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
"Every emergency manager has an origin story, mine was the Yellowstone Fire in 1988 when I was seven."
Alicia D. JohnsonDisasters and the 21st Century
December 10, 2021
"Embedding health education standards in the program became our KPIs for the entire project."
JD BuckleyCommunicating the ROI of UX within a large enterprise and out on the streets
June 14, 2018
"People will say, I’m not totally sure what they do, but I know we need it."
John Mortimer Milan Guenther Lucy Ellis Patrick QuattlebaumPanel Discussion
December 3, 2024
"Everyone has a different context—teams, culture, and history—that shapes how they work and think."
Sean McKayWhole Product Thinking: Expanding beyond problem and solution space thinking
March 14, 2024
"The Guild is much more than a community; it’s actively driving standards and creating conditions for success across the company."
Jess GrecoCreating a Basis for Change: Scaling Design Maturity
June 8, 2022
"The LLM gave many different answers for the same passage, each time reporting it was one hundred percent confident."
Trisha Causley[Demo] Complexity in disguise: Crafting experiences for generative AI features
June 5, 2024
"Temporary disability is real and products should support people when they experience it."
Samuel ProulxDesigning beyond caricatures: Embracing real, diverse user needs
December 4, 2024
"Most organizations don’t have one research tool, but a mix, so openness and integration are essential."
Sofia QuinteroThe Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
March 10, 2021
"Please put your questions inside of the thread associated with the talk."
Bria AlexanderDay 2 Welcome
September 24, 2024