclusive. They're good at different things.

Okay, the practical part. Based on the research and years of my own experimentation, here's how to use physical materials effectively for learning without pretending we live in a Studio Ghibli movie where technology doesn't exist.

Handwrite your primary study notes. This is the highest-leverage move. When you're learning something new (reading a book, taking a class, working through material), take your primary notes by hand. Don't try to capture everything. Focus on the parts you need to understand and remember. The selectivity is part of the point. The physical writing is producing the learning that typing wouldn't.

Use physical books for material you actually need to learn. For books you're reading for education (not entertainment), consider getting the physical copy when possible. Mark it up. Fold pages. Write in the margins. Interact with it physically. This is more valuable than pristine e-book pages you'll forget existed.

Keep a physical learning journal. In addition to notes on specific material, maintain a physical journal where you process what you're learning over time. Reflections, connections, questions. The journal becomes both a memory aid and a document of your development. The physical form makes it feel more real than a digital journal typically does.

Use paper for planning and thinking. When you're planning learning projects, working through ideas, or trying to understand something complex, use paper. The physical space is more conducive to exploratory thinking than digital tools tend to be. You can spread things out, connect ideas visually, and see the whole picture in ways screens don't quite allow.

Digitize when you need to. If you want your handwritten notes to be searchable or shareable, take photos of them and store them digitally after you've done the physical work. This gets you both benefits… the learning from handwriting and the access from digital storage. Best of both.

Choose notebook formats deliberately. Spiral-bound or notebooks that lay flat are much easier to write in than ones that need to be held open. Notebooks with quality paper make writing more pleasant, which sustains the habit. The tools matter. As Naruto reminds us, the shinobi is only as good as the kunai they carry. Get decent gear.

Don't feel obligated to write beautifully. The learning benefit isn't in the aesthetic quality of your notes. It's in the physical act of writing them. Ugly handwriting that captures the concepts you're learning is more valuable than beautiful lettering that took so long you didn't have time to think. The utility beats the aesthetics.

Match the tool to the task. For learning, use paper. For reference, use digital. For collaboration, use digital. For revision, use digital. For focused reading of demanding material, use physical books. For breezy consumption of many articles, digital is fine. The skill is in matching the tool to what you're trying to do, not in choosing one for everything.

There's a specific benefit of physical materials that I want to draw out separately because it's become genuinely important in our current era. Physical materials don't compete for your attention with the entire internet.

When you're reading a physical book, the book has your attention until you choose to put it down. When you're reading on a device, the device is also potentially showing you social media, email, news, videos, messages from friends, and whatever else the algorithms decide might grab you. The book you're supposedly reading is competing, in real time, against every other digital experience available. Even if you have the discipline to not switch tabs, some part of your attention is spent NOT switching tabs. That attention is not going into the reading.

The physical book eliminates this competition entirely. There's nothing else the book can turn into. The attention it captures is the attention it keeps. This is a more significant advantage than it sounds like, especially for material that requires sustained deep engagement. The Naruto principle applies here… chakra is finite. Every bit of it you're using to resist distractions is chakra not going into the actual work. Physical materials don't demand this chakra tax.

For learning that requires deep focus, this alone might justify the choice of physical over digital regardless of any other consideration. The medium that lets you actually focus is worth using, even if it's slightly less convenient in other ways.

Here's what I want you to take from all this. The cultural pressure to use digital tools for everything (because they're modern, efficient, and integrated) has led a lot of us to underweight what physical materials actually offer for learning specifically. The research is remarkably consistent that for the encoding of new understanding, physical books and handwritten notes produce measurably better results than their digital equivalents. The effect isn't dramatic. It's not the difference between learning something and not learning it. But it's real, it's replicated, and it adds up over years.

If you've been doing all your learning on screens because you assumed digital was strictly better, please consider that the assumption might not hold up. The people who read serious material in physical books and take handwritten notes aren't being old-fashioned. They're using tools that the research suggests are genuinely more effective for the specific work of learning. The tools that are best for messaging aren't always best for encoding. The tools that are best for reference aren't always best for study. The tools that are best for entertainment aren't always best for growth.

The move isn't to abandon digital tools. It's to be more thoughtful about which tool you use for which purpose. Handwrite your important notes. Read serious books on paper when you can. Keep a physical journal for your learning journey. Use digital tools where they genuinely serve you… reference, collaboration, sharing. Match the medium to the goal.

The Kindle you own is fine for beach reading. It's not the best tool for reading Kant. The notes app is fine for grocery lists. It's not the best tool for encoding a semester of organic chemistry. The friction of switching to physical for the important work is small. The compounding benefits over decades of learning are substantial.

In Cowboy Bebop, Spike had specific tools for specific jobs. He didn't use the same gun for every situation. The tools mattered because they were fit for their purposes. Your learning tools are the same. Pick the ones that fit what you're actually doing. The physical ones, for the deep learning work, are more useful than you've probably been treating them.

Keep learning (and keep your notebook handy),

Ray