Progressive Summarization: A Practical Technique for Designing Discoverable Notes
渐进式摘要：设计可发现笔记的实用技术

Modern digital tools make it easy to “capture” information from a wide variety of sources. We know how to snap a picture, type out some notes, record a video, or scan a document. Getting this content from the outside world into the digital world is trivial.
现代数字工具可以轻松地从各种来源“捕获”信息。我们知道如何拍照、打出一些笔记、录制视频或扫描文档。将这些内容从外部世界转移到数字世界是微不足道的。

It’s even easier to get content that is already digital from one app to another. We know how to copy and paste text, save an image from a webpage, archive an email attachment, or import a video file.
将已经数字化的内容从一个应用程序转移到另一个应用程序更加容易。我们知道如何复制和粘贴文本、保存网页中的图像、归档电子邮件附件或导入视频文件。

What is difficult is not transferring content from place to place, but transferring it through time.
困难的不是将内容从一个地方传送到另一个地方，而是通过时间传送它。

You know what I mean: you read a book, investing hours of mental labor in understanding the ideas it presents. You finish the book with a feeling of triumph that you’ve gained a valuable body of knowledge.
你知道我的意思：你读了一本书，投入大量的脑力劳动来理解它所提出的想法。当你读完这本书时，你会感到一种胜利的感觉，因为你已经获得了宝贵的知识体系。

But then what?
但然后呢？

You may try to apply the science-based methods the book recommends, only to realize it’s not quite as clear-cut as you thought. You may try to change the way you eat, exercise, communicate, or work, trusting in the power of habits. But then the everyday demands of life come rushing back, and you forget what motivated you in the first place.
您可能会尝试应用本书推荐的基于科学的方法，却发现它并不像您想象的那么清晰。您可以尝试改变饮食、锻炼、交流或工作的方式，相信习惯的力量。但随后日常生活的需求又涌了上来，你忘记了最初激励你的是什么。

At this point, people take different paths. Some give up, labeling all “self-help” books a waste of time. Others decide it’s just a problem of remembering everything they read, and invest in fancy memorization techniques. And many people become “infovores,” force-feeding themselves endless books, articles, and courses, in the hope that something will stick.
此时，人们走上了不同的道路。有些人放弃了，认为所有“自助”书籍都是浪费时间。另一些人认为这只是记住他们读过的所有内容的问题，并投资于花哨的记忆技巧。许多人成为“信息狂”，强迫自己吃没完没了的书籍、文章和课程，希望能坚持下去。

I want to suggest an alternative to all the approaches above: what you read is good and useful and very important, you’re just reading it at the wrong time.
我想建议一个替代上述所有方法的方法：你读到的东西很好、有用而且非常重要，你只是在错误的时间读到了它。

You’re reading about time management techniques now, but they will only be useful two years from now, when you become a manager and have much greater demands on your time.
您现在正在阅读有关时间管理技巧的内容，但它们只会在两年后有用，那时您将成为一名经理并且对您的时间有更大的要求。

You’re watching YouTube videos on online marketing now, but that knowledge can only be put to use in 9 months, when your new online course gets off the ground.
您现在正在观看有关在线营销的 YouTube 视频，但这些知识只能在 9 个月后您的新在线课程开始使用时才能使用。

You’re talking to a prospect about his goals and challenges now, but when you could really use that information is next year, when he is taking bids for a huge new contract.
你现在正在与潜在客户谈论他的目标和挑战，但你真正可以使用这些信息的时候是明年，那时他正在竞标一份巨大的新合同。

The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it. In our digital world, you can acquire almost any knowledge at almost any time.
知识的挑战不在于获取知识。在我们的数字世界中，您几乎可以随时获取几乎任何知识。

The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. And then building a system to forward bits of it through time, to the future situation or problem or challenge where it is most applicable, and most needed.
挑战在于知道哪些知识值得获取。然后构建一个系统，将其中的一些内容随着时间的推移转发到最适用和最需要的未来情况、问题或挑战。

