Paper and pen considered important personal coding tools

When I'm writing code, I like to keep a pen and paper handy. I find that by writing down the types of a function, or the fragment of code I'm thinking about, it somehow helps me get to the point where I'm ready to type in the code editor.

Today for example, I was contemplating some refactoring and found myself sketching a call tree, to confirm my plan would work. In my notes I also see a space where I've done some brainstorming, writing four possible names for a new class I wanted to write. There's also a spot where I jotted down the six related actions that my servlet handles which I was about to change, to help me make sure I methodically covered all of them at each stage.

Does anyone else work this way? I don't think I used to do it like that. I think it came about after grinding through my master's work where I was writing a 10,000+ line SML program and frequently needed to write down the types of functions I was planning to write.