As said above, different things work for different people.
I've never been able to take notes in lectures, writing stuff down stopped me from being able to actually concentrate on what was being said and then I found the notes useless anyway. I used to do external reading within a week of the lecture, choosing stuff that was interesting over stuff that was more directly relevant as that way you actually pay attention. One thing I also found really handy is I used to plaster my walls with notes during revision season, that way it involved spatial memory and I could think about where different names/dates/facts were in relation to everything else.
Unhelpfully, there's a good chance this won't work for you and just because you're doing things differently to anyone else you speak to doesn't neccessarily mean you're doing it wrong. Experiment a bit and see what you like.