I love having an established workflow for online articles. DevonThink can save Pocket articles as bookmarks, web archives, PDFs, Markdown, or plain text, and I can easily link to them from other apps (like Craft). DevonThink is a tremendously powerful document storage app that I use to keep various personal and professional files, including the entire ship maintenance system for our trawler, MV Indiscretion. Once a week, I archive the best Pocket articles into DevonThink for future reference. Highlights I make in Pocket flow automatically into Readwise. The free version of Pocket allows up to three highlights which is sufficient for most pieces. I enjoy the reading experience on Pocket’s iPad app, and it’s a simple thing to add articles, even those behind paywalls. Instead, I save them into Pocket and take time on the weekend to read through them all at once. Capturing a highlight from a printed book in Readwise is fast and accurate.īesides books, I read a lot of online articles and blog posts, but I resist the urge to read these on the fly. When finished, all those highlights and notes are now magically part of Readwise. I batch my capture of highlights in chunks, and each takes about 20 seconds to process. If you want to include a note with the highlight, tap the record button and add it with your voice. Snap a picture of the page with your iPhone, pick the beginning and end of the highlight with your finger, tap the book (it remembers what you’re reading), and type in an optional page number. The OCR engine inside the Readwise app is fantastic. Kindle and Pocket highlights sync to Readwise automatically, so I don’t have to think about it while I read.Ĭapturing quotes from printed books is a Readwise superpower. Readwise integrates with almost 20 reading sources. Readwise is a subscription service that gathers and resurfaces highlights and annotations from books and periodicals. I use Readwise to import highlights and annotations from Kindle ebooks and online articles using the Pocket read-it-later app. I also occasionally reflect on what I’m reading in my journal. Often, in the process of putting something in my own words, I stumble upon some new insight I hadn’t comprehended at first blush. I’ve gotten in the habit of summarizing the main points of what I’ve just read to help forge a mental lock on the material. If I’m reading on Kindle, I highlight passages with my finger, but jot notes down on paper, usually in a Field Notes notebook. If I’m reading an actual book, I almost always have a pen in my hand to mark passages or scribble notes in the margins. This part of the system is decidedly old school. I’ve learned that to remember and learn from what I read, I need to take notes. Phase I - CapturingĬapturing insights from my reading is the first phase of my system. And finally, I have no financial incentives or affiliations with Readwise, Craft or any other service or product mentioned in this post. The tools and techniques I’m using in early 2022 will continue to evolve as new capabilities and services emerge. Second, we’re in the early innings of a golden era of note-taking and reading technologies. The books I read for pleasure at night before bed don’t see much action in this system. First, these workflows only apply to books I actively read with an alert mind and a notebook and pen nearby. There are a few caveats I’ll share before diving in. (3) Compounding the knowledge and insights I’ve gleaned with daily reviews and Zettelkasten-style linking. (2) Curating what I’ve captured inside my note-taking system and (1) Capturing notes and quotes from my reading What follows are the methods I employ in the reading system across three key activities: Yet, using these two apps has improved my reading retention, and perhaps more importantly, unlocked a way for me to consistently integrate what I read into a broader system of curated thought and wisdom. Both require a paid subscription, and one works only with Apple devices, so they aren’t for everyone. I’m pleased to share that two innovative apps - Craft and Readwise - have finally become that system for me. I needed a simple system to make better use of the time I spent reading, but didn’t distract or pull me away from the flow of reading itself. And how many hours of my life have I spent searching for something I read but can’t find?įor someone who invests a thousand hours a year reading, this kind of poor knowledge return always bothered me. I may have spent hours of study at the time, but it’s already become a blur. Too often, I’ll pick up a book I’ve read just a few years back and feel a familiar sense of despair. Have you ever run across a book you know you’ve read but can’t recall much about it? Or, come across a passage in a book while you were reading that seemed important - something you knew you could use at some point in the future - but didn’t know where or how to save it so you could find it again?
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