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praxis.fortelabs.co

Progressive Summarization: A
Practical Technique for Designing
Discoverable Notes
17-22 minutes

Modern digital tools make it easy to “capture” information from a

wide variety of sources. We know how to snap a picture, type out
some notes, record a video, or scan a document. Getting this
content from the outside world into the digital world is trivial.

It’s even easier to get content that is already digital from one app to
another. We know how to copy and paste text, save an image from
a webpage, archive an email attachment, or import a video file.

What is difficult is not transferring content from place to place, but

transferring it through time.

You know what I mean: you read a book, investing hours of mental
labor in understanding the ideas it presents. You finish the book

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with a feeling of triumph that you’ve gained a valuable body of

knowledge.

But then what?

You may try to apply the science-based methods the book

recommends, only to realize it’s not quite as clear-cut as you
thought. You may try to change the way you eat, exercise,
communicate, or work, trusting in the power of habits. But then the
everyday demands of life come rushing back, and you forget what
motivated you in the first place.

At this point, people take different paths. Some give up, labeling all
“self-help” books a waste of time. Others decide it’s just a problem
of remembering everything they read, and invest in fancy
memorization techniques. And many people become “infovores,”
force-feeding themselves endless books, articles, and courses, in
the hope that something will stick.

I want to suggest an alternative to all the approaches above: what

you read is good and useful and very important, you’re just reading
it at the wrong time.

You’re reading about time management techniques now, but they

will only be useful two years from now, when you become a
manager and have much greater demands on your time.

You’re watching YouTube videos on online marketing now, but that

knowledge can only be put to use in 9 months, when your new
online course gets off the ground.

You’re talking to a prospect about his goals and challenges now,

but when you could really use that information is next year, when
he is taking bids for a huge new contract.

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The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it. In our digital world,

you can acquire almost any knowledge at almost any time.

The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. And

then building a system to forward bits of it through time, to the
future situation or problem or challenge where it is most applicable,
and most needed.

At that future point, when you’re applying that knowledge directly to

a real-world challenge, you won’t have to worry about memorizing
it, integrating it, or even fully understanding it. You will only have to
apply it, and any gaps in your understanding will very quickly reveal
themselves. By the time you’re done solving a real problem with it,
book knowledge has become experiential knowledge. And
experiential knowledge is something you carry with you forever.

This is the job of a “second brain” — an external, integrated digital

repository for the things you learn and the resources from which
they come. It is a storage and retrieval system, packaging bits of
knowledge into discrete packets that can be forwarded to various
points in time to be reviewed, utilized, or deleted.

In the 4-part P.A.R.A. series, I described a universal system for

organizing any kind of digital information from any source. It is a
“good enough” system, maintaining notes according to their
actionability (which takes just a moment to determine), instead of
their meaning (which is ambiguous and depends on the context).

The four top-level categories of P.A.R.A. — Projects, Areas,

Resources, and Archives — are designed to facilitate this process of
forwarding knowledge through time.

By placing a note in a project folder, you are essentially scheduling

it for review on the short time horizon of an individual project

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Notes in area folders are scheduled for less frequent review,

whenever you evaluate that area of your work or life

Notes in resource folders stand ready for review if and when you
decide to take action on that topic

And notes in archive folders are in “cold storage,” available if

needed but not scheduled for review at any particular time

Note that we have re-created the tickler file, except instead of strict
time-based horizons (daily, weekly, monthly, annually), they are
scheduled contingently — if X happens, when Y arrives, if I want to
do Z, etc.

Planning in terms of contingencies gives us all the benefits of

planning and researching, without locking us into rigid routines. We
have the ability to massively accelerate, using our repository of
accumulated notes as rocket fuel. But the actual decision of
whether or not to accelerate, and critically, in which direction, we
leave to our Future Self, who is older and wiser.

P.A.R.A. answers how these “packets of knowledge” are

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organized: in discrete notes, sorted into 4 categories according to

actionability, and resurfaced using RandomNote.

But now we turn to a more fundamental question: how are these

packets made? Once we capture something, how do we structure
the note so that it’s easily discoverable and usable in the future?
How do we make sure what we’re saving today adds value to future
projects, even when we can’t predict or even imagine what those
projects might be?

That is the job of Progressive Summarization.

Note-first knowledge management

There are two primary schools of thought on how to organize a

note-taking program (or really any body of information, but I’ll use
terms specific to note-taking apps):

Tagging-first approaches argue that there should be no explicit

hierarchy of notes, notebooks, and stacks. Notes are envisioned as
an ever-changing, virtual matrix of interconnected, free-floating
ideas. Because many tags can be applied to one note, there are

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multiple pathways to discover any given note. Locating notes in

specific notebooks and folders is seen as limiting and static.

