Enhance Your Digital Note-taking with Jorge Arango’s Newest Release, Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes

Virtually everyone takes notes: the grad student transcribing a dense lecture, the doctor tracking patient progress, the friend adding your newest movie recommendation to their digital notepad. We constantly absorb information, and often seek to capture that material and document it for later use. But take note (pun 100% intended!): the everyday practice of jotting down information holds more power than you think.

Become a better note-taker to unlock ideas and productivity

The way we take and use our notes can be the difference between unhelpful clutter and critical tools for success. By becoming a better note-taker, you’ll become a better reader, a better writer, a better student, a better teacher, a better thinker—essentially, a better you. Jorge Arango’s newest book, Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes, teaches you how to streamline your digital note-taking, organize recorded information, connect your ideas, and supercharge your thinking.

In Jorge’s recent interview on The Rosenfeld Review podcast, he stresses that “externalizing thoughts [through note-taking] is one of the most powerful means we have… one of the most powerful means you have… to think better. And the ‘humble’ note… something that we use every day… if we use it mindfully, if we learn to use it a little bit better, we’re going to be better thinkers.”

What will you gain from reading Duly Noted?

You may think there’s nothing new to learn about note-taking. You’ve been doing it in some form or another since you could write, or even draw! You might say that note-taking is a matter of personal preference and isn’t something that can be done “correctly” or “incorrectly.” And while yes, no one is doing it “incorrectly,” everyone can still benefit from doing it better. Duly Noted provides note-taking best practices so you can take more concise, useful, and organized digital notes. You’re already doing the work, so why not “work smarter, not harder” and give yourself the gift of cohesive, thought-inspiring notes!

When you take your note-taking abilities to the next level, you’ll optimize the work you’re already doing. Throughout your life, you’re always going to be taking notes, so why not learn how to make those notes serve you better?

Within the pages of this book, you’ll find tips on how to consolidate your digital notes in a clear, meaningful way so you can more easily find them—and make sense of them—later on. You’ll also discover how notes can facilitate collaboration with other thinkers, and even AI! What’s more, Duly Noted will walk you through taking your notes in Obsidian, a powerful contemporary digital note-taking tool.

Who should read Duly Noted?

Are you a master’s student? A PhD candidate? A writer? A “creative”? Or anyone surrounded by countless scribbled and typed notes—on paper, on your phone, on your laptop? Duly Noted will show you how to clearly group these bits and pieces of information, and how to set up future-you for success. There’s nothing worse than looking at your notes after the fact and going, “Huh. What was this about? What does this mean?”

If you have minimal time and need to maximize your productivity, Duly Noted can help you turn your untamed thoughts (the “wilderness of your mind”) into an organized, well-maintained “knowledge garden.”

What readers are saying about Duly Noted

Andy Polaine, leadership coach and co-author of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation, says, “In an age of information overload, Duly Noted is a perfectly pitched guide to the principles and practices of connected thinking and tending to your personal knowledge garden.”

Nicole van der Hoeven, YouTuber and Senior Developer Advocate at Grafana Labs, says, “Duly Noted is the definitive book on taking digital notes and creating a modern, methodology-light system for thinking deeply.”

Take a sneak peek inside the book

Ready to dive into the realm of thought transformation? With Duly Noted, you’ll discover how to unleash the power of note-taking through the use of tools, practices, and frameworks that elevate your digital note-taking game.

But don’t take our word for it; check out Duly Noted for yourself: This free sample chapter will give you an idea of what’s in store.

Meet the author: Jorge Arango

In his design consulting practice, San Francisco-based information architect and strategic designer Jorge Arango collaborates with product, design, and innovation leaders to create digital spaces that make people smarter. He’s the author of Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places and co-author of the fourth edition of Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond. Jorge is a frequent speaker at global UX conferences and serves as an adjunct professor in the Interaction Design program at the California College of the Arts.