Video summary
If you possess a large collection of handwritten notes and wish to leverage AI for organization and analysis, there are several effective methods available depending on your timeline and budget. While future home robots in 2030 or later might eventually handle this task automatically, current solutions range from professional scanning services that can mail away and transcribe notebooks for you to more immediate, cost-effective DIY approaches. The speaker emphasizes that even with poor handwriting, modern AI models like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok possess advanced image recognition capabilities that can perfectly transcribe text in major world languages, including cursive and medical prescriptions, provided the user simply takes clear photos of their pages without worrying about perfect alignment or zoom levels.
For those looking to save money and process their notes manually, the most efficient workflow involves using a smartphone camera to photograph each page of your notebook quickly, ensuring only that nothing is cut off while maintaining a natural pace. Once these images are captured, they can be easily backed up to cloud storage services like Google Photos, which organizes them chronologically for easy access. From there, users can instruct their AI assistant via a browser or integrated tool to review the uploaded photos, transcribe the content into a structured document, and arrange the pages in the correct logical order, effectively converting physical scribbles into digital assets within minutes.
To ensure the highest quality output, especially for note-takers who incorporate sketches and diagrams alongside text, it is crucial to include specific instructions in your AI prompt. You should explicitly tell the AI not only to transcribe the written words but also to identify and render any drawings as images to the best of its ability, preserving the visual elements of your notes. Additionally, you can enhance the process by asking the AI to pause and ask clarifying questions before beginning the transcription, ensuring it fully understands your specific needs regarding language, handwriting style, or diagram complexity before generating the final document. This combination of simple photography, cloud backup, and targeted prompting allows anyone to seamlessly integrate their handwritten knowledge base into powerful AI workflows for further analysis and organization.
Read the full video transcript
What if you have a lot of handwritten
notes and you want to finally, you know,
benefit from AI and you'd love for AI to
be able to
just ingest all of your handwritten
notes and help organize and everything.
Like for example, some people have
drafted a a book or notes for a book and
it's like, well, AI can help me organize
all that. Yes, it can. So,
first of all, if anybody has any
solution here, please go ahead and
comment below there. I'm sure there are
apps or other things that I've never
heard of or never used because
everything I do is digital, so I don't
have any handwritten notes. But for
those who do, here's what I would do if
I were you. Just off the top of my head,
okay?
Depending on when you're watching this,
if you're watching this in 2030 or
later, I would just say, "Wait, just get
your home robot to page through and take
a screen capture of every single page.
What's the problem?" Okay. So, 2030
we'll all have home robots that can can
do all the manual work for us. But
before then, before we have home robots,
um, for those who want to spend a little
bit of money, I'm sure you can mail your
notebooks to some kind of service that
will diligently scan all the pages for
you in organized manner and uh, have it
perfectly transcribed. And I I'll just
want to say right now even I'm I'm
recording this in in 2026
AI the top AIs I'll just say at least
Claude ChachiPT Gemini and Grock at
least those four I would just say use
one of those have such advanced image
recognition techniques that if you
haven't yet tried
even if you have terrible handwriting
like I do take
And I tried this and I was shocked. Take
do terrible handwriting. Take a picture
now. Don't purposely try to screw it up,
right? But just do normal handwriting
for for you. Take a picture, feed it
into whatever AI you use and be shocked
that it can transcribe perfectly. Now,
>> no matter if you do cursive, no matter
if you do a different language,
>> no matter if it's a different language,
if it's a common language, obviously
it's not. you're doing if you're an
indigenous tribe language maybe it won't
do as as well but all the major
languages of the world the handwriting
reading is perfect
>> perfect um it can read doctor's
prescriptions okay okay so so I said
robot we don't have that yet uh you know
scanning service those exist so you can
look look up or ask your AI for
reputable scanning service third if you
want to do it manually yourself if I
wanted to save money here's what I would
I would basically, oh, you can also hire
your grandchildren, you know, hire your
neighbor's nephew or whatever to to to
do the scanning for you. But but it's as
simple as this or do it yourself. Here's
what I would do. Open up the notebook,
have your phone in hand, have your
camera in hand, okay? Have your camera
app open. Open your page one, snap. Turn
the page, snap. Page three, snap. Turn
the page. Page four, snap. Page five,
snap. Page six, snap. You just Do you
see how fast I'm going?
>> Within 10 minutes, you've done dozens of
pages. And they're all photos in your
phone. Right.
Right. Okay. Photos in your phone. And
it doesn't have No, don't worry about
making sure it's perfectly, you know, a
lot. No. Again, AI is smart enough where
even if it's really far away and small,
it can do it. It knows how to zoom in by
itself. It knows how to read it. It's
perfect, right? So, don't worry about
alignment. You just you just be
comfortable and make just make sure the
entire page is shown on your screen. I
mean, obviously, you need to do that.
Don't make make sure nothing's cut off,
but don't worry about alignment. Don't
just just just do normal. Just be just
be natural. And maybe put your notebook
on some kind of stand so it's easy to
flip, right? Snap, flip, snap, flip,
snap, flip, snap, flip, snap. You see
how fast I'm not that fast. Snap, snap,
snap,
snap, snap. Do you see how fast I'm
going? Okay. And then now that it's on
your phone,
um, the next step is to give AI those
photos. And the easiest way is to like I
use Google Photos. I have the Google
Photo app installed on my phone. It's
free for everybody.
>> So, install Google Photos app for, but
there's lots of them out there. But
Google Photos app installed on your
phone. Even after you've taken all the
pictures and then you install Google
Photos app, you then ask Google Photos
app to back it back everything up to
Google your Google Photos account and
now you can go to Google Photos account
and they're all there. They're all there
like together today, right? Reverse
reverse chronological order. It doesn't
matter because AI can smart enough to
figure that out. And then you simply
if you've set up your AI the way that I
recommend, if you don't, please take my
AI setup course. Honestly, it's the most
important course I've ever taught. But
if you have set up your AI to be able to
look at your to use your browser, then
just say, "Hey, open up my Google
Photos.
See that I've scanned
uh a bunch of my notebook. It's in
reverse chronological order. and go
ahead and transcribe it all and put it
into a document transcribe.
>> Step one. So then it's now in the
document transcribe in correct order.
>> Now you can do with it whatever you
want. You can have AI analyze it,
reorder things, take things from it,
whatever you want to do. So I hope that
makes sense and let me know if you have
any questions. And for those of you who
like to draw in your handwriting notes,
the AI prompt should include the
following to say, not only should you
transcribe it, please note notice that I
draw sometimes as part of my writing. So
please uh try to sense the drawings and
output them as drawings to the best of
your ability
um as well. Okay. And yeah, and I think
you could say that and the AI will
understand and and you could also add at
the end of it, please ask me any
questions about the process before you
begin. And then submit the prompt and
it'll make sure it clarifies everything
before you go get going.