The Unfashionable Art of Actually Learning Things

8 min read Original article ↗

rehmanali momin

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Photo by Amanda Lawrence on Unsplash

When I tell fellow engineers that I hand-write notes during technical deep-dives, the reactions range from puzzled looks to outright mockery. “Just use Notion,” they say. “Record the meeting,” they suggest. “Why are you living in the stone age?”

But here’s the thing: I’ve been doing this since my school days, dropped it during college (big mistake), picked it back up again, and never looked back. And the research? It backs up what I’ve experienced firsthand - writing things down isn’t just some boomer habit. It’s one of the most effective ways to actually learn and retain complex technical information.

The Brutal Reality of Information Overload

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The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve shows how rapidly we lose information without active reinforcement, while spaced repetition dramatically improves retention over time

We’re drowning in content. Technical blogs, documentation, tutorials, conference talks, podcast - it’s an endless firehose of information. The cruel irony is that despite having access to more learning resources than any generation before us, most of us are terrible at actually retaining what we consume.

Hermann Ebbinghaus figured this out in the 1880s with his famous forgetting curve research. Within an hour of learning something new, you’ve forgotten about 50% of it. Within a week, you’re down to about 25%. That expensive course you just finished? That brilliant talk you watched? Most of it evaporates faster than your motivation to update documentation.

I learned this the hard way during college. I was busy with sports, focused on “efficiency,” and figured I could just absorb information passively through lectures and reading. The result? Information went in one ear and out the other. I’d barely ace a test, then forget everything two weeks later. Sound familiar?

When Writing Saved My Interviews (And My Career)

Fast forward to interview preparation time. Suddenly, I had skin in the game. I couldn’t just nod along to system design videos and hope for the best. I needed to actually understand and articulate complex concepts under pressure.

So I went back to my old school method: writing everything down. Not typing - actually writing. With a pen. On paper. Like some kind of caveman.

The difference was immediate and dramatic. When I wrote down how consistent hashing works, I had to think through each step. When I sketched out database replication strategies, I had to understand the trade-offs deeply enough to explain them in my own words. The act of writing forced me to confront what I didn’t actually understand.

The Science Behind Why This Works

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Learning retention rates dramatically increase as methods become more active, with writing and teaching showing the highest retention at 90%

It turns out there’s solid neuroscience behind why writing beats passive consumption. When you write by hand, your brain activates like a Christmas tree. Multiple regions fire simultaneously: motor cortex, sensory processing areas, visual processing, language centers, and memory formation regions all work together.

Typing? Not so much. It primarily activates repetitive motor patterns with much less cognitive engagement. Your brain treats typing more like… well, typing. But handwriting? That’s treated as complex cognitive work that demands attention and processing.

The generation effect explains why this matters. We remember information significantly better when we actively create it rather than passively consume it. When you’re forced to rephrase concepts in your own words — which happens naturally when you write notes — you’re doing the mental work necessary for long-term retention.

The Engineer’s Dilemma: Speed vs. Understanding

Here’s where most of us go wrong. We optimize for the wrong metric. We want to consume information faster, cover more ground, check more items off our learning list. But speed of consumption has almost zero correlation with depth of understanding.

I see this constantly with junior engineers (and honestly, plenty of seniors too, heck I have done it). They’ll zip through a React tutorial, bookmark twelve articles about microservices, and watch a conference talk on GraphQL - all in one afternoon. Then when it’s time to actually implement something, they’re paralyzed because they never did the slow work of actually understanding any of it.

Writing forces you to slow down. You can’t just nod along when your pen is hovering over paper, waiting for you to articulate what you just “learned.” Either you understand it well enough to write it down, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.

My Current System (And Why It Works)

My approach is embarrassingly simple:

For new concepts: I write them down in my own words, with examples. If I’m learning about event sourcing, I don’t just copy definitions. I write out why you’d use it, what problems it solves, and sketch out a concrete example from a domain I understand.

For debugging sessions: I document the problem, my hypothesis, what I tried, and what I learned. This turns every bug into a learning opportunity instead of just a thing I fixed and forgot.

For system design: I draw it out. Boxes, arrows, data flows. The act of choosing what to include (and what to leave out) forces me to think about the essential complexity versus accidental complexity.

For code reviews: I write down patterns I notice, both good and bad. This builds up an internal library of “code smells” and “good practices” that I can reference later.

The key is intentionality. I’m not transcribing - I’m translating complex information into my own mental models.

The Compound Effect

Here’s what nobody tells you about learning: it’s not just about the individual piece of information you’re trying to retain. It’s about building a web of connected knowledge that you can navigate and extend over time.

When I write things down, I’m not just memorizing facts. I’m building schema - organized patterns of knowledge that my brain can use as scaffolding for new information. Each new concept I learn and document properly becomes a foundation for understanding the next concept.

This is why senior engineers seem to learn new technologies so quickly. It’s not that we’re smarter - it’s that we have robust mental models that we can extend and adapt. We’ve done the slow work of building foundations, so adding new floors is relatively straightforward.

The Modern Resistance

I get it. In 2025, handwriting feels inefficient. It’s slow, you can’t search it easily, and your handwriting probably looks like a doctor’s prescription written during an earthquake.

But that’s actually the point. The inefficiency is a feature, not a bug. The cognitive load of forming letters forces your brain to engage with the content at a deeper level. The slowness creates space for reflection and synthesis.

And here’s the kicker: you don’t need to handwrite everything. I’m not suggesting you abandon all digital tools and live like it’s 1995. Use the right tool for the right job. For quick references and searchable information, digital is great. But for learning new concepts? For understanding complex systems? For building intuition about trade-offs? Nothing beats the deliberate slowness of pen and paper.

The Professional Payoff

This isn’t just about personal learning - it has real career implications. Engineers who can deeply understand and articulate complex concepts are rare and valuable. In architecture reviews, system design interviews, and technical discussions, the ability to think clearly and communicate precisely sets you apart. [acm+1]

I’ve seen brilliant engineers struggle to advance because they couldn’t explain their thinking clearly. They understood the technology, but they couldn’t build shared understanding with their team. Writing — really writing, not just typing - teaches you to think clearly because it forces you to articulate your thoughts precisely. [savvycomsoftware+1]

The Bottom Line

Look, I’m not going to convince everyone. Some people have found other methods that work for them, and that’s fine. But if you’re struggling to retain technical knowledge, if you find yourself re-learning the same concepts over and over, or if you feel like you’re consuming lots of content but not getting much wiser, or simply just not able to consume the content in depth, try this:

Pick one technical concept you’re trying to learn. Close your laptop. Get a pen and paper. Write down what you understand about it in your own words. Draw diagrams. Create examples. Struggle with the parts you don’t understand.

It’s slow. It’s inefficient. It’s unfashionable. And it works.

The irony is that in our rush to optimize everything, we’ve optimized away one of the most effective learning techniques humans have. Sometimes the old ways persist not because we’re stuck in the past, but because they actually work.

Your brain doesn’t care about efficiency. It cares about understanding. And understanding requires doing the slow work that can’t be shortcut, automated, or optimized away.

So grab a pen. Start writing. Your future self will thank you.

Don’t Just Take My Word For It

For the data-driven folks who want to see the research behind the reasoning, here are some of the key studies and articles that back this up -

Core Neuroscience Research on Handwriting vs Typing:

Forgetting Curve & Memory Research:

Generation Effect & Active Learning:

Software Engineering Learning: