Misplaced but cannot comment under the original one.
You wrote: "I don't take notes. (It's worth pondering whether taking notes is really an aid to internal remembering...)"
This is fascinating. Somehow, when what is out there is reflected "correctly" in the mind, it stays there in a highly connected way.
Here is an other one that does not take notes and apparently understands things.
"After high school, Scholze continued to pursue this interest in number theory and geometry at the University of Bonn. In his mathematics classes there, he never took notes, recalled Hellmann, who was his classmate. Scholze could understand the course material in real time, Hellmann said. “Not just understand, but really understand on some kind of deep level, so that he also would not forget.”"
and:
"Yet even with the benefit of Scholze’s explanations, perfectoid spaces are hard for other researchers to grasp, Hellmann said. “If you move a little bit away from the path, or the way that he prescribes, then you’re in the middle of the jungle and it’s actually very hard.” But Scholze himself, Hellmann said, “would never lose himself in the jungle, because he’s never trying to fight the jungle. He’s always looking for the overview, for some kind of clear concept.”"
Source: https://www.quantamagazine.org/peter-scholze-and-the-future-...
An other one who described something similar was Alexander Grothendiek in "Récoltes et semailles": (apx traduced from French) "Understanding something is like removing shards from one's eyes." He was known to be completely still when trying to understand/solve something... yet it took him a lot of energy. Understanding something is also understanding how it works, thus simulating it in one's mind. In fact reflecting about something is probably identical to simulating it in one's mind.
Can this be thought in a repeatable way? (or at all?)
Pascal has the perfect excuse for my misplaced and not short enough comment.