(2015-11-16) Forte ReadItLater Apps

Tiago Forte on ReadItLater apps.

*At the end of 2014 I received an email informing me that I had read over a million words in the ‘read it later’ app Pocket over the course of the year... it represents 22 books’-worth of long-form reading that would not have happened without a system in place.

The ability to read is becoming a source of competitive advantage in the world. I’m not talking about basic literacy. What has become exceedingly scarce (and therefore, valuable) is the physical, emotional, attentional, and mental capability to sit quietly and direct focused attention for sustained periods of time.

There are a lot of ways we could talk about to improve the quality of the information you consume. But I want to focus now on the two that ReadItLater apps can help with:

• Increasing consumption of Long Form content (which is presumably more substantive)
• Better filtering

Increasing Consumption of Long-Form Content: Let’s look at the 4 main barriers to consuming long-form content, and the affordances that Read It Later apps use to overcome them:

1. App performance
2. Matching content with your Context: Pocket gives reading some of this stimulatory pleasure by laying out your list in a pleasing, magazine-style layout (at left). Not only is it generally attractive, but it gives you that same magazine-flipping pleasure of engaging with something that interests you right in that moment.
3. Asynchronous reading: There is something deeply, deeply unsatisfying about repeatedly starting something and not finishing it... Read It Later apps address this by simply saving your progress in a given article, allowing you to pick back up at a different time.
4. Focus: "Why don’t I just use Evernote?" The last thing you want to see when you (finally!) have time to read is the thousands of notes you’ve collected from every corner of the universe.

Better filtering: Every time I come across something I may want to read/watch, I’m totally allowed to. No limits! The only requirement is I have to save it to Pocket, and then choose to consume it at a later time... not only am I saving time and preserving focus by batch processing both the collection and the consumption of new content, I’m time-shifting the curation process to a time better suited for reading, and (most critically) removed from the temptations, stresses, and biopsychosocial hooks that first lured me in... I regularly eliminate 1/3 of my list before reading.

Progress Traps and Paradigms

What would it look like instead to solve problems (and explore opportunities) in a way that gets better the faster we go?

Increasingly, the only metric that will matter in your journey of personal growth will be ROL: Rate-of-Learning.

Ideas are high Leverage agents. They become more so when arranged in highly cross-referenced (Associative) networks. The only tool we have available that is capable of both creating and accessing these networks on demand is the human brain.

I lied before. There is one form of leverage even more powerful than the initial assumptions and paradigms that inform a system’s development: the ability to transcend paradigms.

If no Paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

The amazing thing about ideas is that it takes zero time for one to change your paradigm. It happens in time, but takes no time... And that is the secret power of ReadItLater apps. *