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
"Design is not about one brilliant idea but about collaboration between different roles and expertise."
Sabrina Mach Nina WainwrightHow to Design Your Design Operating Model
September 29, 2021
"Even those with a roof over their head didn’t really fare much better; unexpected expenses break the budget every time."
Yasmine KhanChecking Bias and Listening to Financially Vulnerable Americans
March 30, 2020
"The pandemic collapsed many roles onto fewer shoulders without the usual context switches, amplifying burnout risk."
Julie Gitlin Esther RaiceDesign as an Agent of Digital Transformation at JPMC
June 9, 2021
"Design is navigating through unprecedented times."
Angelos ArnisNavigating the Rapid Shifts in Tech's Turbulent Terrain
October 2, 2023
"Don’t go alone. The loneliness of the first UX designer is real."
Kristin SkinnerOpening Keynote: Org Design for Design Orgs
November 6, 2017
"The CEO wanted rapport, not just productivity, and the collaborative poster created that from scratch."
Elizabeth ChurchillExploring Cadence: You, Your Team, and Your Enterprise
June 8, 2017
"For many users, mobile is their first choice because it offers less distraction and simplifies interactions."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
March 10, 2022
"This is absolutely not the time for us to be throwing our hands up in the air and giving up on Research."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 27, 2023
"I think the world we’re in is definitely not antagonistic to research, there’s a huge opportunity right now."
Renee BouwensLanding Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
December 15, 2023