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’re not teaching the model anything; we’re improving our prompts and context."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #1: Let’s write your first AI eval
October 8, 2025
"An everything chat bot is almost certainly not how you’re going to build it; realistically you’re building three apps in a trench coat."
Sarah BarrettAI in Real Life: Using LLMs to Turbocharge Microsoft Learn
February 13, 2025
"The stories you hear inside an organization are like its soul."
Laurent ChristophScale the impact of DesignOps in 3D: Diligence, Decision, Discipline
September 17, 2025
"UX maturity can move backward after reorgs or leadership changes, which is frustrating but common."
Susan WeinschenkEvaluating the Maturity of UX in Your Organization
January 15, 2020
"Fable’s OZ adapts the System Usability Scale to better measure perceived usability for assistive technology users."
Amber KnablEmpowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
June 4, 2024
"We enable PMs and designers to conduct research rigorously because they are already in contact with customers daily."
Anna Poznyakov Richa PrajapatiGet The Most Out Of Stakeholder Collaboration—and Maximize Your Research Impact
March 12, 2021
"I am what I do is a muscle memory that is really hard to undo."
Luz BratcherThis Is a Talk for Tired People
June 10, 2022
"You have to ask yourself, are you ready for the messiness, the hard choices, and the chaos that come with change?"
Maria GiudiceRemaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
June 9, 2016
"Build a program management community of practice so you can formalize partnerships and solve process delivery issues together."
Alnie FigueroaTeamwork: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with Other Program Management Teams
September 8, 2022
