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
"Getting to know what people care about in the organization helps tailor workshops to support those goals and gain buy-in."
Anne MamaghaniHow Your Organization's Generative Workshops Are Probably Going Wrong and How to Get Them Right
March 28, 2023
"Kindness and empathy are a good way to build interest and relationships."
Melissa Eggleston Maya Israni Florence Kasule Owen Seely Andrea SchneiderPractical People Skills for Building Trust on Teams and with Partners
December 9, 2021
"Connecting strings of Christmas lights is a mental model for connecting teams’ insights without superseding their systems."
Etienne FangPower of Insights: Why sharing is better than silos with Uber’s Insights Platform
December 16, 2019
"You can access the digital swag bag by scanning the QR code or visiting fld.me/cd2022 for cool sponsor offers."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 17, 2022
"Lonely workers think about quitting their job twice as frequently as non-lonely workers."
Kat VellosOpener: The Other L Word
January 8, 2024
"If you have trouble logging in or streaming, please go to hashtag DAS help in Slack for support."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
June 9, 2021
"Every feature release with AI is really an experiment, not a finished feature."
Anupama DhareshwarFrom blueprint to bot: Designing resilient AI-powered services
November 19, 2025
"Design operators must create scaffolding that shapes design practice, not just produce deliverables."
Dave MaloufClosing Keynote: Amplify. Not Optimize.
October 24, 2019
"Even with decades of UX thinking, many enterprise systems still feel stuck in the past and don’t deliver on their promises."
Robert ReimannTaming Design Complexity with UX Models
June 8, 2017
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What role does continuous learning and curiosity play in maintaining sustainable design practices?
How can small teams apply service design to navigate shifting conditions without multi-year strategic plans?
How does testing accessibility at the component level improve overall product accessibility?