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.
The Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
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
"Public sector work is about broadening your reach and delivering outcomes to everyone, not winning market share."
Louis Rosenfeld Lashanda Hodge Senongo Akpem Chris HodowanecBecoming a Civic Designer: Making the Move from Private to Public Sector
November 17, 2022
"Ego death is a painful, almost burial-like process of letting go of aspects that have become our identity over decades."
Aletheia DelivreNew Shapes and Emerging Identities for Design Ops
September 11, 2025
"It’s impossible to be angry with a warm cup of tea in your hand."
Dave GrayLiminal Thinking: Sense-making for systems in large organizations
May 14, 2015
"Users are building mental models of how to use AI while they’re using it."
Jonathan Fairman Kevin JohnsonIntegrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout
June 5, 2024
"Without safety, human beings literally can’t think."
Alla WeinbergHow to Build and Scale Team Safety
January 8, 2024
"I present myself as simply somebody who’s on this journey to figure it out."
Chris Geison Cristen Torrey Eric MahlstedtWhat is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
March 4, 2021
"It’s important to create a clear value proposition that ties your work to the larger organizational mission."
Jackie AjouxLeveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One
January 8, 2024
"Proto-persona sessions helped us avoid departmental bias and uncover the questions stakeholders really cared about."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"I was largely wrong about how we thought technology and design would just implement policy."
Sarah Brooks Jennifer PahlkaFireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka
October 21, 2021
