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
"We wanted to surface agents day-to-day jobs, not necessarily how they were using Compass products."
Sean Fitzell Sarah Han Kayla FarrellCraft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps
March 12, 2021
"Waging peace with sticky notes is a metaphor for how small design tools can contribute to huge social change."
Jim KalbachPeace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences
June 14, 2018
"The harms of technology typically fall on non-users and worse-off groups in society."
Cennydd BowlesResponsible Design in Reality
June 9, 2021
"Innovation is invention multiplied by adoption multiplied by inclusion."
Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi JainKey Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”
November 13, 2024
"Sponsor sessions are not just salesy sessions; they’re actually really fantastic sessions put on by your peers."
Uday Gajendar Louis RosenfeldDay 1 Welcome
June 4, 2024
"This isn’t a green pasture. It’s still a business. But at the end of the day, you can see the difference you make."
Sara ConklinExit Interview: 20 Years of Tech, One Very Big Bet, and a Lot of Heat Pumps
April 10, 2026
"A high-level roadmap with now, next, later helped us show we had a plan but kept flexibility for changing priorities."
Dr Chloe SharpUsing Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities
November 29, 2023
"Business people thrive in certainty; designers habitually thrive in ambiguity."
Nathan ShedroffRedefining Value: Bridging the Innovation Culture Divide
May 14, 2015
"Most human-centered design tools intellectualize the process and leave many stakeholders undervalued and disconnected."
Robert Fabricant Sahibzada Mayed Nidhi Singh RathoreIndustry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
October 2, 2024
