Decoding Knowledge Management Systems
A No-Nonsense Guide to Progressive Summarization
Your guide to the method and whether you should use it?
Progressive Summarization is a Note-Taking method of processing raw information from a source into a form that balances compression and context for a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system — created by Tiago Forte.
Introduction to the Progressive Summarization
The design philosophy behind Progressive Summarization is built upon the belief that Note-Taking is a balancing act between Compression and Context.
- Compression. To make information simpler and easier to digest.
- Context. To gain a contextual understanding of the information within its environment of discussion.
A trade-off between Compression; where information is Compressed too much and loses all context or meaning, and Context; where information is too dense and loses all skim-ability.
The inherent nature of Note-Taking is that not all information you have collected in the past is valuable to your future self. The act of storing information is not difficult, but the act of preparing information in a way that’s usable and discoverable is.
