Digital Reading
If you’re like me and enjoy reading web articles, RSS feeds, and blogs often, you need to develop a good workflow to sort, comment on, and retain what you’ve read. Unlike with books, I have many more options to work directly with what I’ve read digitally. And I can read whenever and wherever I want. On the train with my smartphone, on the couch with my tablet, at my desk with my laptop.
The first step is to find articles that are worth reading. My well-maintained RSS-Feedly and a few Google Alerts reliably take care of this. Additionally, there are social media, Medium, newsletters, and other sources where important articles frequently appear.
Usually, I don’t have time to read immediately. I see the article and save it for later. For years, Pocket has been serving me well here. The platform is always accessible everywhere, whether through an app, browser extensions, or sharing extensions. Since Pocket has been part of Mozilla for several years, the technology is directly integrated into the Firefox browser. A popular alternative to Pocket is Instapaper, which works just as well.
2-3 times a day, I go through this collection and read concentratedly. Articles that I can simply acknowledge are then done. If necessary, I make a note in Notion or create a bookmark.
Articles that I want to process more intensively go into a separate reading list. From this, I pick up an article now and then, read, highlight, comment, and add my thoughts, usually also in Notion. I know: I’ll be able to do something with this article someday, whether in projects, communication, or scientific work.
It Matters
I’ve been maintaining this reading list for some time in the Matter app. The app was in a closed preview for a long time. It’s been in public beta for a few days now. Matter does – simply put – almost everything better than Pocket and Instapaper. This is because both Pocket and Instapaper have stagnated in recent years. Occasionally there was a maintenance update, but nothing really moved anymore. This is a shame, because digital reading is actually becoming more and more important, and both apps could have expanded their market position.
So now there are challengers. Matter accepts articles via sharing and browser extensions. This is, by the way, the only reason why I still use Pocket as described above: Matter, as a newcomer, simply doesn’t yet offer the widespread distribution and connection to other apps. But that will surely come, and then I can switch off Pocket.
Back to Matter: here too, all saved articles first land in a queue. From there, I open the articles in a special reading view that filters out ads and other clutter. In this view, I can now highlight texts and also comment on them right away. If desired, I can also have the text read aloud to me – currently, however, this only works for English texts.
I can tag articles and file them in different folders. For me, after reading, everything simply moves into the archive, which I can easily search and view. All highlights and comments are synchronized with Notion in the background, so that I can continue working with my notes there in the final phase of processing.
But Matter is not just a reader, it’s also a source. I can follow my favorite authors directly in Matter and get their latest articles directly in my inbox. In return, I can post my read articles along with my comments in Matter. Other Matter users can thus read along with me.
Matter is just the Beginning
With Matter, I can finally progress in my digital reading workflow. The app is reliable, fast, and offers me all the functions I need. This is highly welcome, especially since both Pocket and Instapaper have shown no development in recent years.
However, Matter will soon face competition again. And that’s from Readwise. This is also a tool that I’m already using. It helps me collect my notes from various other digital reading sources such as e-books, PDFs, Medium, or Hypothesis directly in one tool and transfer them to Notion. I have already described this process in a post.
Recently, Readwise has announced that they will also offer a new reader mode. In a blog post, the motivation and features are described in detail. As soon as the tool is available, I will of course report on it here again.
