Yes - today, without offloading information from our central processor (the brain) to an external medium, it’s impossible to manage. There’s just too much information, and we can’t keep everything in our heads.

With a phone at hand, we can easily record a smart thought at any moment so it doesn’t slip away—or we can easily open Instagram and check out what’s new there.

Advantages of Technology

An amazing tool for finding and organizing information. The only problem is that everyone online is trying to grab our attention, anyone who can. Unfortunately, those who create content that isn’t genuinely useful to us are often better at this. Nevertheless, some have managed to achieve the opposite. Here’s an example: How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media | Luis Von Ahn | TED.

Advantages of Handwriting

Thoughtfulness. Writing by hand requires more effort, and as a result, you’re less likely to want to write something by hand that isn’t really important. On the other hand, saving a task with a necessary link on a computer requires almost no effort. As a result, this leads to overloading your digital storage with information, which in turn leads to a reluctance to look into it.

Tactility – the feeling of a pen in your hand or paper on the table is like a direct connection to the brain, a sense that you’re truly creating something, something that’s not as easy to erase as, for example, a few button presses on a computer screen.

The greatest advantage of this method is that you can step away from the screen and truly be in the moment while writing in your notebook.

Disadvantages of Handwriting

It’s hard to manage a large volume of information. You might have heard about the Zettelkasten method developed by Niklas Luhmann. This method involves a concise but simultaneously complex system for organizing notes. I don’t think everyone today is ready to build card cabinets with notebooks and try to organize them. There’s a search button, and you don’t even need to know where your own notes are.

Nowadays, it’s impossible to give up digital technology. Whether it’s for organizing tasks or storing information, the benefits of screens are undeniable. To organize your routine, you don’t have to resort to a binary choice and pick just one. You can combine the best of both worlds. Especially in our time, more than ever, we lack genuine engagement in the moment and truly being present here and now. Handwriting can really help with this.