Thinking With A Pen

Those of you who read previous posts of mine know that I love the connection between the human brain and computer science. One of the topics I've learned during my Neural Networks course in my first degree was Associative Memory, and indeed I'm often amazed at how memories and thinking in general are association driven.

I may use all kind of technologies to manage my data but I still always keep a primitive notebook+pen set on my desk. You can say that there are things that are just more easy to do with a notebook, and that's true, but in addition, this notebook helps me to think. I sometimes only need to grab my notebook and pen without any scribbling and I already get into "thinking mode", it's like the pretence of writing signals to my brain that it's time to work. 

When I think about it, I actually can't perform heavy thinking without a pen in my hand. I remember last year when I had an Advanced Algorithms course, the homework weren't so hard so most of the questions I solved with a pen and a blank paper in my hand, whenever I tried to give up the pen it just felt awkward.

Another example is that I can't remember some fact I always try to think of a situation in which I used this fact and it often helps (in other cases I just can't remember no matter what, but that's another issue).