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The 5 Magical Apps That Changed My Life

2020-09-18 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:16 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: Books and reading) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Sponsor segment present

Ali presents what he calls the magical insight logging framework: Kindle, Instapaper and the podcast app Airr capture highlights, Readwise gathers them, and Readwise's new export puts them all in Notion, his second brain.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The problem: insights from years of reading and listening are lost; the magical insight logging framework

  • ★★ Ali reads many books, browses many articles, listens to a lot of podcasts and scrolls Twitter, but until recently he had no way of logging the insights he came across. — 00:00:00 · Twitter, Twitch
  • ★★ Over ten-plus years of listening, reading and watching, Ali says he took away only a fraction of it, and remembered and applied even less. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ Ali's magical insight logging framework is five apps working together to capture and log automatically the insights from books, articles, podcasts and even tweets. — 00:00:29

    “what I like to call the magical insight logging framework”

  • ★★ The first part of Ali's magical insight logging framework is the consumption layer, made of three apps. — 00:00:29

  • ★★ Ali has read books on Kindle since about 2008, when the Kindle first came out. — 00:00:29 · Kindle

00:00:51 — The consumption layer: Kindle, Instapaper and Airr

  • ★★ In the Kindle app on any device, including iOS, the iPad and Android, you can select a passage and highlight it, in different colours. — 00:01:14 · Kindle, iPad
  • ★★ The second app of Ali's framework is a read-it-later app such as Instapaper or Pocket; he uses Instapaper. — 00:01:14
  • ★★★ One of Ali's biggest productivity hacks: he almost never reads an interesting article when he comes across it, but saves it to Instapaper and reads through the list when he is next in the mood. — 00:01:43
  • ★★ In Instapaper and Pocket you can highlight articles while you read them on any device. — 00:02:12
  • ★★★ The third app of Ali's framework is Airr, now his podcast app of choice on iOS; it is only available for iOS, with an Android version in the works. — 00:02:36
  • ★★★ In Airr, hitting the quote button while listening creates an "air quote" from the last 30 to 60 seconds of the podcast, a length you can change. — 00:03:18
  • ★★ Airr generates transcripts for many of the most popular podcasts, so an air quote becomes a text highlight when a transcript is available. — 00:03:47
  • ★★★ Ali calls Airr completely game-changing, because before it taking notes from podcasts was not possible. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ Ali has loved Readwise, the app of his framework's integration layer, for about two years since he first discovered it. — 00:04:27

00:04:40 — The integration layer: Readwise gathers highlights, sends a daily email and exports to Notion

  • ★★ In the integration layer of Ali's framework, Readwise brings together the highlights he creates in the three consumption apps. — 00:04:56
  • ★★ Ali has 107 books highlighted on Kindle over the last several years, all brought together in Readwise. — 00:04:56 · Kindle
  • ★ Ali's Instapaper highlights in Readwise go back to 2019, when he first started using Instapaper. — 00:05:26
  • ★★ Readwise has recently added tweets: sending a tweet or thread to the Readwise Twitter account saves it into Readwise. — 00:05:26 · Twitter, Twitch
  • ★★ Readwise has more recently added podcast support: linked to his Airr account, it syncs his air quotes automatically. — 00:05:26
  • ★★ Readwise can send you a daily email with five of your highlights, surfaced at random. — 00:06:36
  • ★★★ Readwise has very recently added an automatic export of all its highlights to Notion, the app of Ali's second brain, which he calls absolutely game-changing. — 00:06:36 · Notion, second brain

00:07:05 — Notion sponsor read: what Ali uses Notion for

  • ★★ Ali has used Notion since around February or March 2019. (hedged) — 00:07:05 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali uses Notion while preparing for the USMLE, the US medical exam, and he has been live-streaming his study for it on Twitch every morning. — 00:07:05 · Notion, USMLE, Twitch

00:08:03 — Readwise highlights in Notion: books, articles, podcasts and tweets

  • ★★ Linked to Notion, Readwise creates a Readwise page there that brings together all the highlights from books, articles, podcasts and tweets. — 00:08:03 · Notion
  • ★★ Clicking the location of a book highlight in the Readwise page in Notion opens the Kindle app at that place, to see its context. — 00:08:32 · Notion, Kindle
  • ★★★ If you consume a lot of books, articles, podcasts and tweets with no system for mining, applying and remembering their insights, Ali recommends setting up your own magical insight logging framework, not necessarily with all of his apps. — 00:09:37
  • ★★★ Ali would recommend the Kindle to everyone, 100 per cent. — 00:09:37 · Kindle
  • ★★ For saving articles to read later, Ali says either Instapaper or Pocket will do. — 00:09:37

00:09:50 — Which apps to use; people now cite Notion rather than the iPad

  • ★★ Ali says Airr is at the moment the only way to capture highlights from podcasts like this. — 00:10:15
  • ★★ For a second brain, Readwise exports to Notion, Roam Research and Evernote, so you are not tied to any one app. — 00:10:15 · Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, second brain
  • ★★★ Ali uses Notion for his second brain, swears by it and organises basically his entire life around it. — 00:10:15 · Notion, second brain
  • ★★ In the last 18 months or so, no one who meets Ali has said they bought an iPad on his recommendation; instead people tell him they started using Notion because of him and it changed their life. — 00:10:44 · iPad, Notion

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Airr · Instapaper · Kindle · magical insight logging framework · Notion · Readwise

Also: People: Eric Weinstein · Hugh Jackman · Mark Manson · Ryan Holiday · Tim Ferriss

Works: The Portal · The Tim Ferriss Show · Tribe of Mentors · USMLE

Organizations: Amazon · Twitch · Twitter

Concepts: second brain

Products: Evernote · iPad · Pocket · Roam Research

Also centred on Readwise: How I Read 100 Books a Year - 8 Tips for Reading More · What's on my iPhone - Favourite iPhone Apps ft. @KharmaMedic · How I Remember Everything I Read

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