We’re Collectors of Ideas—But Few of Us Revisit Them
We’ve become digital hoarders of ideas. We highlight, clip, and save everything—but rarely revisit what we’ve collected.
Productivity writers like Austin Kleon encourage it:
“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”
Steal Like an Artist
Over time, we save vast amounts of data in our PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) databases.
But there’s a hidden cost. Most of us never or rarely look back at what we’ve saved.
I ran into this problem myself.
Then I discovered a tool that changed everything about how I review and use what I read.
It helps me remember ideas I thought were worth saving and spurs new insights and creativity.
Want to hear more?
Enter Readwise: A Better Way to Remember
The Readwise service helps me automatically and regularly review my stored highlights.
Whenever I read anything in a book, web article, blog, or newsletter that I think is worth saving, I’ll highlight it and sync it to my Readwise database.
The Readwise service stores all my highlighted ideas in its database and then regularly reminds me of them.
Every morning when I open the Readwise app on my iPad (as a part of my morning routine), I’m presented with twenty random highlights.
What Makes Readwise Different
I use Readwise because of it’s many benefits:
1. Automatically Save Highlights From Anywhere
When I read books on the Kindle app on my iPad, I’ll highlight ideas I deem valuable and later (about once a week) hit a button in the Readwise app to sync them.
Or highlight material (PDFs, blog posts, newsletters) in Readwise Reader, and it will automatically sync it to my Readwise database.
Readwise gathers my highlights from many sources, including Apple Books, Instapaper, and Kindle—keeping everything in one searchable place. It will even save highlights made in paper books, but the process is more complicated than using an electronic book.
2. Spark Serendipity and Creative Insight
Every morning, Readwise presents me with 20 randomly selected highlights.
I often find that these spark my thinking and prompt a blog idea when they show up in Readwise—not when I first read them.
That’s because there are different circumstances now than when I initially saved the highlight. I’ve got new projects underway, new interests, and I’ve changed.
I look forward every morning with anticipation to see what highlights Readwise will send me, and what new insights I’ll gain when I review them.
3. Search (or Chat) Your Knowledge With Ease
Within Readwise, I can conduct a term search or browse highlights within a specific book or article.
I can also utilize the new Readwise AI Chat, where I can ask questions about my highlights and receive answers. It examines the highlight database, lists relevant highlights, shows me the sources, and is typically much more comprehensive than a word search or tagging, as it looks for both concepts and terms.
I often conduct a Readwise AI search when I’m preparing to write a blog post. It will surface relevant highlights I had forgotten about, and it includes words I would have used in a word search. Sometimes it will even suggest a thought structure for organizing the highlights.
4. Share Beautifully Formatted Quotes
You have the option of sharing highlights in either a text format or an attractive graphic that shows the quote, the author, and the source, and a graphic representing the source.
These can be copied, saved to Apple Photos, emailed, messaged, or shared with other apps.
Using the share button makes it easy for me to direct a highlight where I want to use it.
I often message a graphic highlight to a friend who I think might be interested in it. Since I save my blog ideas in Craft, I often send the text or graphic directly to the relevant Craft document.
5. Give Credit Easily
I often use highlights from my Readwise collection in my blog posts. It’s helpful that the highlight includes the author and source of the quotation.
I can confidently quote an author and list the source without needing additional research.
6. Forget About Folders and Tags
I don’t have to worry about rearranging highlights into folders or by topic or anything else. The Readwise database takes care of that for me.
While Readwise allows tagging, I don’t use it. For me, it’s too much additional hassle, and I’ve found that using Readwise search makes tagging unnecessary. Readwise can almost always find what I’m looking for, and often relevant highlights I wasn’t looking for.
Readwise consolidates all of my highlights in one central location. The real benefit in all of this is that it is an automatic process once highlights are synced.
7. Export Highlights to Wherever You Work
Another benefit of the Readwise service is that it allows for the automatic export of highlights to other apps, such as Obsidian, NotePlan, Notion, and more.
That enables me to automatically back up my Readwise database and search it within other apps.
For instance, I have it sync automatically to Obsidian, and this database is automatically indexed to and copied into the DEVONThink app. This allows me to search my highlights and other documents in DEVONThink, rather than conducting separate searches in Readwise and DEVONThink (although I sometimes search in both).
Over time, Readwise has become more than a highlight manager. It’s a quiet thinking partner. Each morning’s review connects ideas I’d long forgotten, helping me see patterns across books, articles, and years of learning.
Why Readwise Is Worth Every Penny
Let Readwise remind you of your highlights and do AI searches for you.
The service is not cheap (around $80 per year), but it’s worth every penny. There’s no question whether I’ll renew each year.
The value is much, much greater than the cost. For pricing tiers and features, see the Readwise pricing page.
Stop just collecting ideas.
Start USING ideas.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images, and text improvements.
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