“Think it not enough to furnish this Store-house of the Mind with good Thoughts, but lay them up there in Order, digested or ranged under proper Subjects or Classes. That whatever Subject you have Occasion to think or talk upon you may have recourse immediately to a good Thought, which you heretofore laid up there under that Subject. So that the very Mention of the Subject may bring the Thought to hand; by which means you will carry a regular Common Place-Book in your Memory.”
John Mason (written in 1745), as quoted in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
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“I had already figured out the core lesson of being a journalist—read before you write.”
– Seymour Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir
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I am grateful that I do not need to create my own individual systems for collecting and storing interesting ideas.
All my reading (via Kindle) passes through the filter of Readwise.
All my highlights are captured, stored and are automatically organised and searchable.
I don’t have to lift a finger. Well one finger, to tap on the search bar.
I simply read, highlight, annotate. Readwise takes care of all the admin.
A beautiful system.
Thankyou Readwise for automatically making me a super organised reader.
How many hours has this saved me?
Or a more important question is: would I even bother to organise my notes without Readwise?
The evidence of a lifetime of sparsely used notebooks says no.
So this one app has transformed me from a prolific, yet disorganised, reader into a super organised reader with access to over 10,000 (and counting!) ideas I have found in books.
My own private coomonplace book, library, encyclopaedia.
This post was made possible by Readwise making instantly available my highlight of the opening quote found in Steven Johnson’s excellent book.
I read so that I can write.
Sometimes I need a little help remembering what I have read.
All writing is my own.
Conversations With Quotations 