As I've asked elsewhere: How is 2 hours of bolding and highlighting the words of someone else more valuable than 2 hours writing and developing your own nuanced perspective to the ideas you encounter? 1/
Progressive Summarization is a vestige of a not-so-distant past when we all thought if you COULD clip a new article into Evernote, you SHOULD. 2/
This led to the Collector's Fallacy.
It feels good to collect other people's ideas like it feels good to collect Pokemon.
Gotta catch 'em all! 3/
It feels good to collect other people's ideas like it feels good to collect Pokemon.
Gotta catch 'em all! 3/
But it's leading aspiring thinkers astray into habits where they are actually not thinking, but just collecting stuff at a surface level. 4/
It reduces full engagement with the text, arguing that it's better to do minimal thinking now, and instead "forward bits of it through time, to the future situation or problem or challenge where it is most applicable, and most needed." 5/
That sounds really cool. But it promotes bad habits of over-collecting and spending time "non-thinking" (bolding, highlighting only—not writing) with the goal of not having to think until the material might actually be needed at some point in the future. 6/
(Side note: It seems instead that a better approach would be to have a slightly better filter as to what we actually collect in the first place.) 7/
The world moves quickly. Progressive Summarization seems to have developed right before concepts like Zettelkasten and bi-directional links went mainstream.
That's fine, but it needs to be acknowledged b/c it's another evolution that weakens the case for Prog Sum. 8/
That's fine, but it needs to be acknowledged b/c it's another evolution that weakens the case for Prog Sum. 8/
Progressive Summarization encourages more time spent in passive engagement with ideas (bolding, highlighting)
VERSUS
time that could be spent engaging with the text and being an active, contributing participant. 9/
VERSUS
time that could be spent engaging with the text and being an active, contributing participant. 9/
Not only is less real value created in the same amount of time, but people just end up with really overdeveloped bolding and highlighting muscles—allowing their muscles that connect and develop ideas to atrophy. 10/
Why clip 20 pages from a magazine on fitness, when you can workout several times instead?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! 11/
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! 11/
Practically speaking: Instead of waiting to engage with the text until some distant future, people should actively comment & connect new ideas to their existing ideas WHILE they are converting notes from the literature, rather than saving it for a possible later step. 12/
But everyone's use case and personalities are different.
And that's precisely why I felt compelled to share a different approach to PKM. 🙏 13/13
And that's precisely why I felt compelled to share a different approach to PKM. 🙏 13/13