At that future point, when you’re applying that knowledge directly to a real-world challenge, you won’t have to worry about memorizing it, integrating it, or even fully understanding it. You will only have to apply it, and any gaps in your understanding will very quickly reveal themselves. By the time you’re done solving a real problem with it, book knowledge has become experiential knowledge. And experiential knowledge is something you carry with you forever.
到了未来，当你将这些知识直接应用于现实世界的挑战时，你将不必担心记住它、整合它，甚至完全理解它。你只需要应用它，你理解中的任何差距都会很快暴露出来。当你用它解决了一个实际问题时，书本知识就变成了经验知识。经验知识是你永远随身携带的东西。

This is the job of a “second brain” — an external, integrated digital repository for the things you learn and the resources from which they come. It is a storage and retrieval system, packaging bits of knowledge into discrete packets that can be forwarded to various points in time to be reviewed, utilized, or deleted.
这是“第二大脑”的工作——一个外部的、集成的数字存储库，用于存储您学到的东西及其来源的资源。它是一个存储和检索系统，将知识片段打包成离散的数据包，可以转发到不同的时间点进行审查、利用或删除。

In The PARA Method, I described a universal system for organizing any kind of digital information from any source. It is a “good enough” system, maintaining notes according to their actionability (which takes just a moment to determine), instead of their meaning (which is ambiguous and depends on the context).
在PARA 方法中，我描述了一个通用系统，用于组织来自任何来源的任何类型的数字信息。这是一个“足够好”的系统，根据其可操作性（只需片刻即可确定）而不是其含义（含糊不清且取决于上下文）来维护注释。

The four top-level categories of PARA — Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives — are designed to facilitate this process of forwarding knowledge through time.
PARA 的四个顶级类别——项目、领域、资源和档案——旨在促进随着时间的推移传播知识的过程。

• By placing a note in a project folder, you are essentially scheduling it for review on the short time horizon of an individual project
  通过将注释放在项目文件夹中，您实际上是在安排它在单个项目的短时间内进行审查
• Notes in area folders are scheduled for less frequent review, whenever you evaluate that area of your work or life
  每当您评估工作或生活的某个领域时，区域文件夹中的笔记都会安排不太频繁的查看。
• Notes in resource folders stand ready for review if and when you decide to take action on that topic
  如果您决定对该主题采取行动，资源文件夹中的注释随时可供查看
• And notes in archive folders are in “cold storage,” available if needed but not scheduled for review at any particular time
  存档文件夹中的笔记处于“冷存储”状态，需要时可以使用，但不会安排在任何特定时间进行审查

Note that we have re-created the tickler file, except instead of strict time-based horizons (daily, weekly, monthly, annually), they are scheduled contingently — if X happens, when Y arrives, if I want to do Z, etc.
请注意，我们重新创建了记事本文件，除了不是严格的基于时间的范围（每日、每周、每月、每年）之外，它们是偶然安排的 - 如果 X 发生、Y 到达时、如果我想做 Z 等。

Planning in terms of contingencies gives us all the benefits of planning and researching, without locking us into rigid routines. We have the ability to massively accelerate, using our repository of accumulated notes as rocket fuel. But the actual decision of whether or not to accelerate, and critically, in which direction, we leave to our Future Self, who is older and wiser.
根据突发事件进行规划为我们提供了规划和研究的所有好处，而无需将我们束缚在严格的例行公事中。我们有能力大幅加速，利用我们积累的笔记存储库作为火箭燃料。但是否加速的实际决定，以及更重要的是朝哪个方向加速，我们把决定权留给了未来的自己，他更年长、更聪明。

PARA answers how these “packets of knowledge” are organized: in discrete notes, sorted into 4 categories according to actionability, and resurfaced using RandomNote.
PARA 回答了这些“知识包”是如何组织的：在离散的笔记中，根据可操作性分为 4 类，并使用 RandomNote 重新呈现。

But now we turn to a more fundamental question: how are these packets made? Once we capture something, how do we structure the note so that it’s easily discoverable and usable in the future? How do we make sure what we’re saving today adds value to future projects, even when we can’t predict or even imagine what those projects might be?
但现在我们转向一个更基本的问题：这些数据包是如何制作的？一旦我们捕获了某些内容，我们如何构建笔记以便将来可以轻松发现和使用它？即使我们无法预测甚至无法想象这些项目可能是什么，我们如何确保今天节省的资金能为未来的项目增加价值？

