What Memory Research
Says About Taking Notes
Three lines of research are often quoted about taking notes: Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, working memory, and handwriting vs typing. This article sets out what each study measured and what later research found. It does not turn the results into claims about any particular note app.
In Ebbinghaus's record, relearning after one day saved only about a third of the original effort (the popular "74% in a day" is close to his six-day value). Working memory is now estimated at about 3–5 chunks rather than 7±2. The 2014 finding that handwriting beats typing did not hold up clearly in a 2021 direct replication. These results are reasons to write things down and review them, not guarantees of an effect.
1. Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve
In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus memorised lists of nonsense syllables himself and measured how much effort relearning them took after a delay. The share of effort saved on relearning (the savings score) was:
- After 20 minutes: 58% (so 42% had to be relearned)
- After 1 hour: 44% (56%)
- After about 9 hours: 36% (64%)
- After 1 day: 34% (66%)
- After 2 days: 28% (72%)
- After 6 days: 25% (75%)
- After 31 days: 21% (79%)
The popular "we forget 74% within a day" is close to his six-day value. A 2015 replication (Murre & Dros) produced a curve of the same shape.
This measures the effort of relearning nonsense syllables. It does not tell you directly how much of a meaningful conversation or meeting you will keep.
2. Working memory
Working memory keeps information available while you think. Miller (1956) put short-term memory capacity at "7 plus or minus 2"; later work (Cowan, 2001) estimates about 3–5 items when they are counted as chunks.
The "Zeigarnik effect" — that interrupted tasks are remembered better than finished ones — is widely quoted, but a 2025 meta-analysis (Ghibellini & Meier) found no general memory advantage for unfinished tasks. What it did find was a tendency to resume interrupted tasks (the Ovsiankina effect).
What it means for notes: Writing down what is on your mind, instead of trying to keep it there, reduces what you have to remember.
3. Handwriting vs typing
Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014) reported that students who took laptop notes while watching lectures transcribed more verbatim than students writing by hand, and scored lower on conceptual questions. A direct replication using the same procedure (Urry et al., 2021) did not find a clear advantage for handwriting.
What both lines of work support is putting what you hear or read into your own words. Information you generate yourself is remembered better than information you only read (the generation effect: Slamecka & Graf, 1978).
When you type your notes:
- Paraphrase instead of transcribing verbatim
- Write keywords only, add your interpretation later
- When reviewing, write a short summary again
FAQ
Does note-taking improve memory?
Some studies find that taking and reviewing notes helps learning, but the effect depends on the material and on how you review. The finding that handwriting beats typing (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014) did not hold up clearly in a direct replication (Urry et al., 2021).
Forgetting curve and memos?
In Ebbinghaus's 1885 record, relearning after one day saved only about a third (34%) of the original effort (measured with nonsense syllables; the popular "74% in a day" is close to his six-day value). Writing a thought down removes the need to hold it in memory, and reviewing it is practice at recalling it.
Digital vs handwritten brain effects?
Some studies favour handwriting and a direct replication found no clear difference. Digital notes are easier to search and handwritten ones make sketches and arrows easier, so choosing by what you need to do with the note is the practical approach.
What Happens When You Take Notes
Taking notes means choosing what matters and condensing it. Information processed for meaning is remembered better — the levels-of-processing work of Craik & Lockhart (1972) and the generation-effect studies (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) show this. Copying verbatim gives up most of that benefit.
Paivio's (1986) dual coding theory holds that information stored both as words and as images is easier to recall. Adding a quick sketch or arrows to a note follows that idea.
In Andrade's (2010) experiment, people who shaded shapes while listening to a dull phone message recalled more of it than people who did not (40 participants; 7.5 vs 5.8 items on average). The author suggests doodling kept them from daydreaming, but it is one small study and it did not measure what happened in the brain.
3 Tips for Remembering What You Type
In the study where laptop notes did worse (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014), verbatim transcription was the suggested reason. Fast typing makes it easy to take down what you hear word for word.
Put what you hear into your own words before you type it: keywords and arrows instead of sentences, your own abbreviations, or a one-line "in other words..." summary.
Spreading reviews out over time keeps material longer than reviewing it all at once; many studies show this spacing effect (see the meta-analysis by Cepeda et al., 2006).
Simple Memo sends notes to your inbox, so checking email the next day is a natural first review. Flag the important ones and look through the flagged notes at the weekend for a one-week review.
Linking new information to what you already know (elaborative rehearsal) tends to work better than simple repetition (maintenance rehearsal). A phone number repeated aloud fades quickly; a mnemonic sticks.
When you review, add a line or two: "Why does this matter?" "What does it connect to?" "How could I use it?" With Simple Memo, find the note in your email and reply to it with your additions. As Craik & Lockhart's (1972) levels-of-processing idea suggests, information processed for meaning lasts longer.
Related Articles
3 Steps to Put This into Practice
In short-term memory research (Peterson & Peterson, 1959), when rehearsal was prevented, recall of a just-learned string of letters fell sharply within about 18 seconds. Ideas from a meeting or a commute also slip away when you put off writing them down. Decide on a place you can write immediately — an app on your first Home Screen page or a widget — and note ideas as they occur. Keywords are enough to trigger the memory later.
Information you generate yourself is remembered better than information you only read (the generation effect). When you note a passage from a book, add your own interpretation, such as "→ this means...". That small step turns a record into a learning tool.
Instead of carrying unfinished things in your head, write them out and collect them in one place — the same idea as GTD's collection step. The claim that interrupted tasks are remembered better (the Zeigarnik effect) was not supported by a recent meta-analysis, but people do tend to resume interrupted tasks; writing them down makes it harder to miss the ones to come back to.
References
- • Ebbinghaus, H. (1913). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (H. A. Ruger & C. E. Bussenius, Trans.). Teachers College, Columbia University. (Original work published 1885)
- • Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97. DOI: 10.1037/h0043158
- • Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168. DOI: 10.1177/0956797614524581
- • Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120644
- • Peterson, L. R., & Peterson, M. J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 193–198. DOI: 10.1037/h0049234
- • Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87–114. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X01003922
- • Ghibellini, R., & Meier, B. (2025). Interruption, recall and resumption: A meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 962. DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05000-w
- • Urry, H. L., et al. (2021). Don't ditch the laptop just yet: A direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer's (2014) Study 1 plus mini meta-analyses across similar studies. Psychological Science, 32(3), 326–339. DOI: 10.1177/0956797620965541
- • Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592–604. DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.4.6.592
- • Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- • Paivio, A. (1986). Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach. Oxford University Press.
- • Andrade, J. (2010). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(1), 100–106. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1561
- • Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684. DOI: 10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-X
