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
"This header took six minutes of IA work—but two years to make happen."
Sarah BarrettThe "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
June 6, 2023
"Synthetic data is useful because it’s easier to generate more examples of something you already have than to create entirely new data."
Peter Van DijckBuilding impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 2: Evals are your moat
July 23, 2025
"You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't connect with other people, nothing will come of it."
Laura Gatewood Laine ProkayBeyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
September 23, 2024
"We have at least 10 minutes of breaks between each session so you can take in everything."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
January 8, 2024
"Participatory research, decolonization, and research justice are vital takes on human-centered discipline."
Chris GeisonTheme 1 Intro
March 9, 2022
"Many ride sharing apps didn’t launch SOS features until after widespread reports of harassment, even though the problem was longstanding."
Mansi GuptaDrawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational
September 9, 2022
"I spent too much time trying to change company culture and should have focused more on just getting things done."
Shipra KayanHow we Built a VoC (Voice of the Customer) Practice at Upwork from the Ground Up
September 30, 2021
"The COP became the beating heart of our project, enabling quick credibility and community excitement."
Alexia Cohen Adriane AckermanIncreasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
December 4, 2024
"My younger self had a lot of impostor syndrome, but everyone even with more experience doesn’t totally know what they’re doing."
Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon RossInsights Panel
November 18, 2022