I'm naturally sceptical because I hated being forced to pointlessly take "notes" as a child (I always felt like they were more intended as a way for teachers to secure their own ass). It took me 20 years to start writing my own notes again. (...on an e-ink device. I guess I'll just hate paper forever. This is that school does to people.)
Anyway, I'd love to see some research comparing, for example, the retention gained by writing stuff out by hand, to just reading the material multiple times until an equivalent amount of time has passed. It seems possible to me that what The Suck achieves is forcing you to slow down and take some time to absorb the information, but the method doesn't seem efficient/optimal in principle.
Regarding being forced vs doing it of one's one volition, I hazily recall some research about checklist effectiveness in hospital and industrial work. If they were handed down from on high they were less effective than teams coming up with their own checklists.
That matches my experience. If I'm being forced to do something, my brain is focused on compliance, meaning doing whatever it takes to get the authority figure off my back. But if it comes from intrinsic motivation, I'm focused on achieving a practical result as best I can.
I've had the exact same thought. This is anecdotal, but I found that writing stuff out by hand indeed helps me tremendously to absorb the material, mainly by creating a more focused state of mind than I'm in otherwise. It's almost as if the hand is guiding the mind, and facilitating the right mental state. That said, I've been getting better at achieving that level of focus without writing things down by hand, and find that actually verbally recapping what I wrote to myself helps me internalize what I read even better, although it's more hit and miss—when my monkey mind acts up, I go back to writing things out by hand.
I'd be very curious to see someone doing a more rigorous experiment across a larger group of people and see what conclusion they arrive at.
It'd be interested in seeing a comparison against typing notes.
My prior is, having a ritual to set your brain in learning mode helps activate it. For most of us (at least over 30 or so) the ritual of written notes was taught. But there's definitely been enough time to get some adults who used typed notes to learn.
The most interesting test to me would be a 2x2 comparison. People who learned to <type|write> notes, test them on recall of information <typed|written>. All four combinations so we can really suss out what makes the difference.
Perhaps, but most of us use computers for lots of other things, e.g., doomscrolling facebook. It seems just as plausible that putting fingers on the keyboard would prime us for a de-focused, short attention span mode.
Anyway, I'd love to see some research comparing, for example, the retention gained by writing stuff out by hand, to just reading the material multiple times until an equivalent amount of time has passed. It seems possible to me that what The Suck achieves is forcing you to slow down and take some time to absorb the information, but the method doesn't seem efficient/optimal in principle.