I think this is kind of a special case of a much more general idea: tools can be useful, but fetishizing tools is not. Note-taking is a tool, and can be useful.

I think this is kind of a special case of a much more general idea: tools can be useful, but fetishizing tools is not. Note-taking is a tool, and can be useful. For example, I just referred back to some notes I wrote about a paper I am currently working on, and lo, I was reminded of something that I had to do for it that I had forgotten. Then I did that thing. Those notes were a useful tool. Good. On the other hand, I have sometimes wasted an hour or several reading about peoples ideas of how their notes should be organized, with the idle idea that I might become better organized as a result, only to find that I have made no progress on the work I wanted to do, and my note-taking was no more effective than before. I was fetishizing the tool. Now, this doesn't mean you should never put any effort into your tools. A good tool can save you a lot of work in the long run, even if it took some effort to get it there. And it won't always be clear in advance what toolwork is going to actually make your tools more useful. Edit to add one more thing: it's also worth noting that working on your tools can be pleasurable, and so doing it for its own sake doesn't need to be a bad thing. But if that is what you are doing, you shouldn't be thinking about it as productive work.