I take extensive notes at meetings because I'm terrible at absorbing information from speeches and discussion. I can maintain attention for about 15 minutes, then I zone out. So in order not to start fidgeting and looking out the window, I write notes. I may or may not look at them again... taking them is enough to make most of it "stick". I don't do any better than colleagues who don't take notes. For me it's just a coping mechanism to keep things from going in one ear and out the other.
> taking them is enough to make most of it "stick"
This is the only reason I take notes on anything. The act of physically writing something down (typing works only half as well at best) sticks it into my brain. Hand-writing notes and immediately throwing them away is 10x as useful to me as just listening or reading alone.
At school, I only have one notebook. I pay attention to the teacher and whenever I don’t understand something immediately, I redo the demonstration on paper. There were a few teachers that didn’t use textbooks or slides so I had to rely on friends and photos to review things later. But the real advantage is that I usually understand the subject deeper. I did well on explanation questions, not so on memorization question. But I could always guess the answer.
