Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
The work of picking something up again that turns a kept source into an idea reformulated, connected and usable without going back to the original.
Full definition
The word circulates in knowledge-management methods, where it designates the progressive tightening of a text: highlight, summarize, condense. The emphasis there falls on reduction.
In the articles on this blog, it designates the second level of a three-stage flow — capturing keeps, distilling transforms, acting produces — and the emphasis falls on transformation rather than on size. To distil isn't to shorten: it is to pick up an article set aside and draw from it a reformulated idea, connected to what you already knew, detached from the form of its source.
Distillation is therefore the only place where a source becomes knowledge. A setup that never does it accumulates without capitalizing, however much care goes into its entrance.
Usage in the field
Used to name the step capture systems leave out, and to situate what is decided once things have cooled: distil a source, or throw it away.
Synonyms and variants
"to distil", "to pick up again", "to transform". "To capitalize" when the emphasis falls on the cumulative effect rather than on the operation.
Not to be confused with
- Capture — keeping a source at the moment of the encounter, with no decision about what it will become. Capture keeps, distillation transforms.
- summary — the compression of a text that stays attached to its original. Distillation detaches: its product stands without the source.
- Maturation — the delay during which an idea stabilizes on its own. Distillation is active work, maturation an effect of time.
Examples
A white paper kept in a queue is distilled the day two reformulated propositions come out of it, connected to existing notes — after which the original file serves only for traceability.
Ambiguities / debates
The inherited sense — condensing — suggests a good summary is enough. It isn't: a faithful compression stays prisoner of the source, whereas the operation intended here consists in getting out of it.