80% (random number that seems reasonable) of the value of notes is the act of writing them the first time. For the other 20% they deserve more effort, rewriting and origination are both useful for them.
Agree with that, in that rewriting should include deciding which notes are worth just leaving as is, so that what you rewrite reflects what is still relevant and that will usually as you say be a very small percentage of the whole.
Rewriting to me also seems to reduce the need to refer back to the notes even further, because it effectively acts as a revision also for the notes I decide are not worth summarising, and the few bits that might still be beneficial gets carried along in the rewritten summaries.
