The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps | by Tiago Forte | Praxis | Medium

At the end of 2014 I received an email informing me that I had read over a million words in the ‘read it later’ app Pocket over the course of the year. This number by itself isn’t impressive, considering our daily intake of information is equivalent to 34 gigabytes, 100,000 words, or 174 newspapers, depending on who you ask. What makes this number significant (in my view) is that it represents 22 books’-worth of long-form reading that would not have happened without a system in place. We’ve made a habit of filling those hundred random spaces in our day with glances at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. But those glances have slowly become stares, and those stares have grown to encompass a major portion of our waking hours. The end result is the same person who spends 127 hours per year on Instagram (the global average) complains that she has “no time” for reading. The fact is, the ability to read is becoming a source of competitive advantage in the world. I’m not talking about basic lit

saved by

• Jacob Mazelin