The unreasonable usefulness of rereading things I have already written

I did an exercise recently over two consecutive days, a Wednesday and Thursday, where I wrote down experiences I might like to have on a date. I ended up with a little over 5 notebook pages (perhaps A5 paper size?) of ideas. Later in the week, I ended up journaling on other related romantic themes, for a total of about 19 notebook pages (same size).

Writing this all out was useful, but what I'm finding really useful is rereading what I already wrote. It turns out that even though I wrote it, I'm still surprised at a lot of what I wrote. I came up with some good ideas and noted some uncomfortable things/questions. Then I forgot those things. That's why I wrote them down. Rereading helps me remember.

This sounds obvious, but I find it somewhat surprising. My usual mode is to write so that I understand what I think, or so I remember what I've learned, and I never reread what I wrote unless I have a specific question I need to answer. This works fine. But it also means I almost never reread my journal entries.

I suspect this would feel "less productive" with my "everything" journal, as opposed this more focused topical journal. I wonder why that is. I suspect it helps that the topical journal pages were, essentially, (a) generating ideas for a possible date, then (b) reflecting on what happened next. But I suspect that I'd still find my "everything" journal entries surprising, and surprisingly useful to reread. I would still be reminding myself of things that I easily forget about myself because they're inconvenient to remember.