RC Strategy for tough questions

If you really want only Emily's advice, you can go for it, else if you wish you can read mine..

Regarding RC it is very difficult to say a standard technique will work, because everybody has different approach.
For someone skimming the passage works, they go through the passage again for answering the questions.
For someone reading the passage twice works.
For someone reading the passage critically once works.
For others as you say taking notes works.

So it is up to you to find out , what is comfortable and works for you, personally i too tried the taking notes approach, i simply wasted a lot of time taking notes, so i gave up that approach.

But it would be too early to say an appraoch doesnt work, even before giving it a sufficient number of tries, because any approach needs practice to master it. So if you feel taking notes is time consuming and not productive as you think, only if you have given sufficient number of tries, try switching to other approaches.

I recommend you to include the mind map in your approach, that is very important for RC helps you in answering the main point question and primary purpose of the passge questions easily.