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
"My dad told me very early on in my career that I had to work two times harder than anyone else to get the same things."
Dantley DavisLeadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
September 17, 2020
"AI can help us develop better alt text for images, which improves accessibility for unsighted users."
Frances Yllana Jorge Arango Maria Taylor Briana ThomasThe Big Question about Impact: A Panel Discussion
September 24, 2024
"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
"We needed to revise our plan; we couldn’t just keep adding talented folks and hope everything falls into place."
Sarah Kinkade Mariana Ortiz-ReyesDesign Management Models in the Face of Transformation
June 8, 2022
"Collaboration is key. I'm never alone in a Peloton class, even at 4:30 in the morning."
Reginé GilbertAsking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic
June 10, 2022
"The machine lens gave us hierarchy, bureaucracy, and a focus on efficiency and control, but it sidelines holistic thinking."
Robin BeersNavigating organizational systems: Rethinking researcher’s role in driving change
March 13, 2025
"I didn’t want to be an AI guy. That was never my goal."
Paul FordNew work, new words: A glossary for AI
June 9, 2026
"Our job is to help others do great work, not to create perfect components for our own ego."
Dan DonaldDesign Systems as a Vehicle for Systemic Change
June 1, 2023
"You get real coded components, not just HTML snippets or style attributes, meaning developers can drag, drop, and extend with hooks already in place."
George Abraham Stefan IvanovDesign Systems To-Go: Reimagining Developer Handoff, and Introducing App Builder (Part 2)
October 1, 2021
