I like reading. Love it.

Reading for me is about working through many different documents, email, web pages or apps that I might have that toss me a myriad of material to check through.

But the ‘backbone’ of my reading, is always to be reading a book or two.

I always have two books on the go. One is a non-fiction book and the other is a fiction book and I move freely between them both as I go through my day or week.

Taking full advantage of technology and trying to utilise every hour of my day, I have also learned how to move freely between my different reading tools without stressing out.

I used to be very much focused on buying a paperback book and then reading that, and that is still a great thing to do. However, I have upped my game on how I use time, technology and tracking.

I will teach each type of book separately here, but I will start with all that other reading material that my routines muster. 

What I am sharing is a further refinement of a previous way of working.

So first things first, I am no longer worried about just deleting stuff. 

I have a lot of emails coming into my inbox and I used to try a whole system of flagging for later or trying to save into a well-structured folder hierarchy.

Now I just delete and scan, delete and scan… if something catches my eye, then I will read it there and then, or dump into my to-read folder. I no longer fret about what I delete. It’s gone. Who knows what I missed, but if I was meant to read it… it will find a way back to me.

I do the same with my ‘read later’ box. Later in the day or in the evening, I scan and delete and only keep the very few things that I might reference on some other day. But that is few and far between.

For my fiction book. That’s very straight forward. I read on my kindle, my kindle app, my kindle app on my iPhone, my iPad or Mac. I am clear, it is not about the medium or the tool that I am reading on… it is about the words. So, I drop off and pick up as and when I go through the day. Five minutes here, an hour there. I don’t highlight much in a fiction book, it is very much about the enjoyment of the words on the page. I can read at pace, speed readings sections and on other parts, I spend the time thoroughly savouring every detail. It depends on the book.

The non-fiction book has more meat in the consumption. I read the book knowing what I want to get out of it and I take my time to read, absorb and have a series of highlighting that I use to prioritise what I want to have a long-time takeaway.

I have shared before what I do to get the best from my reading so have a read of this previous post…

‘How I learned to read better’ – see the link directly below

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I have further refined this. The changes I have made have helped me get even more from my non-fiction book reading and it is down to utilising my MacBook.

I was not big on using my MacBook for anything to do with reading other than to take notes, write out some detail and shop for some new books online.

However, I have two great enhancements.

However, I have two great enhancements.

Two new discoveries on how can use more technology to improve my productivity

The first one is using the Kindle app on my MacBook. This allows me to simultaneously open up a highlight and then write my note out below the highlight. Once I go through my highlights and quickly refresh my thoughts and capture notes where I see the need so that I can obtain deeper learning. I can then email my notes, which are much tighter and in better logical order, to my inbox.

From there I can then take them onto my second enhancement. This is something I recommend to anyone that is focused on learning or creating and wishes to keep a database like control of their information.

The recommendation is to use the web-based app at – Notion.com

Learning Notion doesn’t take long and it is very user friendly. Immediately you can have a very clear and concise way of gathering and documenting information and storing it in a way that makes great sense to you and is easily unearthed at a later date.

Go get this app now, you will not regret this.

Also, think, how you can best use all of your tools to increase satisfaction and productivity.

And when you find something great, share it.

Show others…

Nothing beats sharing, learning with others and knowing that you might just help someone make a difference in their day.

Have a great day.

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