Although tags have their uses, I don’t believe they work as a

primary organizational system. In my experience, relying on tagging
is too fragile and requires too much maintenance, spreading
attention too uniformly across all notes whether or not they are truly
valuable. The virtual matrix sounds cool and futuristic, but our
minds are not made to work well with such abstract concepts — we
understand placing one thing in one place intuitively and
automatically.

The second conventional approach to organizing notes is

notebook-first. This basically translates how we organize things in
the physical world — in a series of discrete containers — into the
digital world.

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Notebook-first is better than tagging-first, in my opinion, mostly

because it stays out of the way. It doesn’t try to automate and
encroach upon the deeply intuitive act of making connections and
seeing patterns. P.A.R.A. on its own is a notebook-first system.

But if we stopped there, it would still be woefully inadequate for an

economy based on creative output. As the tagging enthusiasts
correctly point out, notebooks and folders actually suppress the
serendipity and randomness that is at the heart of a creative
lifestyle.

I propose a way to break the impasse: a note-first approach.

I propose we make the design of individual notes the primary

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factor, instead of tags or notebooks. This has many advantages:

It works well with any other organizational system, without

depending on them (including but not limited to tags and
notebooks, if you want to use those)

It makes all work you do on your notes value-added, because

you’re spending close to 100% of the time engaging directly with
the content itself

It can more easily survive migrations to other devices, storage

locations, and even programs, because note content is much more
likely to be preserved than overarching structure

It cultivates skills (succinct communication, finding the core of an

idea, visual thinking, etc.) that are inherently valuable and highly
transferrable to other activities

It makes your notes more legible and useful to others (unlike your
internal notebook structure, which is only for your use), promoting
collaboration and sharing

With a note-first approach, your notes become like individual

atoms — each with its own unique properties, but ready to be
assembled into elements, molecules, and compounds that are
far more powerful.

Designing discoverable notes

A note-first approach to knowledge management means we have to

think about design. You are, in a very real sense, designing a
product for a demanding customer — Future You.

Future You doesn’t necessarily trust that everything Past You put
into your notes is valuable. Future You is impatient and skeptical,

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demanding proof upfront that the time they spend reviewing notes
will be worthwhile. You’ve gotta “sell them” on the idea of reviewing
a given note, including all the stages any salesperson has to
master: gaining attention, inspiring interest, establishing
credibility, stoking desire, and making a case for action NOW.

As if all that wasn’t intimidating enough, you have to do this for

every single note without spending any extra time. You don’t have
extra time, do you?

Let’s start at the beginning: at the heart of every design, we are

trying to balance priorities. You want one thing, but it has to be
balanced against something else that you also want.

You want a vehicle to protect its occupants, but you can’t just add
layers and layers of titanium armor plating. You have to balance
safety against weight and cost.

You want a phone to have the longest possible battery life, but you
can’t just give it a 10-pound brick of a battery. You have to balance
battery life against size and usability.

In the case of notes, I believe the two priorities we are trying to

balance are discoverability and understanding.

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Making a note discoverable involves making it small, simple, and

easy to digest. We accomplish this using compression: creating
highly condensed summaries, without all the fluff.

But we also want to make our notes understandable. This involves

including all the context: the details, the examples, and cited
sources to be sure nothing falls through the cracks.

This is a difficult tradeoff because you cannot compress something

without losing some of its context.

You cannot summarize an article without discarding most of its

points. You cannot make a highlight reel of a video without cutting
out most of the footage. You cannot give an 18-minute TED talk
without leaving out most of your ideas.

In making decisions about what to keep, you are inevitably making

decisions about what to throw away.

Compression vs. context

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There’s a natural tension between the two, compression and

context.

To communicate anything, you have to compress it, like

communicating a huge amount of life experience in a wise saying.
But in doing so, you lose a lot of the context that made that wisdom
valuable in the first place.

Let’s look at some examples.

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If we compress a note too much, in other words, we make a

summary that is too brief, we lose the context and it loses all
meaning. In the note above, for example, the information it contains
is highly discoverable — I can get the gist of it with just a glance.

But if I come across this note a year from now, I’ll have no idea
what it means or why it’s important. It’s too compressed.

But we can go too far in the opposite direction too. If we make

something totally understandable, in other words, if we include
every little detail and bit of context, it loses its discoverability.

The example above is my notes on the task management software

Jira. It has lots of context, making it highly understandable. But it’s
not discoverable at all. It would probably take me a couple hours
and tremendous mental effort to read through this note and
remember enough context to decide whether or not it’s useful. The
main points and key insights are hidden somewhere in the noise.

