Keep Forgetting Things? To Improve Your Memory and Recall, Science Says Start Taking Notes (by Hand) – Inc.com
Keep Forgetting Things? To Improve Your Memory and Recall, Science Says Start Taking Notes (by Hand)
And then do a quick review the next morning.
EXPERT OPINION BY JEFF HADEN @JEFF_HADEN, Jan 22, 2026
Illustration: Getty Images
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When I spoke at the Arabian Business Awards a few years ago, I showed a slide describing research that shows meetings literally make people dumber: a study published in Transcripts of the Royal Society of London found that meetings cause you to (during the meeting) lose IQ points.
A bunch of people in the audience took photos of that slide.
The same was true when I presented a slide describing research published in Journal of Business Research showing that not only do 90 percent of employees feel meetings are unproductive, but when the number of meetings is reduced by 40 percent employee productivity increases by 70 percent.
A bunch of people took photos of that slide, too.
Both findings seem easy to remember, if only because the research confirms what most people feel about meetings: Most of the time, the only person who thinks a meeting is important is the person who called the meeting. But what if you really wanted to remember that meetings tend to make participants dumber, and tend to negatively impact overall productivity?
Or, more broadly, have a better shot of remembering things you really want to remember? Don’t take photos.
In a study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of a variety of memory-boosting strategies: taking photos, typing notes, and writing notes by hand.
As you can probably guess, people who wrote notes by hand scored the highest on subsequent recall and comprehension tests, even when people who took photos or typed verbatim notes were allowed to review those items before they took the tests.
Or maybe you couldn’t guess that: The researchers also found that “learners were not cognizant of the advantages of longhand note-taking, but misjudged all three techniques to be equally effective.”
So why does taking notes by hand work so well? According to the researchers:
Longhand note-takers mind-wandered less and, in turn, demonstrated superior retention of the lecture content.
Which makes sense. Taking a photo requires no “mental participation” at all. You don’t have to consider, synthesize, decide how you’ll capture the information in shorthand, etc. Typing notes verbatim — for example, transcribing a lecture or meeting recording — is more of a process than a thought exercise. The focus is on accuracy, not retention. (I can type fast enough to capture everything someone says in real time, but that doesn’t mean I remember any of it without reviewing what I’ve typed.)
Maybe that’s why Richard Branson carries a notebook everywhere he goes. (Literally: I’ve seen him with one at least 10 times.) Summarizing, putting concepts or ideas in your own words, deciding not just what to write, but how to write it — all those things engage different parts of your brain, and therefore improve your retention and recall.
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