How to learn to synthesize, a neglected skill

Learn to synthesize to better manage and remember information. Is there a more decisive competition? Maybe not. We have all found ourselves on more than one occasion in the need to summarize a text and obtain the most important ideas from it. Thanks to this ability, we favor learning processes by prioritizing the concepts that we consider relevant in a given subject.

What can we say about this skill? Which is key in any area of ​​our life, but especially in the daily life of every student. Thusfew things are a higher priority in teaching the little ones than starting them in this area. It should be said, however, that its mastery requires time, since it is necessary to first master multiple highly decisive and strategic cognitive functions.

Attention, understanding or even the ability to detect patterns and create content diagrams is decisive. Let us therefore delve deeper into this neglected skill, into this very significant multi-purpose tool.

Why is it so important to know how to synthesize?

Extracting the most relevant information from a conference, a movie, a book, a conversation or a work meeting… It seems like a simple task, so much so that we almost take it for granted that when we reach an age and educational level, we all master this dimension with ease. However, The truth is that knowing how to synthesize is a gift of the most awake and refined minds.

How can it be? Something that we see, for example, at a work level is that human teams are very good at generating ideas, but when they must compile and summarize everything contributed, memory, concretion and clarity fail. This task involves a highly sophisticated cognitive effort that we do not always master successfully.

If knowing how to synthesize is labeled as one of the most complex psychological processes, it is not by chance. Studies such as those carried out by the University of Florida tell us that It is one of the cognitive functions that takes the longest to develop.. It involves variables such as attention, understanding, deducing the essential from the trivial, prioritizing ideas and memorizing.

It is not something that children understand in primary education, It is a competence that they must develop over time until they reach secondary school. Moment when that pre-university student, for example, must be able to synthesize information with great solvency and agility.

How to learn to synthesize?

Simplifying information is like obtaining the perfume of a text. Like bringing to light the skeleton of a body, the pearl of an oyster.

Keeping the most significant part of something requires skill, we already know, but this is acquired from practice and, above all, from a specific technique.

Let’s see therefore what those keys are to learn to synthesize.

Go deeper, go beyond simple understanding

The first step is logical and obvious: no one can synthesize anything if they do not first understand the information presented to them. Therefore, what we must do is immerse ourselves in that text, in that specific material. The objective is not only to understand in detail what is in front of us, It is to go deeper until it becomes ours, it is to remain impregnated with its essence, to understand it at its roots.

To do this, techniques such as underlining can be useful to highlight “only” the most relevant ideas, sentences or concepts, as well as making diagrams, prioritizing information, etc.

A first rough summary, the diamond that we must polish

When a person is asked to summarize something, it is common for them to limit themselves to making a summary. However, we would fall short if we were to settle for just that part. We must go further. Once the summary is written we must polish it, repeat it if possiblego back to the original text and ask ourselves if there is something we are missing and if we couldn’t rephrase it better.

That first summary is actually the starting point for making a good synthesis.

Learning to synthesize: the importance of the mental map

Once the material has been read, analyzed and understood and the first summary has been presented, It’s time to make a mental map. Let’s try to see the key ideas in our mind first and even give it a headline…

In this phase it is important to keep a series of very specific ideas on a mental level. These will be the pillars on which to support our synthesis.

Attention, concentration and selection: not everything is important

Separating the gold from the wheat requires being focused, attentive and with a motivated gaze to find the most relevant information.. Something that we must be clear about is that to simplify information it is necessary to deduce what is relevant and what is most useless and not very useful.

Learning to synthesize: the 140 characters of Twitter, when less is more

Anyone accustomed to Twitter has more than learned the art of knowing how to synthesize. Those precise 140 characters are the essence of a good summary.

These lines include relevant information about a specific fact and often even your own contributions. This is how the data provided is more significant, as well as having a much better impact on the public.

Review the synthesis created: is it clear, is it concise, do I understand it in all its nuances?

It is time to see and analyze the synthesis we have created. These sentences must be highly meaningful, loaded with value and information. In addition, They must meet three very specific values: clarity, conciseness and transcendence. That is, they must provide relevant and very specific data, but at the same time, this synthesis must be meaningful for us.

Only in this way will we remember it better, only in this way will we shape a skillful brain in this decisive competition… Do not hesitate to put these simple strategies into practice.

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