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
"Values conversation is less threatening when framed as wanting to understand why we're doing this project or why we're here."
Tricia WangThe most popular design thinking strategy is BS
January 27, 2022
"When I started, I was the first designer among engineers who already prized ease of use as a key advantage."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Innovation programs can be tiring when you have a day job and constant change fatigue; you need a source of energy to push through."
Steve BatyBreaking Out of Ruts: Tips for Overcoming the Fear of Change
June 9, 2016
"Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns – using verbs helps users know where they are in the workflow."
Boon Yew ChewMaking Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
June 6, 2023
"You can't just measure ethics like a scientific question; you have to reason differently."
Cennydd BowlesExit Interview #2: Rediscovering the ethical heart of design
November 6, 2025
"Driver modeling tells you which research initiatives matter most based on their impact on key outcome metrics."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"Every minute spent struggling with an IT system is a minute not spent delivering value for IBM and our clients."
Kristin WisnewskiMeasuring What Matters
October 23, 2019
"Acknowledging and validating what someone has told you creates psychological safety and trust in leadership."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Uday Gajendar Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma
July 13, 2022
"People with disabilities are more willing to participate in studies if it's to make a product they use more accessible."
Rebecca ToppsPlanning and conducting remote usability studies for accessibility
September 10, 2020
