# Progressive summarization Created On: 03-23-2023 12:00 pm Up:: [[My Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) (MOC)]] Tags:: #note/evergreen🌲 Topics:: [[Second Brain]] Related:: --- The idea that notes should be continuously refined into the sweetest of composable morsels that they have to offer. This occurs in stages: 1. The original writing/draft of a note marks the baseline content 2. You return to a note, skim it, see some highlights that seem more important now, so you bold them, making the highlights easier extract in the future. 1. You may even find yourself rewriting some of it, making it more [[Evergreen note concept|evergreen]] (see below) 3. You return much later and cut away some of the old bolded highlights, but leaving some, and then use a highlight tool to bring about more refinement 4. From all of your highlights previously, you write an [[Executive summary]] for your future self. This entire concept is fundamentally rooted in this idea: [[Separate the wheat from the chaff]], which allows us to derive incremental benefit from content once returning to it from stints away from it. Through this, our brain assimilates it, but sees it in a "fresh way" this time: more for what it truly is. Therefore, we're presented with an opportunity to *improve* the note by further refining the most important elements of its content. This specific concept demonstrates how [[Our brain interprets everything first]]. Now, one of the *main differentiators* in [[Tiago Forte]]'s approach as that *one must have a reason* to be progressively summarizing; to only summarize notes that are "regularly valuable" - a pragmatic mindset. This is in opposition to sort of a "perfectionist" approach of needlessly refining every note for the broader sake of the "perfection" of your notes as opposed to nurturing and investing in the ones directly that are actively serving you. > [!question] Opportunity > Separate that "perfection mindset" concept into its own zettel? #note/question❓ This is relative to the concept of [[Principle of Atomicity]] through which [[Evergreen note concept|evergreen notes]] are continually improved in an effort to make the morsels of understanding within them more composable.