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# Write Down Your Own Thoughts, Don't Save Others'
- URL: https://www.saraburke.net/write-down-your-own-thoughts-dont-save-others/
- Published: 2015-02-16T05:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-12-29T06:50:12.000Z
- Author: Sara Burke

Saving a list promotes forgetting it. BPS Research Digest has [a nice summary](http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/02/after-saving-information-to-computer.html?utm%5Fsource=feedburner&utm%5Fmedium=feed&utm%5Fcampaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%290) of a paper where merely the act of saving a list in a text editor lowers students’ abillity to recall its contents when tested later.

> Further details back up this interpretation. When the computer saving process was made unreliable – files kept getting lost – the saving process no longer boosted the students’ performance on the second list. Also, when the first list was made up of just two words, meaning it placed little strain on memory, the act of saving it to computer no longer made a difference to memory for the second list.

This is another argument [against everything buckets](https://al3x.net/2009/01/31/against-everything-buckets.html?ref=saraburke.net) and in favor of summarizing and note taking in the [zettelkasten tradition](http://zettelkasten.de/?ref=saraburke.net).