That is the job of Progressive Summarization.
这就是渐进式总结的工作。

Note-first knowledge management
笔记优先的知识管理

There are two primary schools of thought on how to organize a note-taking program (or really any body of information, but I’ll use terms specific to note-taking apps):
关于如何组织笔记程序（或实际上任何信息体，但我将使用特定于笔记应用程序的术语）有两种主要思想流派：

Tagging-first approaches argue that there should be no explicit hierarchy of notes, notebooks, and stacks. Notes are envisioned as an ever-changing, virtual matrix of interconnected, free-floating ideas. Because many tags can be applied to one note, there are multiple pathways to discover any given note. Locating notes in specific notebooks and folders is seen as limiting and static.
标记优先方法认为笔记、笔记本和堆栈不应该有明确的层次结构。笔记被设想为一个不断变化的、相互关联的、自由浮动的想法的虚拟矩阵。由于一个笔记可以应用多个标签，因此可以通过多种途径来发现任何给定的笔记。在特定笔记本和文件夹中定位笔记被视为限制性的和静态的。

Although tags have their uses, I don’t believe they work as a primary organizational system. In my experience, relying on tagging is too fragile and requires too much maintenance, spreading attention too uniformly across all notes whether or not they are truly valuable. The virtual matrix sounds cool and futuristic, but our minds are not made to work well with such abstract concepts — we understand placing one thing in one place intuitively and automatically.
尽管标签有其用途，但我不认为它们可以作为主要的组织系统。根据我的经验，依赖标签太脆弱，需要太多维护，将注意力过于均匀地分散在所有笔记上，无论它们是否真正有价值。虚拟矩阵听起来很酷且充满未来感，但我们的大脑无法很好地处理这些抽象概念——我们理解直观且自动地将一件东西放在一个地方。

The second conventional approach to organizing notes is notebook-first. This basically translates how we organize things in the physical world — in a series of discrete containers — into the digital world.
组织笔记的第二种传统方法是笔记本优先。这基本上将我们在物理世界（在一系列离散容器中）组织事物的方式转化为数字世界。

Notebook-first is better than tagging-first, in my opinion, mostly because it stays out of the way. It doesn’t try to automate and encroach upon the deeply intuitive act of making connections and seeing patterns. PARA on its own is a notebook-first system.
在我看来，笔记本优先比标签优先更好，主要是因为它不碍事。它不会试图实现自动化，也不会侵犯建立联系和查看模式的深刻直觉行为。 PARA 本身就是一个笔记本优先的系统。

But if we stopped there, it would still be woefully inadequate for an economy based on creative output. As the tagging enthusiasts correctly point out, notebooks and folders actually suppress the serendipity and randomness that is at the heart of a creative lifestyle.
但如果我们就此止步，对于一个基于创意产出的经济来说，这仍然是远远不够的。正如标签爱好者正确指出的那样，笔记本和文件夹实际上抑制了创意生活方式核心的偶然性和随机性。

I propose a way to break the impasse: a note-first approach.
我提出了一种打破僵局的方法：音符优先的方法。

I propose we make the design of individual notes the primary factor, instead of tags or notebooks. This has many advantages:
我建议我们将个人笔记的设计作为主要因素，而不是标签或笔记本。这有很多优点：

• It works well with any other organizational system, without depending on them (including but not limited to tags and notebooks, if you want to use those)
  它可以与任何其他组织系统很好地配合，而不依赖于它们（包括但不限于标签和笔记本，如果您想使用它们）
• It makes all work you do on your notes value-added, because you’re spending close to 100% of the time engaging directly with the content itself
  它使您在笔记上所做的所有工作都增值，因为您几乎 100% 的时间都花在直接与内容本身互动上
• It can more easily survive migrations to other devices, storage locations, and even programs, because note content is much more likely to be preserved than overarching structure
  它可以更轻松地迁移到其他设备、存储位置甚至程序，因为笔记内容比总体结构更有可能被保留
• It cultivates skills (succinct communication, finding the core of an idea, visual thinking, etc.) that are inherently valuable and highly transferrable to other activities
  它培养具有内在价值且高度可转移到其他活动的技能（简洁沟通、寻找想法核心、视觉思维等）
• It makes your notes more legible and useful to others (unlike your internal notebook structure, which is only for your use), promoting collaboration and sharing
  它使您的笔记对其他人更加清晰和有用（与仅供您使用的内部笔记本结构不同），促进协作和共享

