Progressive Summarization
When writing notes, there is a contention between compression and context. We want to compress note to make key insight more discoverable, yet this inevitably involves sacrificing context, potentially making the notes less understandable in the future.
Progressive summarization is a technique that gradually refine a note to make it more compressed. It contains the following layer:
- layer 0: source material
- layer 1: source material that brought to a literature note
- layer 2: bold parts of layer 1
- layer 3: highlight parts of layer 2
- layer 4: small summary
- layer 5: remix
Not all notes need all layers, and we also only summarize notes when we are already reviewing it. This is important since we don’t want to spend time and energy on unimportant notes. In other words, design a system for the laziest version of yourself.
Criticisms
criticism of progressive summarization
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.
References
Link to original