(2018-03-07) Forte Progressive Summarization V The Faster You Forget The Faster You Learn

Tiago Forte: Progressive Summarization V: The Faster You Forget, The Faster You Learn. In Part I, I introduced Progressive Summarization, a method for easily creating highly discoverable notes. In Part II, I gave you examples and metaphors of the method in action. Part III included my top recommendations for how to perform it effectively. Part IV showed how to apply the technique to non-text media.. In Part V, I’ll show you how Progressive Summarization directly contributes to the ultimate outcome we’re seeking with our information consumption: learning.

The burden of perfect memory

Her memory is a map of regrets, other lives she could have lived

The importance of forgetting

As the world changes faster and more unpredictably, attachment to ideas and paradigms of the past becomes more and more of a liability.

Contrast this with most books and courses on “accelerated learning,” which tend to offer two kinds of approaches:

#1 Increase the flow of information entering the brain

#2 Improve memory and recall of this information

All these techniques work. And they completely miss the point

They both operate with the same misguided metaphor: the mind as an empty vessel.

a mind can not just store things; it can take action. And taking action is where true learning actually takes place.

Here’s the problem: the more we optimize for storage, the more we interfere with action.

The information bottleneck

The basic question researchers were trying to answer was, how do you decide which are the most relevant features of a given piece of information?

our highly constrained bandwidth for absorbing information is not a hindrance, but key to our ability to perform this feat.

This paper on the role of forgetting in learning used problem-solving algorithms to determine exactly how much forgetting was optimal.

optimal strategy involved learning a large body of knowledge initially, followed by random forgetting of approximately 90% of the knowledge acquired

Trying to “forget” only the least useful knowledge also didn’t help — random forgetting performed far better.

Progressive Summarization is not a method for remembering as much as possible — it is a method for forgetting as much as possible. For offloading as much of your thinking as possible, leaving room for imagination, creativity, and mind-wandering.

You are free to strike out boldly on the trail of a hidden core message, knowing that you can walk it back to previous layers if you make a mistake or get lost.

By minimizing the cognitive burden of interacting with information at all stages — initial consumption, review, and retrieval.

It reduces the inherent difficulty of the topic you’re reading about by eliminating the necessity of understanding it completely upfront. It instead treats each paragraph as a small, self-contained unit. Your only goal is to surface the key point in each “chunk” — each chapter, section, paragraph, and sentence — leaving it to your future self to figure out how to string those insights together.

Offloading our thinking to an external tool lowers the brain’s workload as it encounters new information.

Your attachment to what you already know may actually interfere with your ability to understand new ideas. Clinging to our notecards, diagrams, and memorization schemes, we may be missing out on simply being present

We must transition from knowledge hoarders to knowledge curators

What is being called into question is the very purpose of learning

Learning is no longer about accumulating data points, but training our algorithm.

What’s interesting is that, just like the deep learning experiments mentioned above, we still need massive amounts of data for the initial training phase. In other words, we need diverse, intense, personal experience. But 90% of the data we collect through these experiences can be ignored, discarded, or forgotten. What is left over is wisdom

The new purpose of learning is to enable you to adapt, as the pace of change continues to accelerate and the amount of uncertainty in the world continues to spiral upward.

Making a dent in a universe that keeps changing shape increasingly requires working on projects and problems that are FAR bigger than you can hold in your head.