With a note-first approach, your notes become like individual atoms — each with its own unique properties, but ready to be assembled into elements, molecules, and compounds that are far more powerful.
采用笔记优先的方法，你的笔记就像单个原子一样——每个原子都有自己独特的属性，但可以组装成更强大的元素、分子和化合物。

Designing discoverable notes
设计可发现的笔记

A note-first approach to knowledge management means we have to think about design. You are, in a very real sense, designing a product for a demanding customer — Future You.
笔记优先的知识管理方法意味着我们必须考虑设计。从真正意义上来说，你正在为要求严格的客户——未来的你——设计产品。

Future You doesn’t necessarily trust that everything Past You put into your notes is valuable. Future You is impatient and skeptical, demanding proof upfront that the time they spend reviewing notes will be worthwhile. You’ve gotta “sell them” on the idea of reviewing a given note, including all the stages any salesperson has to master: gaining attention, inspiring interest, establishing credibility, stoking desire, and making a case for action NOW.
未来的你不一定相信过去的你记在笔记中的所有内容都是有价值的。未来的你不耐烦、多疑，要求预先证明他们花在审阅笔记上的时间是值得的。你必须“向他们推销”审查给定票据的想法，包括任何销售人员必须掌握的所有阶段：获得关注、激发兴趣、建立可信度、激发欲望以及提出立即采取行动的理由。

As if all that wasn’t intimidating enough, you have to do this for every single note without spending any extra time. You don’t have extra time, do you?
好像这一切还不够令人生畏，您必须对每个音符都执行此操作，而无需花费任何额外的时间。你没有多余的时间，是吗？

Let’s start at the beginning: at the heart of every design, we are trying to balance priorities. You want one thing, but it has to be balanced against something else that you also want.
让我们从头开始：在每个设计的核心，我们都在努力平衡优先级。你想要一件事，但它必须与你也想要的其他东西相平衡。

You want a vehicle to protect its occupants, but you can’t just add layers and layers of titanium armor plating. You have to balance safety against weight and cost.
您希望车辆能够保护其乘员，但您不能只添加一层又一层的钛装甲。您必须在安全性与重量和成本之间取得平衡。

You want a phone to have the longest possible battery life, but you can’t just give it a 10-pound brick of a battery. You have to balance battery life against size and usability.
您希望手机拥有尽可能长的电池寿命，但您不能只给它一块 10 磅重的电池。您必须在电池寿命与尺寸和可用性之间取得平衡。

In the case of notes, I believe the two priorities we are trying to balance are discoverability and understanding.
就笔记而言，我相信我们试图平衡的两个优先事项是可发现性和理解性。

Making a note discoverable involves making it small, simple, and easy to digest. We accomplish this using compression: creating highly condensed summaries, without all the fluff.
使笔记易于被发​​现需要使其小而简单且易于理解。我们通过压缩来实现这一点：创建高度浓缩的摘要，没有任何废话。

But we also want to make our notes understandable. This involves including all the context: the details, the examples, and cited sources to be sure nothing falls through the cracks.
但我们也想让我们的笔记易于理解。这涉及到所有的背景：细节、例子和引用的来源，以确保没有任何遗漏。

This is a difficult tradeoff because you cannot compress something without losing some of its context.

You cannot summarize an article without discarding most of its points. You cannot make a highlight reel of a video without cutting out most of the footage. You cannot give an 18-minute TED talk without leaving out most of your ideas.

In making decisions about what to keep, you are inevitably making decisions about what to throw away.

Compression vs. context

There’s a natural tension between the two, compression and context.

