We’re here at the Publishing blog, so naturally we’re more concerned with all the steps needed to make content readable. Today, however, we’re jumping to the other side and focusing on reading. Reading on a screen, to be precise.
Knowledge Work Means: Reading and Processing
As a knowledge worker, I read a lot, exclusively digitally for several years now. I know that many people need the tactile experience of paper. That’s completely fine with me, but I tick differently. When I read, I want to process what I’ve read immediately. I want to clip out the most important statements from the text, simplify the structure of the text, link with other texts, summarize, simplify. In short: I want to work with the content right away.
For me, this doesn’t work with printed books. Sure, I can take notes. Directly in the book or on Post-Its or in a notebook. But that’s no use to me because I have to rewrite it all later. I lose too much time that way.
That’s why I read exclusively digitally. Primarily on the iPad. I use Kindle books from Amazon and e-books from Apple. Plus, of course, PDFs time and again and often articles directly in the browser or via my RSS feed.
In all these media, I can make color markings and notes. E-books and PDFs have good note-taking tools, some even in conjunction with the Pencil – so I can have handwritten notes directly converted to text. Annotating websites is a bit more difficult. But you can use Pocket Premium, for example, and save websites there for later processing. I also like to use the universal annotation tool Hypothesis to make notes on the web.
Notes are Made – and Now What?
So I’ve made my notes. What now? As mentioned at the beginning, the goal is to work further with these notes. For example, I maintain an extensive Second Brain in Notion. This is my very personal notebook/wiki/link board. So how do I get my notes in there?
The old way: after reading, I export the notes from the sources and import them into Notion. It works, but it’s a bit cumbersome. Still faster than typing up handwritten notes. And to my knowledge, it hasn’t been possible any other way in recent years.
The new way: Readwise. For some time now, there’s been a tool that does exactly this work for me. The tool is brilliant. I just have to connect it to my sources and it automatically pulls out all my notes and markings. And even better: it automatically forwards them to Notion. On request, also to Evernote or Roam, but for me, the sync with Notion is a blessing. This way, all my notes automatically end up in my Second Brain, where I can further use, enrich, and link them.
Readwise Synchronizes Everything
The cool thing about this solution is that it doesn’t matter where I make notes. Readwise can handle everything.
- Readwise monitors my Kindle app and my Books app on iOS / OSX. Everything I annotate there ends up in Readwise and then in Notion.
- In Readwise, I can import PDFs and it extracts all comments for me. And with the PDF workflow, Pandora’s box opens up: emails, images, screenshots, websites, … I just convert it to a PDF and then make my notes. Boom, everything lands in the Second Brain.
- I continue to comment on websites with Pocket or Hypothesis. Both tools can be linked to Readwise. All my comments end up in Readwise and thus in Notion. In Firefox and Chrome, I can also use the Readwise extension, which simplifies things even more. This even works on mobile, as I have a sharing extension to Readwise there.
- If I occasionally read a physical book, I use the Readwise app, with which I photograph text passages and images from books and comment on them directly on my smartphone. The app naturally masters OCR, recognizing the text in the photos. Works on Android and iOS.
But That’s not All
Readwise can do even more. It allows me to tag the highlights and notes in the sources. I can add keywords and categories to a note, but I can also use it to preserve the structure of the texts in the notes. If I want to indicate which chapter the notes belong to in a Kindle book, I simply highlight the heading (making it a note itself) and tag it with .h1 – when processing further, this note then becomes a heading in my notes. Nerdy, but extremely practical once you get the hang of it.
Readwise also saves the backlink to each note when possible. So at the end, in Notion, I can simply click on the attached link for a note and automatically return to the source of my annotation in the Kindle app.
And then there’s the flashcard function: Haeme makes his flashcards with Repetico, I make them with Readwise. Or rather, I have them made for me. Readwise regularly sends me emails with a number of notes upon request. I can then work through them Tinder-style. I still know it, I don’t know it anymore, I want to look at it again later. Perfect for commuting: This way I can easily and regularly activate and keep my Second Brain in motion.
In Short: I’m Impressed
Readwise is my app discovery of the last year! My digital reading workflow is now perfect and makes me more productive than ever. Readwise is a subscription app, I pay around 100 francs per year. Not too much for a great app that is actively being developed and saves me a lot, lot, lot of time in my daily life.
