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
"Collaboration should include stakeholders beyond the product trio, from marketing to sales and customer support."
Angelos ArnisNavigating the Rapid Shifts in Tech's Turbulent Terrain
October 2, 2023
"We should reinvent UX researchers to be delightful ethicists leading ethical concerns in AI adoption."
Dr. Jamika D. Burge Nick Fine Alexandra Jayeun Lee Greg Nudelman Bo WangHow UX researchers can partner with (and not be replaced by) AI [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
August 31, 2023
"Fletcher Prevend took us to the next level by reporting design and user research directly into the CIO office—a huge differentiator."
Kristin WisnewskiMeasuring What Matters
October 23, 2019
"Traceable research citations can be simple links referencing insights in planning workspaces, driving consistent use."
Jake BurghardtStop wasting research: Create new value with insight summaries
July 9, 2025
"We have four themes over two days: systems thinking, information architecture and knowledge management, AI and machine learning, and designing the data."
Louis RosenfeldWelcome / Housekeeping
June 7, 2023
"Consistency is so important that sometimes even consistency in failure works if it means I only have to learn the workaround once."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023
"You don’t think of raising a child or teaching a student as solving a problem, it’s an ongoing process—and so is design today."
Hugh DubberlyProblems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving
June 19, 2019
"Corey’s story of resilience during his 2023 to 2024 job search ends well because we accepted his offer at Adobe."
Bria AlexanderTheme 1 Intro
September 23, 2024
"The code starts to follow the outcomes and might even start to write itself at some level."
Greg PetroffSoftware as Material—A Redux
June 6, 2023