During undergrad, I found I rarely reviewed my class notes, and when I did they weren’t very helpful. I simply stopped taking them, was happier, and giving my full focus to lectures improved my comprehension. Notes that don’t get read again are a distraction in my opinion.
And, really, there's no substitute for coming to class prepared (by reading ahead or whatever). It makes the lecture process much more useful. In that sense, a list of notes of things you don't think you understand from preparation is probably helpful.
Discussing the word "notes" is not easy because it encompasses a bunch of different uses.
- (1) notes as transcription of an external source or memorization aid: e.g. a professor might say something and a student writes that down. Or one comes across a fact and makes a note of it.
- (2) notes to organize internal thought: a canvas for generating/synthesizing/connecting/etc ideas. Things like personal commentary on topics, weighing pros/cons of different future actions, drafts of song lyrics, research ideas, etc.
I think your comment is mostly based on thinking of notes as (1). A lot of people that constantly review notes are talking about category (2).
Sometimes when I spend an hour trying to figure out the right ffmpeg command line options or Linux "find" syntax that works correctly, I'll copy paste those as "notes" in my "tipsandtricks.txt" file. Those feel like a combination of (1) and (2).
Also, if the mental model of "notes" is dominated by (1), it would seem like having a hypothetical universal recording tool combined with a more complete search engine would make note-taking obsolete. I mentioned in a previous comment that such a search engine still wouldn't handle type (2) notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30153479
Review as in look at every single one of them from time to time? No.
But I do review them as in it's my first stop in finding something. It's my personal DDG for repetitive queries (vaguely remembering a quote, needing a reminder of some code syntax, or what happened in a book I've read 3 years ago and kinda liked). All my notes are oriented towards what my future self might actually want to find: most important things at the top, going in more details if I scroll down, sometimes adding unnecessary words just because future self might search for them in hopes of reaching that note, etc.
I'm firmly of an opinion that if the search bar in your notes app isn't the most crucial part of your workflow, you're doing something wrong and wasting your time.
The limit of my notetaking is daily journaling because if I link out to the pages I created or updated with some contextual information (e.g. "read chapter 2 of book X, went off and read a blog post at https://X that was mentioned") then I can retrace the backlinks to find out when/how I learned something. I wish I could do that with things that I haven't put into Roam (or Notion, which to be honest I use more often).
That's interesting, because I almost wanted to make the exact opposite point. I'm actually right now in the process of revisiting my notes, and I think it helps me a lot. Not because they are super useful in and of itself (After 1-3 months have passed now, I understand the stuff deeper now, obviously) but because they help me piece the stuff together.
Anyways, the reason why they then get useful is because I have an extrinsic motivation to read them! (Exams are coming up)
That does in no way make it easier to read them, but it helps in actually reading them.
Then, reading notes and really understanding something will always be hard. I think there is also quite some research ouf there that finds just this: If you really want to understand stuff, you need to put in the effort. It kinda needs to hurt...
This is why I don't think these personal wikis / note -taking tools help too much, especially if one is, like me (and probably most people), more a person who in their downtime maybe likes to read something new and interesting, but better keep that on the light side - it's supposed to be downtime anyways, no?
That leads me then back to the extrinsic motivation: If for example you're a researcher and use Roam (or whatever) exclusively for that (that means restraining also from putting notes in there that have little to do with your actual research), I think the benefits would be much more clear. To be honest, though, that is just a guess. I'm not a researcher myself and I have n't been using note-taking systems for a while now, because of the points explained above.
The older way of organization may seem outdated and clunky, but it indeed works.
Yes. I have a bunch of notes which embodies larger subjects or procedures in a more compact and fit-for-purpose format.
These notes are regularly visited, updated and read. Both my personal and professional note troves are actively expanded, reviewed and pruned. However, this is not a deliberate effort, but a part of my normal routine.
With auto linking, I think the main issue for me is that I want the connection made in my head rather than in a tool. So searching and finding related notes works rather well and the deliberate act helps gradually internalize the links for me.