On my desk there’s always a small stack of books. Some are half-read, some just cracked open, and a couple have pages dog-eared beyond saving. I’m the kind of reader who jumps between titles, chasing ideas rather than obsessing over finishing every last chapter.
A couple of years ago I got a Kindle, and it completely changed how I read. I started using the highlights feature religiously: every time I came across a sentence or idea worth keeping, I’d tap and save it. The bigger shift came when I connected my Kindle to Readwise. Now my highlights sync automatically, and instead of disappearing into the digital void, they resurface in my daily Readwise review, like little postcards from my past self.
Sometimes they land at exactly the right moment. One morning, a Readwise email brought back a line from Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon: “You can’t find your voice if you don’t use it.” That day I’d been hesitating over whether to share a new UI exploration on social media, worried it wasn’t polished enough. That one line pushed me to post, and it led to conversations and opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
I read a lot about creativity, product, business, productivity and self-development. But I don’t see reading as a race to the final page. I’d rather sample more perspectives and go deep only on the ideas that actually shift how I think or work. I’m not trying to be well-read so much as well-fed.
Start with a summary
Before I sink hours into a book, I’ll skim a good summary. Shortform and Blinkist are my go-tos. They’re a quick filter for whether the ideas are worth a deeper dive. If they are, I commit. If not, I’ve still taken something away without the time sink.
Spend time with the right ideas
When a book passes the test, I slow everything down. I’ll spend an hour or two with its core concepts, taking notes, mapping them to my own challenges and thinking about how to put them into practice.
Keeping ideas alive in Obsidian
Reading and highlighting are only half of it. The other half is making sure those ideas don’t fade away, and that’s where Obsidian comes in.
Readwise is my collection hub. It pulls in highlights from everywhere: books, articles, newsletters, Twitter threads, YouTube transcripts and my Kindle. Instead of leaving them scattered across platforms, it exports them straight into my Obsidian vault.
Every new highlight lands tagged “Readwise inbox”, ready for me to process. From there I connect it to related notes, link it into ongoing projects and fold it into my own thinking.
The best part is that they’re searchable and there when I need them. Last month, while designing a property investment dashboard, I pulled up a UX principle I’d saved from a book I read over a year earlier. It solved a layout problem I’d been stuck on.
That’s the whole point of the system, really. Not to read more, but to make sure nothing I’ve already learned gets lost.
