Incrementally processing notes is a key user behavior to promote synthesis
Authored By:: Rob Haisfield, Brendan Langen
This claim is a response to What workflows and behaviors facilitate synthesis.
The thought behind this claim is that People are lazy and needing to process 6 months worth of research at once is more difficult than processing 1 month worth of information 6 times. As we use it here, the word processing refers to the act of going through old information and sorting it, either into new groups, by importance, or by stage in some pipeline. What friction underlies the act of processing notes?
Synthesis is supported by Active Reading, and one method of active reading is the act of progressive summarization (as coined by Tiago Forte).
Tools like Readwise, LiquidText, and Hypothesis promote this act within their via annotations, highlighting, and focused views to gradually process notes. This is an area where It will be important to capture the potential energy of information consumption, as other individuals can help process notes while they are reading.
Tools alone do not enable incremental processing, though. This has led the PKM community to reference routines and algorithms for thought in order to turn ideas into synthesized knowledge. Multiplicity facilitates synthesis.
Many people will progressively summarize their own notes. People process complex information in multiple levels and stages of processing.