Nick Milo offers criticism of progressive summarization, suggesting it can result in over-collecting, over-summarization and under thinking.

He also critiqued the term “progressive summarization,” arguing that it diverges significantly from traditional summarization and could confuse people. Instead, he proposed calling the technique “just-in-time summarization.”

Another point he made is that highlighting is known to be ineffective by research and it can makes illusion of learning, where people can confuse familiarity with understanding.

Instead, Milo suggests a process he calls “active idealization.” In this approach, you make highlights while also writing comments in real-time. Subsequently, you generate notes based on these highlights and comments.

Lesley: His suggested approach is quite similar to my combined PARA and Zettelkasten methods.

Also Lesley: there is a debate between Milo and proponents of progressive summarization and I don’t have a strong opinion on either side.

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