I wonder if you might subconsciously have a more active style of listening to a lecture or reading a book, such that you automatically reflect on the content, m

I wonder if you might subconsciously have a more active style of listening to a lecture or reading a book, such that you automatically reflect on the content, maybe playing back a compressed summary of every section in your mind. Someone with this approach would get a lot more out of a lecture or a book than someone who zones out or highlights the first sentence of every other paragraph without really engaging mentally. By contrast, it's possible to take notes unproductively: mindlessly transcribing the audio stream can produce a great transcript, but does not promote understanding. It's more effective to take your approach of actually listening, and if you do take notes, to write a compressed summary, or key points of the last few minutes, or rewording key concepts (the "generative" stuff the article mentions).