[lurker137]

I first finish reading the textbook (or the parts I'm interested in), highlighting and taking notes on the side bars along the way. Then I go back through that marked up pdf and extract notes from that. The reason I stopped taking notes while reading are:

1. There was mental overhead from both understanding the material / organizing it into notes at the same time.

2. On the first pass everything seems noteworthy and the bigger picture is not clear. This leads to notes that are too long and unfocused.

One other thing I've found useful is to use of a combination of highlight colors / underlines to make the process of taking notes later easier or avoid notes altogether.

[markus_zhang]

Thanks man! I found the same reasons as you did and thus was unable to conform to a desired system for note taking. I also had the tendency to overestimate my abilities and time to study hobbies which adds into the frustration.