Eep, I guess it depends on what kind of learner you are. For me, the notes being in the book, and the book being somewhere on my shelf spatially encodes it into my mind.

Offloading things into a centralized store according to a system not only causes me anxiety but it doesn’t have the same spatial kick.

I don't mean this with any disrespect, but people love to find ways to overcomplicate things that work perfectly well. And maybe for some reason that overcomplicated version works better, but for many it's at best a waste of time, at worst an active distraction from the thing your trying to do.

not as much as I used to but I still take handwritten notes when reading something I deem worth doing so by some personal semi-rational algorithm. my favorite exercise ~15 years ago was reading People's History of the US and Kissinger's Diplomacy at the same time, and taking notes in the same notebook in parallel columns. Naturally I went into product