It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the vast quantity of stuff on your reading list.
When you have a list including…
- a growing folder of PDFs
- 50 articles your friends have sent you
- a playlist of youtube lectures
- that audiobook you’ve been meaning to read
- that webinar you want to watch
it’s hard to know how to capture it all.
And inevitably, when you’re paralysed by choice you’ll end up mindlessly scrolling on your phone.
There are tons of other valuable resources out there, but they’re so widespread that you end up sticking to the lowest common denominator.
Readwise
Yusef was looking for a simple, straightforward way to prioritise what to read next, while capturing the most valuable elements from different sources.
He was also looking for a way of highlighting text that would automatically index it into his second brain.
But using a convoluted system with multiple integrations to record everything meant that reading could feel more like a chore than something he did for pleasure.
Being invited to be a Beta tester for the Readwise Reader app was a game changer.
The app basically captures lots of disparate bits of input from a range of sources, and puts them into a single funnel so that you can tag and prioritise them.
And because the Reader app fully integrates everything, this helps you create a high-level overview of what the book’s about.
For example, when you finish a book in Readwise, you can also add a task to TickTick to review the highlights that it's automatically imported into second brain.
This all helps you think more clearly and access ideas more rapidly.
A closer look at the Reader web app
The Reader web app has a library which is very keyboard friendly. You can easily switch between things, and you can scroll through text using the ‘up’ and ‘down’ keys.
It’s also really easy to search for items through the library, as well as accessing things you’ve subscribed to, like RSS feeds and email lists.
The app can link to other notebooks, highlights and other notes you’ve made to help make connections between different bits of reading. And setting tags and priorities bumps things to the top of the list for you so that you know what to read next.
Reader takes in things like:
- PDFs
- Articles
- Books
- Bookmarks
- Tweets
And they’re all contained within one place.
They’re also planning to start including things like podcasts and audiobooks.
The mobile app
The structure of the Reader mobile app is very similar to the web app, but with one other exciting feature:
Text to speech.
This turns any book or article into an audiobook, allowing you to seamlessly turn your walk into reading and taking notes at the same time.
Find out more
The Reader app allows you to get through so much more reading and really improves your output. It’s great to finally have everything in one place that makes it much easier to solidify your learning.
You can sign up to Readwise Reader here using our Propane referral link.
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