How I Use Kindle Highlighting to Learn More Effectively

I use Kindle high­light­ing to learn more effect­iv­ely.

To keep up with everything PR and the ever-chan­ging media land­scape, I’ve devised a soft­ware eco­sys­tem to help me learn and put new insights to use.

I like this sys­tem because I don’t have to com­mit any­thing to memory at those exact moments when I’m stum­bling across some­thing useful. 

Alas, the sys­tem does­n’t help me remem­ber everything I read: it encour­ages me to read more and util­ise everything I want to know and understand.

The secret sauce? Highlight notes.

Maybe this sys­tem could inspire you to stay ahead, too.

The Setup: The Everything PR System

The sys­tem I use to stay on top of everything PR makes good use of a few pop­u­lar ser­vices that are easy to access for every­one. However, it does come with a few sub­scrip­tion fees to get the needed functionality.

Also, it’s worth not­ing that every­one is dif­fer­ent. I learn by tak­ing notes and then using those notes cre­at­ively myself. You might learn differently.

While this sys­tem would work for any know­ledge-intens­ive top­ic and not just PR, it’s also worth con­sid­er­ing that it’s per­haps most use­ful for experts and thought leaders.

Step 1: Reading Everywhere and Always

I try to read every­where and always. Before fall­ing asleep. In cafés. In the metro. On busses and trains. When eat­ing lunch solo. And so on.

Whenever I feel like read­ing, I don’t want to begin search­ing around for some­thing to read. I want some­thing worth read­ing ready to go.

To always have some­thing to read in a con­trolled envir­on­ment, I use a few spe­cif­ic tools:

My E‑Reader: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is my e‑reader of choice. Of course, any e‑reader will do, but I recom­mend a Kindle spe­cific­ally for the sync options (more on this below).

So, how do I super­charge my e‑reader?

The key is, of course, to find and read the right books for your needs. I focus on books that are use­ful for PR, along­side some fic­tion and books on my interest and hobbies. 

I’ve chosen the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite as my e‑reader. I enjoy the back­lit screen, and the chan­ging col­our tem­per­at­ure paired with 8GB stor­age is enough for my e‑book needs. There are more expens­ive altern­at­ives with wire­less char­ging, sim-card sup­port, and auto-light­ing, but this ver­sion is good enough for my needs. ¹Constantly buy­ing and read­ing new books can become expens­ive, but I’ve always con­sidered good books a worthy invest­ment.

My RSS Reader: Feedly Pro+

I use Feedly Pro+ on my smart­phone to fol­low care­fully cur­ated RSS feeds from sources regard­ing PR, mar­ket­ing, social media, big data, busi­ness etc.

So, how do I super­charge my RSS reader? 

I’m adam­ant about revis­ing my RSS sources at least once every month. My goal is to have my RSS read­er only pull in high-qual­ity art­icles I’m highly inter­ested in reading.

Another way to super­charge your RSS read­er is to cat­egor­ise your feeds by trend. If you want to stay updated on machine learn­ing, cre­ate a tag and find a source that will give you the latest updates weekly. Via this struc­ture, you could keep tabs on 100+ spe­cif­ic trends. ²I’ve con­sidered shar­ing my RSS feeds on Doctor Spin. However, I also use these feeds to keep up with my cli­ents. And their interests aren’t mine to share pub­licly. In my book, all con­fid­en­ti­al­ity … Continue read­ing

You can also get cre­at­ive with RSS feeds by using ser­vices like Google Alerts and oth­er search-based feeds.

The Feedly Pro+ plan will set you back $8 per month, but I’ve opted for this plan for sev­er­al reas­ons, using high­lights being the main one. But this plan also allows me to build my RSS feeds, a fea­ture that I use to apply fil­ters to spe­cif­ic feeds with too much noise.

I also use Feedly Pro+ to fol­low news­let­ters to put less “stress” on my inbox and instead send myself a cur­ated news­let­ter with all the best new con­tent.

My Save-for-Later: Pocket Premium

I use Pocket for sav­ing read-later articles.

So, how do I super­charge my saved-for-later list? 

