I Just Bulk-Imported 350+ Highlights and This Is What I Learned

4 hard-earned lessons that’ll save you time and energy

A couple of days back I took a leap and subscribed to a service called Readwise*. This service lets you import highlights from various sources such as Medium, Pocket, and Kindle and import them to your personal management system (PMS).

I’m a frequent highlighter, as was shown on the number of highlights from articles I’ve read in the past year: close to 400. And that’s just articles, not books.

Eager, I imported all the stuff into my PMS (RoamResearch) and went through it. Fast forward a couple of days, a few cups of coffee, and a lot of disappointment, and I’ve finally cut my way through the jungle. It was a massacre. Only a handful of those highlights survived.

But I learned valuable lessons. Here they are.

Heads up: it’s a referral link. I get no provision but I get a free month if you sign up. 

1. Your Highlights Are Useless Without Context

If I am any indication of mankind, we’re a lot of frivolous highlighters. I highlight singular (random) words, sentences that have no meaning (without context), phrases that look good but aren’t… It’s like I’ve been given too much power and it has corrupted me. Any text can be violated by my indiscriminate hand.

As I ravaged my highlights, I soon noticed the problem: Solitary highlights are useless.

I quickly thought of Niklas Luhmann, the prolific german sociologist:

I always have a slip of paper at hand, on which I note down the ideas of certain pages. On the backside I write down the bibliographic details. After finishing the book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant for already written notes in the slip-box. It means that I always read with an eye towards possible connections in the slip-box.”(Luhmann et al., 1987) [emphasis mine]

The lessons?

You don’t have to have a slip-box to implement Luhmann’s wisdom. As you highlight, think hard about how it relates to what you know. Does it expand your knowledge in any way? Is it any good for your purposes (writing, research, hobby, a project for work, anything)?

Think hard before you click & drag. Don’t be too lenient.

The above quote also illustrates another important lesson: provide context for your future self.

I can’t believe how many highlights I had to discard because I wanted to be “minimalistic” with highlights. What looks blatantly obvious when you’re reading the text looks cryptic with no context. Hence, import whole paragraphs (you can always highlight in your PMS). Assume you’re stupid and won’t remember anything the next time you look at the information.

Moving on.

2. Most of Your Highlights Are the Same Thing

I can’t tell you how many articles with “writing advice” I’ve read (the number is embarrassingly high). The same goes for self-help and a couple of other topics. What I can tell you is that:

They. All. Repeat. The. Same. Advice.

Sorry for the formatting, but I wanted you to stop for a moment.

The lesson?

Find one superbly good source for the topic you’re interested in and read that (and only that). Go through it several times if need be. Burn it into your skull. Everything else is a waste of time*. Reading multiple pieces about the same topic makes you feel better (keyword: mere exposure), but overall knowledge gain is negligible.

*it might still be useful in other ways, though, such as giving you motivation

3. The Most Insight Comes From Fewest Sources

Some people recommend reading broadly. On paper, this looks good: you try as much as possible and expose yourself to various voices hoping something sticks.

But doing so also increases the noise to signal ratio significantly: you’ll read a lot of baloney. Context also plays a huge role. A highlight that looks promising might only look promising because the rest of the text is bad.

You can excavate gems from a diamond mine. But you can’t excavate gems from a shithole (got 2 views on that story).

What I can tell you after going through my highlights is that insight is rare. High-quality insight comes from high-quality writers. There are few exceptions to this rule.

The lesson?

The biggest ROI of knowledge/time is reading quality sources. If you’re into philosophy, aeon.co is my go-to page. If you like to learn about psychology in an accessible format, try the sister-page of Aeon — psyche.co. Look for curated lists and try services such as the Browser.

All You Need to Know

Highlights are a powerful tool to retain more from what we read. Sadly, we often misuse them because we don’t understand them properly (nobody teaches such practical things in school, after all). The result is a bunch of highlights that are useless.

To make the most of your highlights, try the following:

1. Before you highlight ask yourself: how does this relate to what I already know? Proceed only if you have an answer.
2. Provide context for your future self. What seems obvious at the moment won’t be one week or a month from now. Assume your future self is oblivious.
3. A huge bulk of the most useful information often stems from one or two superb articles about the topic. Once you have those, cease the search.
4. Curate your input and find quality sources. The bulk of your attention (~80%) should be focused on tried and true. But keep the door open (~20%) to discovering something new.

Hope that helps.