Consume with intention.

How Reader Apps help you Consume Less and Better Content.

Do you ever pick up your phone only to somehow end up on YouTube? Or Twitter? Or somewhere else you didn’t intend to go?

Then before you know it, an hour has passed and you are wondering why you picked your phone up in the first place.

This used to happen to me.
Like. A lot.
It was a problem.

So I set out to turn my devices into useful tools again.

After years of experimenting I have found a setup that actually works. Not just in the short run, but for a sustained period of time.

A large part of the change happened when I started seriously using a so called “read-it-later” app. And by seriously I mean I started to consume content exclusively through it.
I had never really paid much attention to these apps. I always thought of them as fancy bookmarking tools.

The app I use is called Reader.
It’s by the Readwise team. It’s great.

But this isn’t about a specific app.
From Instapaper to Pocket, there are plenty of good one out there, serving the same purpose.

My time spent on news and social media sites took a drastic nose dive. My YouTube watch time more than halved.

But less watch-time is only half the story.

I don’t just consume less content than I used to.
I consume better content.

The kind of stuff you will actually remember. Those videos and articles that don’t leave you feeling empty.

Let me explain.

• A read-it later app is an app where you can save any piece of content for later consumption.
• You can organise them in-app, in any way you want.
• The content is saved to the app with a uniform formatting without surrounding links.

You are curating content for later consumption.
Pretty simple.

But these three points actually have massive impact.

Separating curation and Consumption is something I severely underestimated before using the app.

But actually..

It’s the FOMO killer.

The way a lot of us operate on the internet is as follows.
You come across something that sparks your interest and you check it out immediately.

And that makes sense.
After all feeds move fast. If we don’t click now, it might be hard to find later. Recommendations you see now will no longer be there when you come back. On YouTube a simple reload can mean I won’t find those recommendations anymore.

We are training ourselves to react to headlines and thumbnails by clicking and consuming. We are building a bad habit which doesn’t put us in control.

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Now what happens if we save that piece of content for later?

We are separating the act of curation from the act of consumption.

We are acting as curators for our later selves.
All the subconscious worries about missing out: pacified.
It’s saved.

You can revisit at any time and it will be waiting for you.
Later.
For now you can keep directing your attention to what you actually wanted to do.

It’s kinda like how writing down your thoughts or to do’s help to get them off your mind.

This too is habit building.

We are training ourselves to act with intent instead of following impulses.

Incredibly useful in our day and age.
Our attention becomes less vulnerable to being hijacked.

And it really is like a hijacking.

This became painfully obvious to me when I looked at my curated list for the first time.

Half the stuff on the list.. isn’t actually that interesting.
Some items will stand out as worth taking a look at. But a lot of it is just like filler content.

This really surprised me at first but it makes sense.

We make choices on a relative basis.

An article may look like a compelling read when it’s sitting next to stuff you don’t really care about.
But place it next to twenty articles you have at least some interest in and it may not stick out as much anymore.

The bar is simply higher when comparing content to other things you care about.

The really good content will still make the cut.
But most of the stuff you save will probably go ignored.

Luckily these apps make it easy to archive the stuff you already clicked on or won’t read at all.

You can also tag and categorise your content.
This is especially useful when you are saving something for a specific project.

All this helps you to pay attention to the things you really care about.

A focussed experience.

When you open an article or a video the content is front and centre.

No ads.
No recommendation feed.

Just cleanly, uniformly formatted content.

What’s best about this is that anything can be highlighted. This is probably my favourite feature. You can highlight and add notes to phrases which stand out or are important to you.

These highlights are easy to find and organise.
They can be tagged, searched and exported.
This helps you engage with the content actively, remember what matters and form connections.

My library of highlights has become an invaluable source for many of my projects. Not to mention a place to revisit things that made me laugh.

For all these reasons I now only consume content inside Reader app. It’s really that good. (I also started blocking YouTube’s player in my browser so I won’t get carried away — but that’s another story).

The wider internet is only for finding stuff.

Take care of yourselves.
B