the "slowing down" part is the real value imo. i've noticed that the physical friction of writing (even just typing in a plain text file instead of a fancy tool) forces you to compress your thinking in a way that just staring at the problem doesn't.

there's a weird thing where the act of writing "i'm stuck because X" often makes the solution obvious before you finish the sentence. it's like rubber duck debugging but with yourself. i think that's what makes notebooks work for engineering specifically: the bottleneck usually isn't remembering what you did, it's noticing what you're actually thinking while you're doing it.