Emergent scholarship

Course Lessons

Processing information

13 min read

Lesson overview

Objective: Convert information into something personally meaningful

Summary: Having filtered sources, captured promising materials, and extracted key information into literature notes, you now face the central challenge of knowledge work: adding something of yourself that creates new understanding. Information becomes knowledge through processing—the intellectual work of connecting, elaborating, questioning, and synthesising. This processing happens through writing, which isn’t a luxury saved for when inspiration strikes but a regular, iterative practice of working through ideas. This lesson establishes daily writing habits that transform extracted information into original insight.

Key habits:

  • Schedule daily writing sessions (even 30 minutes) dedicated to processing information
  • Engage in dialogue with extracted notes by asking questions and making observations
  • Look for connections between different sources and ideas
  • Identify relationships and patterns across your literature notes
  • Produce something concrete from each processing session that advances your project work

Introduction

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. - John Locke

Processing is the craft of knowledge work. It’s cognitively demanding, often frustrating, but ultimately the most rewarding part of academic practice.

You’ve built a personal library of high-quality sources. You’ve extracted relevant information from those sources into literature notes with annotations. But this collection of notes, however well-organised, remains information—content you’ve consumed but not yet transformed. Having more information doesn’t automatically lead to better academic work. In fact, accumulating information without processing it often produces the opposite effect: analysis paralysis, fragmented understanding, and the nagging sense that you’re always reading but never producing.

Information becomes knowledge through processing. Knowledge isn’t the content you consume; it’s the cognitive integration of that content into a network of understanding that’s uniquely yours. This integration happens through writing—not the formal writing of articles and books, but the daily, mundane practice of working through ideas on the page. When you take extracted information and add your own thinking, you create something that didn’t exist before.

The central question at this stage is: What value are you adding? What makes the output you create different from what I would create working with the same sources? Two academics reading identical articles will process that information differently, generating distinct insights, connections, and applications. This difference represents the craft of knowledge work—your particular way of thinking about problems, connecting ideas, and generating understanding.

Yet many academics conflate ‘writing’ with ‘preparing to write’. They read extensively, take careful notes, and organise materials meticulously, but put off the actual work of writing until they have more time, more sources, or more clarity. This postponement misunderstands the nature of writing. You don’t write because you have clarity; you write to generate clarity. Processing information through writing is how you discover what you actually think.

Processing as intellectual craft

Processing transforms disconnected pieces of information into integrated understanding. This work takes several forms, all of which involve writing as a way of thinking.

Finding connections

Isolated pieces of information have limited value. A quote from one article, an observation from another, a methodological insight from a third—none of these isolated fragments creates much understanding on their own. Value emerges when you identify relationships between information from different sources.

Connections might be:

  • Convergent: Multiple sources making similar arguments or reaching comparable conclusions, which strengthens confidence in particular claims
  • Divergent: Sources offering contrasting perspectives or conflicting evidence, which reveals complexity and debate within a field
  • Complementary: Different sources addressing different aspects of the same phenomenon, which allows more complete understanding when synthesised
  • Progressive: Earlier sources establishing foundations that later sources build upon, which reveals how understanding develops over time

Finding these connections requires actively looking for relationships rather than treating each source in isolation. As you process information, constantly ask: What does this remind me of? Where else have I encountered similar ideas? How does this compare to what other sources say? These questions generate the connections that transform information into knowledge.

Elaborating and explaining

Processing information involves explaining it to yourself in your own words. This elaboration serves multiple purposes. First, it tests whether you actually understand what you’ve read. If you can’t explain a concept without referring back to the original source, you don’t yet understand it. Second, the act of explanation often reveals gaps in understanding or questions that require further investigation. Third, explanation in your own words makes information memorable and usable in ways that quoted passages never become.

Elaboration includes:

  • Reframing complex ideas in simpler language
  • Generating examples that illustrate abstract concepts
  • Explaining implications that sources don’t make explicit
  • Drawing out assumptions underlying arguments
  • Identifying practical applications for theoretical insights

This elaborative work isn’t wasted effort even though it doesn’t appear directly in final outputs. The understanding developed through elaboration shapes how you later write about topics, teach concepts to students, and apply ideas in your own research.

Critical questioning

Processing information demands more than passive acceptance. Strong academic work emerges from critical engagement with sources—questioning claims, examining evidence, identifying limitations, and considering alternative interpretations.

Questions to ask while processing:

  • What assumptions does this argument rest on? Are those assumptions justified?
  • What evidence supports this claim? Is the evidence sufficient and appropriate?
  • What counterfacts or alternative explanations might challenge this interpretation?
  • How might this look different from another theoretical perspective?
  • What are the implications if this claim is correct? What if it’s incorrect?
  • What questions does this source raise but not answer?

These questions transform you from a consumer of information into an active participant in scholarly discourse. Your critical commentary adds value that the original sources alone cannot provide.

Synthesising across sources

Synthesis represents a more advanced form of processing where you combine information from multiple sources to develop understanding that transcends any single source. This is where genuinely original insight emerges—not from individual sources but from your particular way of bringing them into conversation.

Synthesis requires identifying themes, patterns, or frameworks that cut across sources. You might notice that five different articles approach assessment from distinct angles, but together they suggest a more comprehensive framework than any single source provides. Or you recognise that debates in your field reflect deeper tensions that no one source articulates clearly. These synthetic insights come from processing information across your literature notes rather than working with sources one at a time.

