Working out Salvation with Fear and Trembling

I was thinking recently about Christians taking sermon notes. I’ve never been good at taking notes in general (I can hardly read my hand writing), but I often wonder if people who take notes lose something by not focusing on the message immediately in front of them? Apparently Jonathan Edwards agreed. He writes,

The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind in the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered

(Quoted in The Salvation of Souls, eds. Richard Bailey and Gregory Wills, p. 11)

What think ye? Was Edwards way off?