I'm an engineer I do something similar despite sitting in front of a computer it's often faster for me to solve simple problems "by hand".
I keep a notebook beside me as I work I end up going through several notebooks a year. I think it's a consequence of how I was taught in school. During high school physics one of the first thing we were taught was to always sketch out a diagram depicting the problem and all the boundary conditions. It is a habit I carried on through university and into my career. I guess the equivalent in programming terms would be to draw a state diagram before attempting to write any code.
I keep a notebook beside me as I work I end up going through several notebooks a year. I think it's a consequence of how I was taught in school. During high school physics one of the first thing we were taught was to always sketch out a diagram depicting the problem and all the boundary conditions. It is a habit I carried on through university and into my career. I guess the equivalent in programming terms would be to draw a state diagram before attempting to write any code.