Progressive summarisation

One specific approach to processing information is progressive summarisation, developed by productivity researcher Tiago Forte. This technique involves iteratively distilling information down to its essential core through multiple passes.

The process works in layers:

Layer 1 (during extraction): Save the full source or relevant passages into your notes

Layer 2 (first review): Bold the most important sentences or phrases within those passages

Layer 3 (later review): Highlight (or bold again) the most critical points within the already-bolded text

Layer 4 (when needed): Write a brief executive summary in your own words

Each layer represents a processing pass where you identify what matters most. By the fourth layer, you’ve distilled a 20-page article down to perhaps a single paragraph capturing the essence. This progressive approach works well because it doesn’t demand perfect understanding immediately—you return to sources multiple times, each time refining your understanding and extraction.

The bolded and highlighted passages also make future review far more efficient. When you return to a literature note months later, you can scan the bolded sections to quickly recall the key points without re-reading everything.

Creating daily processing routines

The difference between academics who consistently produce quality work and those who struggle with output often comes down to processing habits. High-output academics don’t necessarily read more or have better sources—they’ve built routines that ensure regular processing of what they read.

Scheduling processing time

Just as you schedule time for reading and extraction, you need protected time for processing. This is writing time, but not necessarily time for producing formal articles or chapters. It’s time for thinking through writing—working with your literature notes, making connections, elaborating ideas, questioning arguments.

Processing time in your schedule:

Many academics find that morning writing sessions work best, when cognitive energy is highest. Even 30 minutes daily, before checking email or attending meetings, creates space for sustained intellectual work. Others prefer end-of-day processing, using the final hour to reflect on what they’ve read or thought about throughout the day.

The specific timing matters less than the consistency and protection. Processing requires the same focused attention as other deep work. It won’t happen in spare moments between meetings or while monitoring email. It needs dedicated, protected time where you can think deeply without interruption.

Starting with a single source

If you’re new to regular processing, start simple. Identify one source from your literature notes that relates to a current project. Set a timer for 30 minutes. Open a new note (or your project notes) and begin writing about that source:

  • What are the main arguments?
  • How does this relate to other sources you’ve read?
  • What questions does it raise?
  • How might you use this in your work?
  • What do you agree or disagree with?

Don’t aim for polished prose. This is thinking-writing, not publication-writing. The goal is working through ideas, not producing finished text. Sometimes this processing produces material you’ll use directly in articles or teaching materials. Other times it generates understanding that shapes your work indirectly. Both outcomes are valuable.

Producing concrete outputs

Each processing session should generate something concrete—not necessarily something immediately usable in final outputs, but something tangible that moves your understanding forward. This might be:

  • A new permanent note capturing a concept you now understand more deeply
  • A paragraph synthesising ideas from multiple sources
  • A list of connections you’ve identified between different literature notes
  • Questions that require further investigation or reading
  • A draft section for an article or teaching materials

The tangible output matters because it transforms processing from vague intellectual activity into concrete progress. You can point to what emerged from today’s processing session. This builds momentum and makes the value of processing visible even when immediate outputs aren’t polished publications.

Pause and reflect

Pause and reflect

The boundary between extracting and processing information is necessarily blurry. While annotating during extraction, you’re already processing—making connections, developing interpretations, generating questions. And processing often requires returning to sources to extract additional information you initially overlooked. Don’t worry about which stage you’re at. What matters is that information moves from raw sources toward processed understanding.

It’s also important to recognise that processing is cognitively demanding in ways that reading or organising notes is not. You can’t process information for eight hours straight. Most people find they have perhaps 2-4 hours daily of genuine processing capacity, and that’s on good days. Respect this limitation rather than fighting it. Better to process deeply for 30 minutes than to spend two hours producing superficial work because you’re mentally exhausted.

Finally, resist the temptation to process everything perfectly before moving forward. Processing is iterative—you’ll return to sources multiple times as your understanding develops. The first pass might produce basic connections and questions. Later passes might generate synthetic insights or identify gaps in current understanding. Accept that processing is ongoing rather than something you complete once and finish.

Activity

Key takeaways

  • Information becomes knowledge through writing, not just reading. Many academics treat writing as something they do after achieving clarity through reading. This misunderstands the process. Writing is how you achieve clarity—how you test understanding, identify connections, and develop original insight. Processing information through regular writing sessions transforms accumulated notes into genuine understanding.

  • The value you add distinguishes knowledge work from information consumption. Two people reading identical sources will generate different insights, make distinct connections, and develop unique perspectives. This difference represents your intellectual contribution. Processing is where you add value through your particular way of thinking about problems, connecting ideas, and applying concepts to your specific context.

  • Concrete outputs make progress visible and sustainable. Processing sessions should produce tangible results—a new permanent note, a draft paragraph, a synthesis document. These concrete outputs serve multiple purposes: they make progress visible, build momentum, and create materials you can draw on during later writing. Without concrete outputs, processing feels like invisible work that’s hard to sustain over time.

Resources

Do you have any experiences or insights that you’d like to share with others? What habits and routines have you implemented in your own practice that have helped in this area? Do you have any questions about your specific context that are not addressed in this lesson? Please leave a comment for other participants in the field below.

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