Books

I primarily read non-fiction books on my Kindle. Although I find reading a paper book more enjoyable, my Kindle makes it easier to highlight passages and make notes. I then sync these with Readwise. Readwise sends me a random selection of 15 of these passages/notes daily. Because I see them again, I better remember what I have read and found important.

When I come across a book that seems interesting, I save it to my Goodreads 'want to read' list. Then, when it's time to start a new book, I check this list and choose the book that appeals to me the most at that moment.

It can happen that I choose a book that ultimately doesn't suit me, and I start to dislike reading it. Therefore, I follow this rule of thumb by Ryan Holiday:

The rule I like is ‘one hundred pages minus your age.’ Say you’re 30 years old—if a book hasn’t captivated you by page 70, stop reading it. So as you age, you have less time to endure crap.

Articles

I follow various RSS Feeds with Feedly. An RSS Feed offers a list of recent articles or news items from a blog or website. This usually includes a title and summary of the article with an accompanying link. In some cases, the entire article is shown in the RSS Feed. Feedly gives you a nice overview of all the RSS Feeds you follow so you can see exactly which articles or news items you haven't read or seen yet. This way you don't miss anything, unlike when you periodically check a website to see if there's something new.

I follow many websites and blogs (including my guilty pleasure: football news) but below I highlight three sources where I get the most interesting articles:

1. Hacker News (HN)
   This site has existed since 2007 and was one of the first platforms where users could post links to articles, blogs, websites, videos, tutorials, etc. Other visitors can then indicate if they also find it interesting by awarding karma to the link. The RSS Feed I follow from HN only shows articles with more than 100 karma points. This results in a fascinating mix of articles that, contrary to the site's name, cover technology, life hacks, productivity, history, philosophy, and world events.
2. Ryan Holiday
   This American author regularly posts articles with useful insights mainly based on Stoicism.
3. Blog of Ernst-Jan Pfauth
   A bit like the Dutch Ryan Holiday. Every blog post he writes has at least one paragraph that I highlight.

When I come across an article in one of my feeds that I want to read, I send it to my 'Reader'. This is a (web)application from the same makers as the aforementioned Readwise. 

The advantage of this is that I have all the articles to read in one place, I can track my progress of a read article, and all articles are shown in an easy-to-read format. You have a lot of control over how an article should be displayed. I like to read the articles in dark mode.

You can also make markings and notes in Reader that are then included in my daily Readwise emails. 

How and what do you read?

I'm curious! Let me know by leaving a comment below.