Hi Adam,
You are not overthinking "this" (unless you think you are

), and I can assure you that I can be the 'Obtusiest' in any dialogue.
Noting has many benefits and techniques. Mahasi Sayadaw's instructions are online and classic, vetted, superb instruction. Here is my digression on noting:
One benefit of noting is to see the pattern of one's own thinking and feeling and how those pattern create beliefs reifying an "I am .../I am not ..."
The technique might be to note, "there's that low opinion again; that is 'low opinion', that is not a "me' nor an "I"
Or just note: "low opinion"
Another benefit is to just see how a restless/uprooted/unsettled mind may leap nervously at everything - jumping from any content (one's own patterns, new thoughts/feelings/anything), just craving a solid-like anchor of thoughts/feelings/one true thing
The technique might be to note: "restless. wanting permanency"
Or just note: "wanting"
Another benefit may be to learn to feel the actual sensation of clinging when the mind attaches to something (such as another thought or feeling). The technique might be to note: "tension. clinging"
Or just: [releasing tension]
Another benefit may be to just quickly detect mental distraction and/or mental clinging and simply return to the object of attention without any concern for the form of the distraction and without clinging.
The mind gets more and more subtle and, I think, so too the methods of noting. Actual worded noting (e.g., "pouring water") leads the mind to finer and finer observations and noting eventually takes wordless forms.
No technique is better than the other; the techniques just seem to occur progressively with a tendency towards increasing subtlety.
However, that subtly does not seem subtle subjectively: no matter how subtle, a person is still noticing something relatively gross unto their frame of reference. So, actual worded noting and some other wordless noting action are the same skill and equally depend on sincere and diligent effort.
It is as if one is standing on the banks of one's own mind - a sometimes torrid river of thoughts/feelings/sensations, and getting less and less swept away by them, while the river also seems more placid.
Forgive my obtuse-ness, but would it be accurate to say that the "point" of noting is to consume mental bandwidth in order to stay in the present moment, as opposed to dwelling in thoughts of the past or grasping at thoughts of the future?
You are not obtuse. You have written clearly as far as I am concerned. Forgive my many words.
I think diligent noting does consume mental bandwidth in longer and longer swaths of activity. The effect of a diligent, saturated noting practice is that when one rests afterward in normal 'habitual' activities (i.e., one is not noting), the mind is more awake to its own thoughts/feelings and little insights about them arise naturally. [Edit: you can stay in the present moment with a sensate practice, too, such as placing the mind on each of the sense bases, and this is facilitated by pleasant sense-base activities, like being in nice landscapes or paying attention to one's head resting on the pillow at night, paying attention to the sense bases during any comforts whatsoever: pleasant smells, breezes, and progressively being receptive to seemingly neutral sense-base activities - like hearing traffic, tapping keyboard, etc. This practice can also cause clinging to comforts if one is not careful]
This is just like after an intense period of concentration, when the concentration practice ostensibly stops, one suddenly finds that even the elevator buttons (for example) are just incredibly COMPELLING.
This is mental training: just as balanced muscle training makes lifting one's old steel bike feel lighter, balanced mental training definitely changes mentation, and can lighten a heavy thoughts and a weighed/fixed sense of self.
I sometimes feel like I'm tip-toeing around some sort of breakthrough in understanding... ... I'm laughing at how ridiculous and almost pretensious this all sounds ... ugh
I understand: I sometimes go through quite an "afterbirth" after these posts wondering how I can possibly express any of this well, without sounding like a know-it-all blowhard (I certainly do not know it all and enjoy that a lot more now!), nor just being irrelevant to the person's post. Then I recall that the DhO - with many levels of practitioners and our respective fluxes - has been very helpful to me.
I hope you keep reporting on your efforts and practice. I read that you are going on a Goenka retreat in June and that you are a parent who does not want any Dark Night experience (the knowledges of suffering) to adversely effect the family. There are many parents on the site and their efforts and insights are agreat support to my own practice and efforts.