To communicate anything, you have to compress it, like communicating a huge amount of life experience in a wise saying. But in doing so, you lose a lot of the context that made that wisdom valuable in the first place.
想要传达任何东西，你都必须压缩它，就像用一句名言来传达大量的生活经验一样。但这样做时，你会失去很多最初使这种智慧变得有价值的背景。

Let’s look at some examples.
让我们看一些例子。

If we compress a note too much, in other words, we make a summary that is too brief, we lose the context and it loses all meaning. In the note above, for example, the information it contains is highly discoverable — I can get the gist of it with just a glance.
如果我们过度压缩笔记，换句话说，我们的总结过于简短，我们就会失去上下文，也就失去了所有意义。例如，在上面的注释中，它包含的信息是非常容易发现的——我只需看一眼就能明白它的要点。

But if I come across this note a year from now, I’ll have no idea what it means or why it’s important. It’s too compressed.
但如果一年后我看到这张纸条，我将不知道它意味着什么或为什么它很重要。太压缩了。

But we can go too far in the opposite direction too. If we make something totally understandable, in other words, if we include every little detail and bit of context, it loses its discoverability.
但我们也可能在相反的方向走得太远。如果我们让某些东西完全可以理解，换句话说，如果我们包含每一个小细节和一点背景，它就失去了可发现性。

The example above is my notes on the task management software Jira. It has lots of context, making it highly understandable. But it’s not discoverable at all. It would probably take me a couple hours and tremendous mental effort to read through this note and remember enough context to decide whether or not it’s useful. The main points and key insights are hidden somewhere in the noise.

Getting the balance between compression and context right is not a trivial matter. When the time comes for Future You to decide whether or not to review this note, seconds count. Because Future You will likely be looking for a solution to a problem, not casual reading, they will be making snap decisions on a tight timeline. Faced with a wall of text of questionable value, they are unlikely to take the risk of committing time for review.

This means that all the summarizing work your Past Self did on this note is wasted. It didn’t pay off back then, and it doesn’t pay off in the future. You successfully sent a packet of information forward through time, but not in a state where it could survive the journey.
这意味着你过去的自己在这张笔记上所做的所有总结工作都被浪费了。过去没有回报，将来也没有回报。您成功地发送了一个信息包，穿越时空，但未处于可以在旅途中幸存的状态。

Opportunistic compression
机会性压缩

I’ve found that most people do just fine on the context side of the equation. We know how to take exhaustive notes on a book, a presentation, or a class.
我发现大多数人在等式的上下文方面做得很好。我们知道如何对一本书、一次演示或一堂课做详尽的笔记。

Progressive Summarization focuses therefore on rebalancing the equation. It is a method for opportunistic compression — summarizing and condensing a piece of information in small spurts, spread across time, in the course of other work, and only doing as much or as little as the information deserves.
因此，渐进式总结的重点是重新平衡方程。这是一种机会主义压缩的方法——在其他工作的过程中，以小规模的突发方式总结和压缩一条信息，跨时间传播，并且只做信息应得的尽可能多或尽可能少的事情。

If you remember, compression is a means to improving discoverability. So our design challenge when creating a note is:
如果您还记得的话，压缩是提高可发现性的一种方法。因此，我们在创建笔记时的设计挑战是：

“How do I make what I’m consuming right now easily discoverable for my future self?”
“如何让未来的自己能够轻松发现我现在正在消费的东西？”

This isn’t an easy question to answer, because you have no idea what Future You remembers, is interested in, or is working on. You have to summarize the note without knowing what it will be used for. It is general purpose summarization, a much greater challenge than extracting takeaways for just one specific project.
这不是一个容易回答的问题，因为你不知道未来你还记得什么、对什么感兴趣或正在做什么。你必须在不知道它的用途的情况下总结它。这是通用目的的总结，比仅为一个特定项目提取要点要大得多的挑战。

Progressive Summarization works in “layers” of summarization. Layer 0 is the original, full-length source text.
渐进式摘要在摘要的“层”中进行。第 0 层是原始的、完整的源文本。

Layer 1 is the content that I initially bring into my note-taking program. I don’t have an explicit set of criteria on what to keep. I just capture anything that feels insightful, interesting, or useful.
第 1 层是我最初带入笔记程序的内容。对于保留什么，我没有一套明确的标准。我只捕捉任何有洞察力、有趣或有用的东西。

