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
"Insight summaries create durable knowledge that only goes away when it's been resolved or no longer relevant."
Jake BurghardtStop wasting research: Create new value with insight summaries
July 9, 2025
"Using your own product frequently through dogfooding creates empathy about ease or difficulty of use."
Ross SmithBreaking Barriers with Empathy
June 9, 2017
"Diary studies are fantastic when you're looking at growing a team and onboarding new people."
Holly ColeUnderstanding Experiences: When you have to do more than work
November 8, 2018
"I traded my butch boots for kitten heels when interviewing scientists who adhere to biblical beliefs of creationism."
Tamara HaleWar Stories LIVE! Tamara Hale
March 30, 2020
"The best future leaders will embody the qualities and traits of a DEO — design executive officer — creative business leaders at the intersection of design and business."
Maria GiudiceBecoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
March 29, 2023
"The power to say no has been a blessing in disguise, helping us refocus on high priority work after layoffs."
Maggie DieringerCreating Consistency Through Constant Change
January 8, 2024
"When there’s dispute over what to measure, use that as an opportunity to discuss the behavior you want to change and the value capture."
Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi JainKey Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”
November 13, 2024
"It doesn’t matter when work is done, so long as it’s done and its quality."
Lavy Kumar Kat Temple Tara Jensen Jenn ChouFuture of Work
June 9, 2021
"Aim for a healthy balance of safeguards and inspiration to protect customers but keep non-researchers motivated."
Trisha TerharEmpathizing with the Empowered: Non-Researcher Responses to Democratization
March 10, 2022
