If we read without taking notes, our knowledge increases for a short time only. Once we forget what we knew, having read the text becomes worthless. You can bet that you’ll forget about the text’s information one day. It’s guaranteed. Thus, reading without taking notes is just a waste of time in the long run. It’s as if reading never happened.
If we don’t take notes, there’s no point in reading.
This connects to the Collector’s Fallacy — amassing bookmarks and highlights feels like learning, but without the act of writing things down in your own words, nothing sticks. Taking notes forces engagement with the material. It’s the difference between knowing about something and actually knowing it.
Well kept notes replace source material. Taking notes thoroughly means you can rely on your notes alone and rarely need to look up a detail in the original text.