The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard

Why writing things down can dramatically boost your recall

Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, November 22nd. In my freshman year of college. I got a 2.8 GPA. In that spring, I got a 2.4. In the fall of my sophomore year, my GPA was 2.1. I was clearly going in the wrong direction and then I got my act together. Spring of my sophomore year, I nailed a 3.6, and in every semester since my entire junior and senior years, I was 4.0., despite being the executive vice president of the Student Government Association, and I was also interning for a member of Congress. I had a minimum of 15 credits and as many as 24 in a single semester, 4.0 every time.

I'm not very smart. I wasn't one of those people who could never go to class or never read the book and get an A anyway, you had people like that in your college classes. We always hated those people. We all knew them. We always hated them. I wasn't like those. I had to work hard to learn this stuff.

So let me tell you how I did it. First, I finally figured out that what my professors were trying to teach me was what I was going to need in order to succeed after graduation. This was a big culture shock for me, because I had the view from high school that pretty much everything they taught me was pointless. Yeah, Shakespeare sonnets, they were okay, but so what? I had almost universally bad teachers in high school, even though I went to a supposedly great public high school. A few of the teachers were great and even inspirational, but most of them were just pass-alongs. 

We had 4,000 kids in my high school. It was only built for 2,000. We had massive overcrowding, and that meant it was really easy to just slide by unnoticed. And that's what I did. And I treated college the same way when I got there as a freshman, and I did that in my freshman year and the first half of my sophomore year.

But then I figured out I was doing it all wrong, and I was tired of getting such lousy grades. So I changed my attitude. I changed how I studied and how I prepared for exams. I want to share with you how I did it. First, I took notes in class. And then I read the book, and then I reread my notes and I yellow highlighted what I had written down in the class, and then I yellow highlighted the key passages of the book, and then I wrote down what I had highlighted. And then a yellow highlighted what I wrote down. And then I wrote note cards that were focused on those highlights.

The bottom line - I went through my class notes and the book five times, and then I memorized the notes prior to the exam and Bam! I knew everything that the exams were going to ask about; 4.0, baby every time! I made the Dean's List five times. I graduated with honors and I became the president of the Student Honor Society. And this is the most important thing, particularly important because while I didn't have a choice about this when I was in college in the 1970s, kids in college today do have a choice. 

The most important thing is this all of my note taking was by hand. I had to do it that way. We had no electronics. Today though, kids are using their laptops wrong. Although we have eBooks today and we have laptops making everything digital, I think use of digital is a bad idea for comprehension and now new research bears me out.

Studies are showing that when you write on paper, it improves your ability to recall and it improves your comprehension. You see, when you type on a keyboard, every muscle action is the same. You just pressing the A and the T and the S and the G. It's just pressing with your fingers and pressing is all the same.

But when you write the letter A, your hand motion is radically different than when you write the letter G. This difference in your physical movement helps your brain process the detail better, and you can't write as fast as you can type, and that forces you to go slower. And going slower forces you to focus more on what you're writing down. One study found that students who typed their notes in class typed twice as many words as students who hand wrote. But those typed notes were just verbatim from the lectures. These students were acting as stenographers, not students. But the students who hand wrote their notes, they had to summarize in order to keep up with the professor, and this forced them to analyze and interpret the data. 

They wrote less, but they comprehended more. When you type, you're not engaging your muscles or your brain as much as when you write. If you want to become a subject matter expert, go slow. Take your time. Do it the effective way, not the fast and expedient way. And that's how you too can get a 4.0 throughout your college career.

As we all get ready for Thanksgiving, I want to give you an update on JB. A few weeks ago I told you his story. JB is a financial advisor at Edelman Financial. He has strong ties to Israel. He has family there. His two sons are there. One of them attending high school, the other in college. And JB decided when Hamas attacked on October 7th, he decided he's not going to stand idly by here in the US while all of his family are in harm's way. So JB took a leave of absence from Edelman Financial. He flew to Jerusalem. He's now helping to feed Israeli soldiers. He's now created a 501(c)3 nonprofit charity called Shabbat Alone Together. It gives meals to soldiers on the Sabbath every Friday night to support them both physically and spiritually. He's providing them with proper meals during the sacred time, and that's allowing the soldiers to connect with their faith, find solace, and gather strength. This is sending a powerful message to the soldiers that they are valued and respected. They get a sense of community and a boost in morale. If you'd like to donate to JB's new nonprofit, the link is in the show notes. 

JB also recommends three other nonprofit organizations if you would like to support the Israelis and the defense of their nation during this challenging time. Friends of the IDF.org, Magen David Adom, that's the Israeli Red Star of David, their version of the Red Cross and Innovation Africa, a charity that makes portable solar power units so Israeli soldiers can keep their phones charged without having to leave the battlefield. International aid organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations, are also working to help injured civilians in both Israel and Gaza. Links to all of these charities are in the show notes. We're off for Thanksgiving. See you on Monday.

Have a wonderful holiday but be sure to tune in to Jean’s podcast this week. We've uploaded it already early so you can enjoy her podcast as you enter the holiday Thanksgiving weekend. The link to Jean’s podcast is in the show notes as well.

You're probably a music fan like I am. I started collecting music back in the 70s. I had a lot of favorite artists, just as I'm sure you do, but it was the popular songs we all really wanted to own. Back in the album days, we had to buy the whole album to get the 1 or 2 songs we really wanted. But now Steve Jobs and Apple changed all of that with iTunes. And in investing, there are indexes that you can buy and focus sectors that you can buy. You want a little bit of this, you want a little bit of that, and you can enjoy this different approach. 

In the world of investing, this is a multi-theme approach. And there are now multi-theme ETFs similar to those greatest hits albums in music or your own creation of your own playlist. These multi-theme ETFs give you a greatest hits approach to different investment sectors and themes that you think are going to do well in the future. Investing in specific sectors gives you opportunities, but of course, also risks. You can help spread out that risk with a multi-themed ETF that invests in a variety of industries where you can diversify across sectors that are impacted by technological disruption.

One of these I like is the Global X Thematic Growth ETF. The symbol is GXTG. It gives exposure to structurally disruptive macro trends. They're not tied down to any specific sector or geography. They focus on innovation and disruption that looks to the future based on changing consumer habits. These invest in a basket of funds, all from Global X, covering a variety of growth oriented themes including blockchain, robotics, fintech, social media, lithium, renewable energy, genomics. I'm a big fan of ETFs, and with the Global X Thematic Growth ETF symbol GXTG, you can gain access to some of these leading disruptive technologies with a single basket approach. Easy. Convenient. Effective. Check it out. The Global X Thematic Growth ETF, GXTG. It's available at Global X ETFs.com or your rep at Global X. And if you are an investor, talk to your investment advisor about it.

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