No matter your work, your politics, your life status, or your interests, you have at your fingertips (or keyboard), more to read than you could possibly consume. Luckily, there are lots of tools—and more arriving to market every day—to help with this overwhelming task. These apps can help you spend less time reading and get more from what you do read.
I confess that I love to try new apps (if they have a free trial). I’m quick to jettison them, though, if they don’t provide significant value. In doing so, I’ve found some excellent tools that have helped me upgrade my reading.
Highlighting
Highlighting has traditionally been considered a way to retain what you read, but research suggests the highlighting itself may not be effective at all. However, repeated exposure to text like the highlights, spaced over time, has been shown to increase retention. That’s where Readwise comes in. Readwise imports your highlights and notes from Kindle, Pocket, Instapaper, and iBooks. The app then serves up the highlights to you in a weekly email for review and better retention. Readwise also provides tools to tag, note, and organize your highlights on a pleasant dashboard.
Notetaking
I find that taking notes on what I read forces me to distill the important points and aids in retention. There are so many cool notetaking apps that you might [almost] wish you were in school again. Do a Google image search on “beautiful notes” and you’ll be astounded by the students’ stunning work.
Personally, I get a lot of value out of physical handwriting instead of typing, so I love taking notes on my iPad with the Apple Pencil. For this, Goodnotes is awesome, though Noteability has similar features and high reviews as well. In both cases, handwriting can be converted to text.
Another notes app that’s getting a lot of attention lately is Roam Research. What sets it apart is that you can link notes, creating a web of information and exposing connections not usually found in traditional linear notetaking. Roam’s interface is not user friendly—you’re required to type commands or keyboard shortcuts—so I stopped using it. That said, Roam has gained a devoted and almost cult-like following in the short time it’s been in the marketplace. Alternatively, Evernote is an old standby, and newer Notion was originally built for notetaking.
Newsletter management
I’m a sucker for newsletters. I tend to subscribe to any and all that interest me, then unsubscribe if I don’t get value. But not only does that make for a crowded inbox, it can result in undisciplined distraction. Mailbrew organizes this chaos by emailing you just one daily digest of all your newsletters, while also calling your attention to links and trusted sources you care about. FOMO vanishes, and inbox zero is again possible.
Collecting and saving
Rabbit holes are a major internet reading hazard. Pocket has transformed my reading life by giving me a tool to dodge rabbit holes. Using Pocket’s Chrome extension, whenever I see an article that interests me, I click on the logo, and it’s saved to Pocket. The phone app is equally handy. Then, when I have a window of time dedicated to reading, coffee in hand, I can review all clipped articles together in Pocket’s pleasant interface. From there, I can also see the article on its original site if I want, or I can share it, tag it, or archive it. A wonderful unexpected benefit: Often what I clipped days ago is now irrelevant, so I just throw it away.
Our thoughts are largely a function of what we read. Which means we should always be upgrading what we consume. It’s not about reading more, it’s about reading better. And applying your reading to your work or life. So why not use these tools to upgrade from simply reading to power-reading?