If you are working in a strategy team, or trying to grasp abstract and complex relationships, it’s hard to beat the use of paper as a communication method.  While I have three screens on my desk, I still prefer large sheets of paper for the really hard thinking.

Some recent research has supported why this is the case:

In all three tasks, the paper users were significantly more “abstract” in thinking. Digital participants reported preferring concrete rather than abstract descriptions of a behavior–for example, “making a list” would be associated with “writing things down,” rather than the “getting organized” description preferred by those taking the survey on paper.

Digital participants scored higher than the paper participants, on average, in recalling details of both the story and the car data table. But they scored lower on questions of inferred relationships and meaning…

Next time your colleagues suggest writing a strategy using PowerPoint, pull out a pencil…

Source: Screen Reading Worse for Grasping Big Picture, Researchers Find