My New Reading Workflow

I absolutely love reading. Lately, a few things have been happening:

• I’ve been pretty busy, which has stopped me from feeling like I could really dig into something long-form
• I’ve been looking at a screen too much, so my eyes have been tired at times when I might otherwise read something on my phone
• My phone has offered too many distractions and I felt like I wasn’t fully engaging with what I was reading.
• My unread articles in Pocket had been piling up to the point where it started to feel silly to save them.

Recently, I discovered an app, https://p2k.co, and revamped my workflow in a way that is absolutely delightful to me. I’ve read hundreds of articles, I feel better before bed, my eyes have gotten a break, and I’ve felt better about engaging with things.

So, here’s what I do now!

My Current Short-form Reading Process

• All my incoming RSS Feeds and newsletters come into Feedly, which I happily pay for.
• Feedly integrates with Pocket. When I see an article I want to save, I click a button on the article to save it to Pocket. I tag it with “kindle” if I know I’ll want to read it on my Kindle.
• I scan/skim through articles in Pocket. Where it seems I want to read it in a more relaxed / focused space and it’s possible to do so, I tag the article with “kindle”.
• I have a process set up in P2K (which stands for Pocket to Kindle). Every day, it bundles up 10 random Pocket saves that are tagged “kindle”, creates a book, and sends it to my Kindle. It then archives those items in Pocket. (All of this is configurable to user preferences.)
• As the opportunity presents itself, I read the articles on my Kindle. I take notes and highlights, just as I would in a normal Kindle book.
• I review the notes occasionally and create tasks if I want to.

This process has brought me so much joy in the few weeks I’ve been using it. I’m reading more, looking at my phone less, and feeling better about reading things I save. It energized me to go through literal years of saved articles in Pocket. I have several 10-article books’ worth of content to get through at a given time. Forcing myself to read the articles in order like a book has been a great way to get my brain to slow down and stop trying to skim everything. And the random nature of the process means that I get a variety of content from a long time range, which I appreciate.

If you like reading as much as I do, I hope this might delight you as well. How do you set up your reading flow? Let me know in the comments!