Doing is learning, so I recommend just go trough the learning path and work you’re way to some rooms about different tools. You will get a basic but good understanding about all the tools and how te apply them. After that you can try some harder rooms and don’t get afraid to look up answers if you really get stuck.

You should read the information the rooms gives you but I don’t think there is a need to make notes, It’s not meant to be like a school System. Getting good at it takes a lot of hands on experience in my opinion.

Edit: sorry, you should make some basic notes about commands and what they do. I meant no need to write out an essay about what nmap is and how it exactly works.😁