“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
(Fran Lebowitz)
Reading has been one of my daily practices for decades.
I love reading because it gives me a quiet and relaxing way to explore the world beyond my own experiences. I use reading for self-discovery. I use reading to learn from others so I can better understand myself. Reading helps me organize my thoughts and feelings into frameworks, or what I call my philosophies, which guide my life.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
(George R. R. Martin)
Reading is part of my life-long pursuit to become a better self, today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life. I read like I used to study in school. Before purchasing my Amazon Kindle, I was a highlighting and earmarking machine. I would always have a pen and highlighter with my books and make notes in the margins. I kept a running list of “takeaways” anywhere I could find blank space in the cover and title pages.
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
(Charles William Eliot)
Reading on my Kindle changed everything! Here is the process I use for more efficient and effective reading with Kindle.
Functions
Highlighting and archiving my takeaway ideas is much easier and more efficient with my Kindle.
Now, I simply highlight passages with my finger. When I highlight a passage, Kindle gives me three options: Highlight, Add Note, or Share.
Highlighting saves the passages in My Kindle Clippings, along with the book title, and exact location of the words selected. I can view My Kindle Clippings on my Kindle and online at kindle.amazon.com. Since I started highlighting my Kindle books in 2011, I have saved nearly 500 pages of highlighted notes!
Add Note is where I can save my thoughts or comments with a highlighted passage. Notes are also stored within My Kindle Clippings for easy reference later.
Share posts my highlights and notes on Facebook and Twitter. I use the Share function when I’m reading something that supports our Foundations of Health at Happy Living. I have created the tagline “Ideas for Happy Living” for my shared notes that I send out on Twitter.
Research
Kindle organizes my Highlights, Notes, and Shares for every book I read. For example, I have 83 highlighted passages and 8 notes for Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World and 48 highlighted passages and 86 notes for Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao.
We use these notes when doing research for our blog posts and especially when writing our Kindle Clippings posts.
Daily Review
Daily Review is a Kindle feature I recently discovered. It is a tool on kindle.amazon.com that helps you review and remember the most significant ideas from your books.
Reviewing ideas periodically makes it easier to remember them and science shows this works better when you space the review over increasing time intervals. This so-called “Spacing Effect” was first identified by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
The Daily Review feature creates daily flashcards with my highlights and notes or the Popular Highlights (from other readers) from one of my books.
My flashcard today was from The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer:
Ideas for Happy Living: This happens when you live from spirit, “Imagine if every child seemed like your own, and every person you saw looked like a beautiful flower, with its own color, its own expression, shape, and sounds. As you went deeper and deeper, you would start noticing a phenomenal thing—you are no longer judging.”
Getting More with Less
My daily practice of reading is more efficient and effective with Kindle.
It helps me capture, organize, use, and share the most important passages from the books I read. The Daily Review feature helps me remember lessons from my books and apply them to my life.
With my Kindle, I carry my entire book library with me all of the time and can easily highlight, comment, and share insights. (For reading suggestions, check out our bookshelf!)
Reading is such an important part of my life-long study to become a better me, and Kindle has made it easier and more effective.
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