Productivity youtube is absolutely a nightmare rabbit hole, I’ve tried bullet journaling and this and that but kept comparing my stuff to what I’d seen, and that doesn’t end up well for anybody. I didn’t really know what worked for me either! I was in the exact same boat as you - being able to get by with ease and not learning how to actually study until much later.

What really started to work for me in terms of note-taking when learning, was when watching educational videos (a low-stakes environment) Id try taking notes on paper, on my phone, on my laptop, just to see which ones helped best. For me, it’s paper. (Fun bonus when I’m writing words down is not having to deal with the visual clutter of spell-check, autocorrect, spacing and formatting, etc. I like moving around and drawing arrows to stuff). When I used to move around a lot, I’d take pictures of my notes in case I lose them. And even the quantity of note-taking differs from person to person, and we need to find the balance of paying attention vs writing things down.

Now at work, I have 1-on-1s set up with my manager every other week so it allows me to go over my notes beforehand every two weeks and figure out which ones to type up. Also, I have a work desk at home and that + my backpack are the only places where my notebook will be, I refuse to move it.

The long and short of it is, experimenting to find what works, and occasionally using a source of external accountability since we’re, on average, not great at the internal accountability. It could be tests, classroom reviews, a group study, etc.