Nat Eliason's take on Progressive Summarization

I recently listened to an episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast, featuring an interview with Nat Eliason.

Nat spoke about his take on Tiago Forte’s technique of progressive summarization, and how it has helped him get the most out of books he reads. Incidentally, he has also monetized this effort by providing people access to his book notes in Evernote

He reads almost exclusively on Kindle and highlights liberally. He mentioned that his note-taking has made him a more strategic reader - as he reads, he is always looking for what might go in his notes

He adds contextual/signposting information (Chapter Titles and Sub Titles) separately. I think this is a good strategy, because if you include these in your highlights, these count and you are likely to hit the Kindle export limit.

Nat relies on Readwise for getting his notes out of Kindle and into Evernote

Unlike Tiago who suggests that progressive summarisation be done opportunistically over longer periods of time (slow burn), Nat does this immediately. Of course, since his book notes are a product he sells, it does make sense in his case.

During progressive summarisation, he deletes highlights that are duplicates or no longer seem relevant. The rest of it seems pretty standard.

In the podcast, he also recommended 5 books, that he felt were good reads, albeit not that well known. His recommendations included :

* Peak: Secrets from the new Science of Expertise  by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool (on learning and skill acquisition)

* Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (the incredible survival story of an expedition team which survived in the harsh Antartctic climate for nearly 2 years after their ship got stuck and crushed by the ice)

* The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg ( on power, money, cryptocurrency, government)

* Godel Escher Bach: Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter ( a cult book on computational thinking, brain/mind, intelligence etc) and

 
* The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (on our all too human tendency to deny our mortality)

Nat provided brief descriptions of these books, based on which I’ve added a couple to my reading list.

You can find more on Nat and his work on his website.

What are your strategies for getting the most out of the books you read? Have you read any of the five books that Nat recommends? Would you agree with his recommendation?