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I believe this is simple conditioning. There are many people like me who learn better from ebooks, online-papers and pdf's rather than dead-tree books. We can annotate, attach notes, add/remove highlights and most importantly: search without needing a painful index and simultaneously study 2 or more books on the same subject with little trouble in shifting context.

With paper books, all this is very painful - too much jugglery needed.

To each his own, I guess. With the exception of search, I can do all of those things more easily in a physical book than electronically — I find that the physical motion and context helps me remember things.

I replace searching with maintaining my own comprehensive index. It forces me to think about what I’ve read and consider the situations in which it might be useful so that I can file it away correctly. I read fewer things this way, but they stick in my memory better, for probably a similar net result.

I wonder if there’s a correlation between usage of debuggers vs printf, and the different strategies you all have taken towards reading.

I don't disagree that it could be conditioning. You make really good points about the benefits of doing things digitally. At some point I really need to spend a few months going all-in on doing it digitally and see if I can make it work for me.

Definitely an area where everyone works differently and it takes serious effort to figure out what's best for you personally.

I think there's a bit of a problem when directly taking content thought for a specific medium, like physical books, and transporting it unchanged to another media, like ebooks.

Quick example: when you're reading a book, you have always two pages available to yourself to read. When you read an ebook, you have one, or part of one page on the screent at a time. That doesn't lend itself to going back and re-reading. A physical book has the chance to keep our attention on a larger scale than an ebook.

But lets twist that example. When I was in primary school, one of my brightest classmates had a severely impaired vision. He'd had to practically stick his face into a book or sheet of paper to read. Probably a large screen with adjustable fonts, and good contrast, would help him read.

I think we need to find a new balance to how we consume written media. But I wouldn't cry that books are disappearing, rather I think "old books" do not adjust so well to screens, and that "screen books" lend themselves to ways that old-written-media couldn't do. We need a new balance to get the best from both worlds, and have an improved medium to read from.

I've found all of these things to be unhelpful compared to just having a notebook next to my book, the added writing down of information helps me retain information better.

I question the benefit of search beyond finding a sentence or two. Most large ideas require more than a sentence or two to explain something, and ignoring the context before and after could limit my understanding.

In any case, most substantial non-fiction books have both a table of contents and an index.

I don't notice much of a difference with reading, but I do feel the same way about writing; digital todo lists or notes just don't work for me.

I used to think this was about the act of writing in itself - that doing it by hand forced me to be more conscious of the information - but writing with e.g. an Apple Pencil on an iPad is just as useless as typing.

I'd really like to figure this out because I love the idea of searchable notes that are available anywhere, any time, and aren't dependent on a dead tree for their longevity, but I haven't found the solution yet. I have a theory that it might be related to the fundamental experience (friction, texture) of a pen and paper, so I'm considering a reMarkable[1] but I'm wary of obsolescence.

1. https://remarkable.com

The single-purposeness and simplicity of non-digital tools is important, I think. Paper doesn't have a web browser hovering behind that icon, waiting to be easily clicked at any moment. Our brain knows that infinite oceans of content and stimuli are lurking there.

As someone with ADHD I can absolutely identify with that. I've tried ebooks in the past but due to distractions tend to come away with very little comprehension of what I've just read. Dead tree books are a lifesaver, I'm able to completely unplug and can consume multiple chapters in a single sitting.

It'd be worth trying out a proper ereader. I picked up a Kobo Libra so I could get back into reading and away from audiobooks a bit. I've read studies that the brain can't tell between the two, but I was halfway through an audiobook recently and realized I had no clue what was going on.

I bought this as my summer project -- basically, 'Steve, let's retrain your brain to focus on long form reading again.'

What I like about an ereader / eink is that its not some flashy screen with a bunch of stuff going on in the background like an iPad or whatever. The screens look great and have an amazing refresh rate these days.

The Libra is a 7" screen, which I figured should be good enough to read PDF'd magazines in landscape -- and I was right [1]! This uses KOReader [2]. While the images themselves aren't the same as a color magazine/screen, it's good enough. For epubs everything is exactly as you'd expect.