This can include virtually any type of media, but for this article I will focus on text. There are many ways of doing this:
这几乎可以包括任何类型的媒体，但在本文中我将重点关注文本。有很多方法可以做到这一点：

• Copy a paragraph of text from a PDF I’m reading, and paste it into the Evernote menu bar helper
  从我正在阅读的 PDF 中复制一段文本，并将其粘贴到 Evernote菜单栏助手中
• Type my random thoughts into a new note on the Evernote mobile app
  在 Evernote移动应用上将我的随机想法输入到新笔记中
• Dropping a Word document onto the Evernote icon in the dock on my Mac, which adds it to a note as an attachment
• Downloading all my Kindle highlights from a book using Bookcision, and then copying and pasting them into a new note
• Forward an email with useful information to my personal import address, which automatically imports the whole email to a note
• Highlight the best passages of an online article using the web highlighter Liner, which exports directly to Evernote

The examples above are from my recommended program Evernote (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, browsers), but all the major note-taking platforms support the above functionality in one way or another: Bear (Mac and iOS), Simplenote (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux), Microsoft OneNote (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows), and Google Keep (browsers, iOS, Android).

Layer 1 is the starting point of Progressive Summarization, like the bedrock on which everything else is built:

Layer 2 is the first round of true summarization, in which I bold only the best parts of the passages I’ve imported. Again, I have no explicit criteria. I look for keywords, key phrases, and key sentences that I feel represent the core or essence of the idea being discussed.

I do this bolding layer at a later time, when I’m already reviewing this note anyway. I’m essentially using the attention I’m already spending for a dual purpose: to “buy” the information I need for the project at hand, and also to summarize the note for future use. If you have to pay attention to something, it comes in handy to be able to double-spend.
无论如何，当我已经在审阅此注释时，我会在稍后的时间执行此粗体层。我基本上将已经花费的注意力用于双重目的：“购买”手头项目所需的信息，并总结笔记以供将来使用。如果你必须注意某件事，那么能够双花就会派上用场。

For Layer 3, I switch to highlighting, so I can make out the smaller number of highlighted passages among all the bolded ones. This time, I’m looking for the “best of the best,” only highlighting something if it is truly unique or valuable. And again, I’m only adding this third layer when I’m already reviewing the note anyway.
对于第 3 层，我切换到突出显示，这样我就可以在所有粗体段落中找出较少数量的突出显示段落。这一次，我正在寻找“最好的”，只突出那些真正独特或有价值的东西。再说一次，我只是在我已经审阅过该注释时才添加第三层。

For Layer 4, I’m still summarizing, but going beyond highlighting the words of others, to recording my own. For a small number of notes that are the most insightful, I summarize layers 2 and 3 in an informal executive summary at the top of the note, restating the key points in my own words.
对于第四层，我仍在总结，但不仅仅是突出别人的话，而是记录我自己的。对于少数最具洞察力的笔记，我在笔记顶部的非正式执行摘要中总结了第 2 层和第 3 层，并用我自己的话重申了要点。

Note that all the previous layers are preserved in context, giving you the freedom to leave things out without worrying that you’ll lose them. Summarization is risky — you may be making the wrong decision about what’s important. But with the safety net of multiple layers of preserved notes, you can strike out decisively on daring intellectual expeditions.

And finally, for a tiny minority of sources, the ones that are so powerful and exciting I want them to become part of how I think and work immediately, I remix them. After pulling them apart and dissecting them from every angle in layers 1–4, I add my own personality and creativity and turn them into something else.

This could include a blog post interpreting, critiquing, or extending the argument an author is making, such as in Strategically Constrained, The Inner Game of Work, and Supersizing the Mind.
这可能包括解释、批评或扩展作者所提出的论点的博客文章，例如《战略约束》 、 《工作的内在游戏》和《超大型思维》中的博文。

But it doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. It could even be…(gasp) fun! Making a sketch, designing a slide, recording a short video on your phone, and sharing on social media are all forms of wrestling deeply with information.

In Part II, we’ll look at some examples of Progressive Summarization in action.
在第二部分中，我们将介绍一些渐进式总结的实际示例。

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