Coined by Andy Matuschak. First read it in his notes here:

Andy Matuschak

Discovered from Andy Matuschak, who acquired the term from Scott Alexander

From Andy Matuschak notes on Spaced Repetition creating a sense of Wu Wei

I feel it put a name on the idea that I had been thinking about after first revisiting Anki and Spaced Repetition in 2021/02. With Spaced Repetition, Memory is a choice. That same idea translates to consumption in the form of Incremental Reading. From there, I imagine that this Cognitive Optimization way of interacting with information may have even larger implications (the size of those implications has expanded thanks to Andy Matuschak coining this term).

Andy Matuschak, https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4bR1HVvDUhMXDm5SJB4Tiw4xGbrm9AfXWgbc

See Andy Matuschak notes on that paper here:

Pretty much isomorphic to Spaced Everything by Andy Matuschak

Focused software development work is self-abnegating, Andy Matuschak

This is opposed the Andy Matuschak idea that Use phones to collect and triage, not (usually) to read.

From Andy Matuschak

One can see when browsing Andy Matuschak notes that linking alone can create a bit of this endless wandering effect. Wikipedia is in some ways not free of this issue either.

An interesting looking Incremental Reading product that Andy Matuschak is working on.

From Andy Matuschak

From Andy Matuschak, The most effective readers and thinkers I know don’t take notes when reading