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vonunov | 13 days ago

Interesting, thanks. Notwithstanding all I've said, I've also struggled with a nebulous sense that there's something to handwriting, possibly bordering on "sacred", to be a bit dramatic about it. This has resulted in phases of annoying obsession with handwriting where all its technical/practical shortcomings are overwhelmed by this unknown property for a time.

The sub-process thing sounds vaguely plausible, but at the same time, I'm under the impression that I'm already constantly evaluating whether what I'm writing makes sense, its implications and assumptions, etc. At least I feel that I'm attentive to the impression of it not making sense, though I also try not to confuse the feeling that something makes sense with the fact of it being so.

Anyway, what I'm going for here is, did you consciously apply any technique or process to evaluating this or do you come by this insight naturally?

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bayindirh|5 days ago

One of the factors I was able to pinpoint was the speed difference between typing and writing affects this "evaluation" process. I'm not a fast typer by any means. ~70 WPM or so, however, this effortless typing reduces how I think while typing vs. how I think while writing. Writing is always deeper, and creates more sparks or lead for new ideas. Also what I write comes out more refined since my mind has to wait for my hand more, hence re-evaluate or evaluate further down into the path before my hand can write out what I have thought in the beginning.

Another thing is, even though I have a very good to-do system backed by a nice software and allows me to see what I'm doing forward in time (application is called Pagico, BTW), I always keep a notepad nearby and automatically offload some information onto it. I tried tons of fast-note applications. On-screen sticky notes, notational velocity and friends and whatnot. I always return back to pen and paper and live better with it.

Well, the notepad I'm currently using is labeled "#14", and this is after the fact that I started numbering them to be able to index them. So, by both trial/error and intuition/insight, I always return to pen and paper.

Same for my diaries. I have an encrypted diary on my computer, yet I still use my paper one(s), and the digital one is a backup in case I really need it, and I don't have the paper one with me.

Hope this answers your question. If you want to chat further into this, you can find ways to contact me starting with the profile page here.