With my own ADHD, the initial get-down-to-reading is tough, but I've noticed that it is getting easier with each session. And it is also getting to the point where I am looking forward to reading.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/9hncMyI.jpg

[2] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295612

I still find a huge difference between ereader and physical book myself. I have a Kindle Fire, which I keep constantly in airplane mode and use no apps except Scribd on, but I find myself reading much faster on it, and also remembering much less of what I actually do read. And I can barely read pdfs on my mac, even with airplane mode and other distraction-reducing things turned on. I just don't like the format. I've come to realize I truly do best recall from physical books, and if I want to learn something new, I'll likely buy physical, though I might use pdfs for a while to test quality.

are kindle fires eink? If not, you should check out some eink -- its so much better than an LED/LCD etc screen.

They're not unfortunately, but the Scribd app also doesn't work on the e-ink readers either (Scribd is really the only reason I have a Fire over e-ink). Lately my Fire has been having issues, so I'll likely switch over to e-ink next time I purchase one and give it a shot. But I think it's just something about physically holding a book that helps me retain more from it -- I've found this to be true even when I'm reading the same book on both (taking the Kindle out walking on a windy day, but reading the physical copy at home)

I think a lot of people have the same experience with paper vs a device -- even an e-reader. Even if it's just a placebo, it's still valid.

I had an old Kindle Keyboard (wifi.) I struggled reading off of that thing -- whereas this new Kobo Libra actually looks like paper and is a breeze to read off of, which may also be a placebo. :)

Same here. I’m so much more productive whenever I write down my todos on a simple sheet of paper. I have a very elaborated online todo list. But still, paper works more effectively. I have no clue why and it frustrates me

I think part of it is that paper is completely unopinionated: all it’s doing is holding whatever marks you make for later. That means your brain has to do the work of deciding what marks to make and their meaning; the more work your brain does on any given task, the more memories there are for you to latch onto when remembering.

When you write a note on paper you've made a unique physical object and maybe that fits better into our memories somehow, for example by inhabiting a space that we can recall?

Whereas digital data appears to break the mental physical space rule that a thing exists in a certain place? As for notes on a phone or computer, they've disappeared into another dimension and are harder to think of as being "at hand." We can't really use our spatial memory on digital stuff, I'm guessing.

A Kindle might be better since your current page in your current book opens as soon as you wake it up, more like a physical object and less like something that disappears into and reappears out of a magician's bag.

I find with my Kindle and ebooks in general that I'd really like some minimal but ever-present indication of my place in the book, even a single pixel progress bar, maybe in part because I yearn for some kind of spatial-object relationship with the book.

With pen and paper notes I've got a 3d object that I've altered. Maybe it feels more present in the same way that cash on a table feels more like "real money" than the credit card next to it.

I've also thought about trying out a reMarkable! I'm a little too cash-strapped to justify it these days, but maybe sometime in the future.

I agree with other commenters here that a lot of it could be conditioning, but I've also found, like you, that even handwriting on devices is lacking compared to doing it with pen and paper. My personal theory is that it might have something to do with the ability to reason in a more spatially oriented way when we use pen and paper to write things down.

Agreed. I still remember best when I take notes on paper. (I was a voracious reader as a kid, still read a lot now). I bring notebooks to meetings and write notes. It helps my recall immensely. I've tried so many other todo and note apps it isn't funny. None of them really worked as well as me keeping lists on paper of things to do: A list of what I want to accomplish today, a list of key things I need to do, and a big sparkfile (half on computer, half on paper) of things I want to remember.

Same here on bringing notebooks to meetings. I didn't for a long time, but I picked it back up recently at the urging of a friend, and I've found myself really enjoying it. Doing something with my hands while in meetings really helps me to stay focused, and I've definitely found that I remember better.

That’s mostly because you’ve become conditioned to experience screen reading as mindless content consumption and dumps.