Mightier than the sword… and the laptop and the smartphone…

Several years ago I was working on an important project for one of our clients. The holidays were immanent and the US team were eager to finish-up. We agreed to blitz the job with a marathon telecom. By the end of a long meeting the client’s UK offices had gone dark and the building was deserted. I took another hour writing up notes and annotating the report while I waited for the US team to send me a summary of their comments. It was past midnight when I finally mounted my motorbike to drive home.

My journey involved navigating Europe’s most notorious and insanely busy motorway junction, Hanger Lane. I knew that if I entered the junction at the right speed I could achieve circumnavigation in one move. However, I got my timing wrong and I had to accelerate hard to get through the last of the traffic lights.

Sadly, I had not closed my backpack fully. As I took off the contents of my bag fell into the path of the oncoming traffic. The meeting of the two must have been something to behold. 

I spent 4 hours picking up laptop debris, report pages and pens from three different slip roads – extending as far half a mile down each. My initial concern was that someone might find pages of the report that were clearly marked with the client’s name and identified as ‘confidential’. However, as time passed I became more and more concerned that I would have to tell the client their efforts in the meeting had been wasted.

My laptop was destroyed, most pieces were no larger than a box of cigarettes. My phone, used to record the meeting, was terminated. I only found 65 of the 120 pages of annotated report. Most pages were impossible to read but I should be grateful that it wasn’t raining. I found the remnants of the binder I had written my notes in about 300 metres down one slip road. It was badly damaged and only a few of the pages were intact. 

After a short sleep I set to preparing a new draft of the report. I used my memory and the few remaining notes to address (what I could only hope was) all the points discussed during the meeting. Imagine my surprise when the client contacted me a week later to thank me for providing such a thorough and well-executed draft (I didn’t dare tell them what had happened).

How did I manage that? I don’t have the best memory and, after a long day at work, my otherwise addled brain was surviving on adrenaline alone. Despite this it seems I had remembered almost everything. Scientific research may give us a clue. 

During my undergraduate studies my limited memory was one reason I always took extensive notes. To be honest, 25 years ago there were few practical options to recording lectures beyond pen and paper. Over the years I have incorporated new technologies into my work routine. However, they have mainly been used as a failsafe mechanism to counter any loss of notes. 

I find many who sit with laptops open during meetings to be unengaged. This is only my subjective opinion but I am acutely aware how distracting it can be if your phone vibrates or buzzes during a meeting. Is it possible that email, instant messaging, the internet and ‘other projects’ diverts their focus? Mindlessly typing certainly seems to reduce the contribution that people make to meetings but might it also impact on their ability to retain information discussed during the meeting?

Research shows that college students taking notes on a computer only spend 60% of class taking notes. They spend 40% of class time using the internet or other programs unrelated to the class [1]. Plus, electronic devices introduce the opportunity for social media to interrupt their focus. It seems unlikely that professionals would be quite so susceptible to distraction – doesn’t it? But, the same research indicates that those students who write notes by hand learn more than those who type. It seems that those writing by hand tend to be aware they can’t catch every word, forcing them to focus on listening and digesting information, then summarizing it in their own written words [2]. The approach seems to make the brain function more efficiently, fostering comprehension and retention. This has been termed the encoding hypothesis (as opposed to the external-storage hypothesis that requires perfect note-taking for later reference).

If you want to get the best out of a meeting you should adapt one of these three options:

• Write your notes by hand when possible. Put your brain to the test. Listen, comprehend and summarise in your notes. In addition to higher retention, you wont have the distractions that come with a computer. It will also allow you to engage with the meeting process and contribute to outcomes. 
• Only take notes on your computer when you truly can’t keep up with the proceedings. Transfer the notes from the computer to paper once you have had time to reflect. Yes, write them up. It doesn’t take as long as you might think and it gives you the opportunity to cut out redundant content, add missing information and include your own considered observations.
• Engage fully with the meeting and take brief notes while capturing the proceedings on a recording device. Write the notes up later. This third approach can be time intensive but can be useful in situations where it is difficult to take notes (I once attended a meeting in an alligator park, next to the alligators).

Although it may seem a little Draconian, adopting a ‘no laptops or cell phones’ policy for meetings improves the retention of key discussion points by your team. We can only speculate that this would make the information more available to their immediate consciousness when making decisions later on [3]. Furthermore, you can spend the time at the start of the meeting talking with colleagues rather than worrying about WiFi passwords, power sources and finding the perfect acoustics. Obviously, you are at risk of facilitating conversations, fostering mutual respect and regaining the value of group-thinking. 

One final benefit for me has been that I have built a library of past notebooks that serve as a ready source of ideas and a handy resource when I want to check facts and figures from past projects.

In conclusion, don’t kid yourself. Science confirms that your efforts at multitasking are in vain. You are simply doing more things less successfully – failing at two (or more) tasks rather than succeeding at one. Over the last five millennia we have established an intimate relationship with ‘the written word’; using it to capture our thoughts. It seems that technology has yet to unlock or exploit the intricacies of that relationship. Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword” in 1839 – almost 150 years before the launch of the first portable computer in 1984. If he was around today he might have concluded that the pen (and paper) is still mightier than the word processor. 

1. Mueller PA, Oppenheimer DM. (2014) The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797614524581.
2. Bretzing BH, Kulhavy RW. (1979) Notetaking and depth of processing. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 4, 145–153.
3. Barnett SM, Ceci, SJ. (2002) When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 612–637.
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Dr Tim Hardman is Managing Director of Niche Science & Technology Ltd., a bespoke services CRO based in the UK. He is also Chairman of the Association of Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry and an occasional commentator on science, business and the process of drug development.