Getting the balance between compression and context right is not a

trivial matter. When the time comes for Future You to decide
whether or not to review this note, seconds count. Because Future

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You will likely be looking for a solution to a problem, not casual

reading, they will be making snap decisions on a tight timeline.
Faced with a wall of text of questionable value, they are unlikely to
take the risk of committing time for review.

This means that all the summarizing work your Past Self did on this
note is wasted. It didn’t pay off back then, and it doesn’t pay off in
the future. You successfully sent a packet of information forward
through time, but not in a state where it could survive the journey.

Opportunistic compression

I’ve found that most people do just fine on the context side of the
equation. We know how to take exhaustive notes on a book, a
presentation, or a class.

Progressive Summarization focuses therefore on rebalancing the

equation. It is a method for opportunistic compression — 
summarizing and condensing a piece of information in small spurts,
spread across time, in the course of other work, and only doing as
much or as little as the information deserves.

If you remember, compression is a means to improving

discoverability. So our design challenge when creating a note is:

“How do I make what I’m consuming right now easily discoverable

for my future self?”

This isn’t an easy question to answer, because you have no idea

what Future You remembers, is interested in, or is working on. You
have to summarize the note without knowing what it will be used
for. It is general purpose summarization, a much greater challenge
than extracting takeaways for just one specific project.

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Progressive Summarization works in “layers” of summarization.

Layer 0 is the original, full-length source text.

Layer 1 is the content that I initially bring into my note-taking

program. I don’t have an explicit set of criteria on what to keep. I
just capture anything that feels insightful, interesting, or useful.

This can include virtually any type of media, but for this article I will
focus on text. There are many ways of doing this:

Copy a paragraph of text from a PDF I’m reading, and paste it into
the Evernote menu bar helper

Type my random thoughts into a new note on the Evernote mobile

app

Dropping a Word document onto the Evernote icon in the dock on

my Mac, which adds it to a note as an attachment

Downloading all my Kindle highlights from a book using

Bookcision, and then copying and pasting them into a new note

Forward an email with useful information to my personal import

address, which automatically imports the whole email to a note

Highlight the best passages of an online article using the web

highlighter Liner, which exports directly to Evernote

The examples above are from my recommended program Evernote

(iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, browsers), but all the major note-
taking platforms support the above functionality in one way or
another: Bear (Mac and iOS), Simplenote (iOS, Android, Mac,
Windows, Linux), Microsoft OneNote (iOS, Android, Mac,
Windows), and Google Keep (browsers, iOS, Android).

Layer 1 is the starting point of Progressive Summarization, like the

bedrock on which everything else is built:

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Layer 2 is the first round of true summarization, in which I bold only

the best parts of the passages I’ve imported. Again, I have no
explicit criteria. I look for keywords, key phrases, and key
sentences that I feel represent the core or essence of the idea
being discussed.

I do this bolding layer at a later time, when I’m already reviewing

this note anyway. I’m essentially using the attention I’m already
spending for a dual purpose: to “buy” the information I need for the

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project at hand, and also to summarize the note for future use. If
you have to pay attention to something, it comes in handy to be
able to double-spend.

For Layer 3, I switch to highlighting, so I can make out the smaller

number of highlighted passages among all the bolded ones. This
time, I’m looking for the “best of the best,” only highlighting
something if it is truly unique or valuable. And again, I’m only
adding this third layer when I’m already reviewing the note anyway.

For Layer 4, I’m still summarizing, but going beyond highlighting the
words of others, to recording my own. For a small number of notes
that are the most insightful, I summarize layers 2 and 3 in an
informal executive summary at the top of the note, restating the key
points in my own words.

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Note that all the previous layers are preserved in context, giving
you the freedom to leave things out without worrying that you’ll lose
them. Summarization is risky — you may be making the wrong
decision about what’s important. But with the safety net of multiple
layers of preserved notes, you can strike out decisively on daring
intellectual expeditions.

And finally, for a tiny minority of sources, the ones that are so
powerful and exciting I want them to become part of how I think and
work immediately, I remix them. After pulling them apart and
dissecting them from every angle in layers 1–4, I add my own
personality and creativity and turn them into something else.

This could include a blog post interpreting, critiquing, or extending

the argument an author is making, such as in Strategically

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Constrained, The Inner Game of Work, and Supersizing the Mind.

But it doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. It could even

be…(gasp) fun! Making a sketch, designing a slide, recording a
short video on your phone, and sharing on social media are all
forms of wrestling deeply with information.

1/ In many ways, we understand less about Toyota’s success than

ever, despite it being one of the most studied companies in history

— Tiago Forte (@fortelabs) November 16, 2016

The first tweet in a tweetstorm I wrote about the book Toyota Kata

In Part II, we’ll look at some examples of Progressive

Summarization in action.

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