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
"The future of urban living depends on our commitment to environmental justice."
Lena ShenkarenkoCollaborative Wireframing for Creating Team Alignment and Shipping Better Products
October 21, 2020
"Sometimes you need to view your career like an investor, where you invest your time for the kind of impact you want."
Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah WickesAssessing UX jobs for impact in climate
August 14, 2024
"We introduced an 'explanation not needed' approach so researchers can decline projects without having to justify themselves."
Brian MossWhat Does it Mean to be a Resilient Research Team?
March 9, 2022
"Every bee understands the same purpose — the survival of the hive for winter."
Mariesa LenzWhat Beekeeping Taught me about Product Teams
October 29, 2025
"We’re selectively skeptical—skeptical about some things but not others based on what we want to believe."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"It’s a great time to be a designer to make data-driven design decisions that impact beyond just pixels."
William Newton Jenny ChangHow to Lead With Data, and Without Data
June 7, 2023
"If you’re the best front-end designer in West River Idaho with a good internet connection, we want to talk to you."
Russ UngerGetting Out from Under Everyone: How to Escape the Paralysis of Getting Started
June 8, 2016
"If you’re spending more time talking about titles, you’re not actually doing the design work."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"It’s not about the methodology, it’s about bravery and leadership."
Katy MogalBut Do Your Insights Scale?
March 12, 2021