Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Summary
Unlock the cognitive benefits of handwriting without losing the convenience of digital organization. Research consistently demonstrates the cognitive value of writing notes by hand. However, there are important benefits to keeping notes digitally. In this seminar by Duly Noted author Jorge Arango, you’ll learn workflows for integrating handwritten notes into your digital notes. Watch Part 2 Watch Part 3
Key Insights
-
•
Note-taking serves different distinct use cases such as prosthetic memory, creative thinking, reading annotation, and lecture capturing, each requiring different approaches.
-
•
The extended mind hypothesis shows notes and external tools extend cognitive capacity beyond the brain itself.
-
•
Handwritten notes facilitate deeper flow states and better initial comprehension due to slower writing reducing verbatim capture.
-
•
Paper notes are resilient, immediate, and long-lasting physically but hard to organize, search, and copy at scale.
-
•
Digital notes offer superior searchability, organization via tags and links, multimodality, and easy backups, but require more setup and learning.
-
•
Combining handwritten and digital notes leverages the immediacy and flow benefits of paper with digital organization and findability.
-
•
Mobile scanning apps like Scanner Pro greatly speed up digitizing handwritten notes with OCR and cloud integration.
-
•
Using a central digital repository (Obsidian) to store and link all notes, including PDFs of handwritten ones, creates a powerful, emergent graph of knowledge.
-
•
Tagging should focus on utility and minimalism, like tagging by projects rather than exhaustively describing topics.
-
•
Beware of over-optimizing note-taking systems; the goal is to enhance effective thinking and work, not just perfect note management.
Notable Quotes
"Note-taking is really important; it's underappreciated but critically important, like interviewing users for a researcher."
"Notes are a way to enhance our thinking, serving different purposes from memory aids to generative creative work."
"We think with things; our brain is part of us but we extend our cognition into our environments and tools."
"Handwritten notes have no boot up time, and that immediacy helps enter deeper flow states."
"People who took notes by hand tend to have better recall than those typing notes because they process information differently."
"Digital notes can be linked to each other to create a graph of ideas that is impossible with linear paper notebooks."
"Scanner Pro automatically corrects perspective and applies filters, making scanning with a phone fast and high quality."
"I resist premature optimization of tagging and structure; I want to be 80% there rather than perfect and distracted."
"The goal is not to take notes; the goal is to think effectively, as Andy Matus says."
"Avoid getting sidetracked by tools and processes so you can focus on the actual work those notes help enable."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Imagine if everyone you worked with, regardless of the role, had deep empathy for your customers and made decisions based on those customer needs."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
January 8, 2024
"Are you thinking about what comes after the smartphone? Yes, and there are hundreds of people working on that."
Richard BuchananCreativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"The goal is that design systems become the way that we do work, just like when you do Agile, you don’t talk about it—you just do it."
Dan Mall“Ask Me Anything” with Dan Mall, Author of Upcoming Rosenfeld Title, Design that Scales
October 2, 2023
"We don’t make big deliverables because they create friction; instead, we create shared understanding through conversations."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"The user might want to see that plan in advance and make sure they’re okay with how it’s going to go about it."
Christopher NoesselAI of the now: Designing for Agents
July 31, 2024
"We have no cross-functional team dedicated to printing, so figuring out with whom to share recommendations was a challenge."
Sharon BautistaTime to Make the Donuts: How User Research Helped Bridge Disparate Teams
January 8, 2024
"The label 'difficult' is your definition of it — it can mean high standards or a need to change behavior."
Tutti TaygerlyVideconference: How to Work with Difficult People with Tutti Taygerly
June 25, 2020
"If teams have a clear ROI strategy, they’re more likely to be involved early in product creation."
Gonzalo GoyanesDesign ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
September 8, 2022
"It’s really important to understand your own mental bandwidth and not take on too much even if the project excites you."
Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah WickesAssessing UX jobs for impact in climate
August 14, 2024
