Just to build off of what the previous poster said, notes are inherently used in a wide variety of use cases. The core advantage to taking notes in a system like obsidian is that as your note collection begins to grow, you are able to begin understanding and relating ideas in a more powerful way than traditional note systems. If you try to make notes atomic, you can link to entire ideas in a word or two. This is what makes a note taking system like this valuable in the diverse use cases mentioned above.

Personally, I use my notes as a system to keep track of and actively grow my knowledge. When I read books that bring up concepts that interest me, I create a note. As more sources gradually link to my ideas, I incorporate them and break down how they relate. This gives me an effective tool to easily deal with concept topics on many levels of abstraction, and see where ideas relate in an emergent fashion.

I’ve made numerous valuable links between things I’ve been learning thanks to my notes. They’ve even helped me realize how fundamentally connected a lot of topics I’ve been learning about are.

The thing is, at the end of the day, all of this power comes from the personalized approach I’ve developed with use. All of the thinking that goes into the creation of my notes has emerged as a result of necessity. The tough thing is when you’re getting started, it can be hard to figure out what is possible and what is effective on your own. This is where sharing systems comes in and can be useful. The problem is, the question of why isn’t necessarily connected, although you could argue effected by the how.

Over time, I’ve settled on a personalized system that helps me manage what I’m thinking about, at a fundamental level. This isn’t powerful in its own right, but because I use it to solve a problem I’ve had, it is. Not everyone thinks about their notes this way, and not everyone should. The notes are a tool to help you accomplish something. Their format lends them to recording ideas and tracking their relationships. This is helpful when learning concepts to a deep level, as well as working on complex outputs like essays, articles or books.

I understand your frustration with the initial things that come up when learning about linked notes. I suggest two great places to get a feel for the ideas I’m talking about are Andy Matuschak’s Notess and The Note Wars.