How do I read things on the internet

post by Vlad Sitalo (harcisis) · 2023-08-20T05:43:47.494Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

This is a link post for https://vlad.roam.garden/How-do-I-read-things-on-the-internet

Contents

  Workflow
  Discovery
  Reading Inbox
  Spaced Repetition in Roam
    How does this work:
  Listen to content in audio form first
    My new process is:
  In-depth reading
  Support structures
  Things I'm still unhappy about
  Conclusion
  Misc
    Display highlights & notes on the page when I visit it at a later point
    Failed experiments
None
2 comments

This is a linkpost - I recommend reading it at the original URL for a better reading UX

I have a somewhat elaborate process for reading things that I find on the web. I've been inspired to share it because after many a long iteration it finally feels adequate!

Reading things on the web seems like it should be easy, and yet - I've been failing at it for years! 🙀

In this article I explore my current workflow and challenges that made it into what it is today.

Workflow

The goal of the workflow is to: Enable you to reliably read things you want to read (and retain learnings from it) while minimizing effort and attention spent.

Discovery

This is part of the pipeline that received relatively less optimization attention, mostly by virtue of me suffering from abundance of content rather than scarcity. I include it primarily for completeness’ sake.

Some ways in which discovery is happening for me are as follows:

 

I'd love to see a Goodreads-style platform created for discovering and tracking articles.

Reading Inbox

When I encounter something that I think would be worth my attention - I save it to Readwise Reader

The first problem of reading things on the internet is that there are too many things out there one is tempted to read.

Even if you have a good curation process there is always too much content and too little time.

My first approach to managing the reading inbox was to keep things I want to read in endless browser tabs and breathe a sigh of relief when my browser crashed and all the open tabs disappeared

When I noticed that this process didn't actually achieve the goal of helping me to read things I wanted to read - I started pushing myself to add things to Pocket/Instapaper to have a clear backlog of things to read

The result wasn't amazing - I went from not reading things and having them eating into my attention to not reading them and forgetting about them.

Arguably it was an improvement, as attention is an important and scarce resource, but as the point of this workflow is to help me actually read things instead of collecting the things I wish I have read - it was a failure.

A better way to direct my limited attention was called for! And I found it in Spaced Repetition

Spaced Repetition in Roam

When a piece is added to Readwise Reader - a Roam "block" for it is automatically created

  • It's tagged with to/read and configured to become an SRS Card

The core pillar of directing my attention programmatically is Spaced Repetition - I use it extensively for inbox processing, engaging with content over time and developing habits.

How does this work:

It proved to be a good match for reading inbox handling. The above process has the effect of:

Listen to content in audio form first

For any new piece of content I want to engage with - listen to an audio version of it first

  • This is often sufficient to get what I was hoping for from a piece ✅
  • If not - it serves as a first-pass skim read before deeper engagement

This is one of the core pillars of my reading flow — I think reading things in audio form is underappreciated.

Audio form dramatically extends the range of environments and situations when it's convenient for you to read.

Read it once mindset

An important stepping stone to make audio form work well for me was overcoming “only read a given thing once” mindset.

What I mean by that is that when I originally started using TTS to read things - after listening to an article - I felt like "I read this, I'm done with it an and don't need to engage with it anymore".

And while it's actually true for many types of content (opinion pieces, news articles, fiction) - I found it that for deeper, more technical pieces - just listening to something once, often wasn't quite satisfactory. I wanted to highlight paragraphs, add notes, play with presented models.

As a consequence I was avoiding listening to all content as I had a vague sense of unease "but what if it's a piece I want to engage deeper with and by listening to it, I'd lose an opportunity to derive full benefit from it".

Eventually I realized that it was silly 🙃

My new process is:

Spaced Repetition reminds me to engage with the piece until I mark it as fully processed

I've been previously using a custom automation setup that allowed me to create a podcast feed of transcribed articles from things saved to Instapaper (https://github.com/Stvad/pollycast/ ).

I've since transitioned to mostly using Readwise Reader TTS.

The reason for having custom setup was a better UX for playing audio inside the podcast apps and a better voice quality. Reader TTS got both of those things to a "good enough" stage.

In-depth reading

For items that survived this far in the pipeline - I'll read them at a designated reading time (usually)

I do most of my reading on an iPad and use Readwise Reader or Hypothes.is for annotation purposes.

Highlights and notes sync to Readwise, then to Roam. The next day I review them in Roam, converting notes that I want to engage with more into SRS items for ongoing review.

Support structures

Some things that I found helpful to make focused reading something that I do reliably and in a productive way

Incorporate “focused reading time” to be a stable part of my daily routine

Getting an iPad and using it as my primary reading device

Beeminder was very useful as a way to introduce daily reading habit

Switch in mindset around listening to a TTS version of an article as necessarily a final step in the process to potentially an intermediate step of pipeline

Things I'm still unhappy about

Taking notes alongside reading

Having the SRS around what should I read to be in an external app (Roam) is a bit awkward

Conclusion

Overall I'm finally happy with this workflow, which prompts me to share it 🙂.

I imagine some of its aspects are peculiar to how I interact with the information out there. But I hope that people can adopt chunks of the workflow that work well for their peculiarities. And that if you recognize some of the struggles I went through in yourself - you may find my solutions useful.

If you do give it a try or if you have your own peculiar ways of interacting with the information you find on the internet - I'd be curious to know

Misc

More things I do or have tried around reading

Display highlights & notes on the page when I visit it at a later point

When I revisit a web page that I've previously read - I want to be able to see how I have interacted with it - see highlights I've made, notes I've taken etc.

There are several tools that afford for that, but I haven't found a perfect solution so far.

Failed experiments

I experimented with improving iPad web annotation UX

spritz speed reading

Copying things into Roam and reading them there

Kindle

2 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by papetoast · 2023-08-21T12:46:39.216Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Meta: The text in your website is too cluttered that I found reading in LW easier, something about the indentation and the small paragraph spacing

Replies from: harcisis
↑ comment by Vlad Sitalo (harcisis) · 2023-08-21T22:46:03.917Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

👌 will iterate on it!