With so much to read online, and so many art­icles being shared around my social media feeds, I try to only for­ward epic con­tent. To para­phrase Derek Sivers—“it’s either hell yeah or no.”

The Pocket Premium plan costs $4,99 per month. I sub­scribe to this plan to get unlim­ited high­lights and a per­man­ent lib­rary of everything I save.

Step 2: The Highlighting Habit

I high­light the rel­ev­ant pas­sages as soon as I find any­thing worth know­ing and remem­ber­ing. Kindle, Feedly Pro, and Pocket all have in-app func­tion­al­ity for mak­ing such highlights.

Highlighting is a reward­ing habit. It’s like stum­bling across valu­able gems and pick­ing them up. A help­ful book or art­icle provides me with many not­able highlights.

My Highlight Aggregator: Readwise

Enter the magic: Readwise.

I use Readwise to auto­mat­ic­ally pull all high­lights from Kindle, Feedly Pro, and Pocket. I aver­aged 5,6 high­lights per day dur­ing 2021 — which equals 2,000+ high­lights per year! But that’s not the end of it.

Readwise will then do two more things for me. Once every day, it sends me an email with a ran­dom selec­tion of high­lights to my inbox for review. This is the best news­let­ter in my inbox by far.

The second thing Readwise does is push all my high­lights into my “second brain” — Notion. 

Readwise is a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that costs $7,99 per month.

Step 3: Putting the Knowledge To Use

My Content Management System: Notion

Notion is a note-tak­ing tool with stream­lined data­base func­tions and much user free­dom. ³To make the most out of using Notion, I recom­mend Ali Abdaal’s YouTube chan­nel on per­son­al pro­ductiv­ity.

Since Notion is my everything-online tool, I spend much of my work­ing hours in Notion. I use it for plan­ning, remem­ber­ing, review­ing, cre­at­ing etc. So, access­ing a wealth of care­fully cur­ated high­lights of pure know­ledge with­in my online work­space is fantastic.

I use the high­lights in Notion to “super­charge” blog art­icles, online courses, and social media con­tent. I also love to cas­u­ally review these high­lights and tag them to use them for build­ing new habits, set­ting goals, and mak­ing changes to my life in general.

Despite being the most potent tool in this sys­tem, Notion is free for single users.

Total Cost: The Everything PR System

The total monthly cost for this soft­ware eco­sys­tem is $20,98 (not includ­ing the price of new books, an e‑reader, and a smartphone). 

It adds up using vari­ous sub­scrip­tion stream­ing ser­vices, premi­um online mar­ket­ing, and web­site tools.

But I find this sys­tem to be a worthy invest­ment. I work as an expert con­sult­ant, speak­er, con­tent cre­at­or, and edu­cat­or in a fast-paced envir­on­ment. I need to keep my PR know­ledge updated and fresh. And I find learn­ing to be one of life’s greatest pleasures.

PR Resource: Pavlov’s Inbox

Pavlov’s Inbox

Pavlov’s Inbox is an email sys­tem built around the idea that your inbox prob­lems can­not be solved by more effi­ciently pro­cessing email (e.g. Inbox Zero and sim­il­ar sys­tems). Such sys­tems will only reward unfa­vour­able sender behaviours.

Pavlov’s Inbox sys­tem assumes that you can influ­ence the beha­viours of those send­ing you emails — through conditioning.

• Reward email senders you favour by reply­ing swiftly and doing as much work as possible.
• Punish email senders you loathe by politely push­ing work back to where it came from.

Pavlov’s Inbox sys­tem is based on psy­cho­lo­gic­al ideas on how to reward and pun­ish email beha­viours in a socially viable man­ner (being rude as “pun­ish­ment” might only be det­ri­ment­al to your pro­fes­sion­al repu­ta­tion).

The oper­at­ing prin­ciple of Pavlov’s Inbox is to a) reward favour­able types of emails by min­im­ising the amount of work required by the sender and b) pun­ish unfa­vour­able emails by max­im­ising the amount of work required by the sender.

Learn more: Pavlov’s Inbox: The Psychological Way to Tame Your Email

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