Once you connect your Evernote account to Readwise, all your digital highlights - including Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, and Instapaper - will be constantly automatically updated to Evernote, enabling a variety of different workflows! Let's now review my simpler reading system which leverages both Readwise and the ever popular note-taking application Evernote.

A Step-By-Step Guide How to Synchronize Your Highlights to Evernote The reading systems of nonfiction authors are typically powerful, but for most readers - who are not professional writers - they're generally a little too cumbersone. Taylor Pearson does something similar on his website, but instead of rating each book, he organizes them by categories such as psychology, self-help, and history. For example, Derek Sivers posts hundreds of book summaries with ratings from 1 to 10 on his personal website. There's also a growing number of authors that publish some version of their book notes online.

(This system is also often called a Commonplace Book.) It's a complex, category-based analog system where he collects noteworthy passages, ideas, and insights from the books he's read for use later. In order to get the most out of reading, nonfiction authors almost always develop external systems for categorizing and revisiting what they read.įor example, the bestselling author Ryan Holiday uses a notecard system to leverage his reading. The Systems Authors Use to Remember What They Readīefore I dive into my reading system with Readwise and Evernote, it might be helpful to explore what a 'reading system' actually is.įor this, we can look to nonfiction authors.īy the very nature of their work, nonfiction authors must read a lot. And if you're an Evernote user, you can create a powerful system by integrating your existing Evernote account with Readwise. This is the key to maximizing your return on time invested in all this reading.įortunately, we can now leverage technology to help us remember significantly more of what we read. You need a system - a system to help you organize and remember all the important ideas and concepts you've read about. With the massive amounts of content we're consuming these days, how do you ensure reading is not a fleeting moment of insight, soon to be forgetten? 'I look at books as investments in a future of learning rather than a fleeting moment of insight, soon to be forgotten.'

Or as Kevan Lee put it in this excellent Buffer post: I'm investing capital today (time) in the skills and knowledge (dividends) I want tomorrow. Why? Because I view reading as an investment in myself.

If you're anything like me, you take reading seriously.

Evernote export all the notes