This is a summary post that ties together what I’ve written about my reading routines so you can see how they fit together. These processes aim to make sure I can read whatever I want to read, but that I can learn from these sources too.

I will also add that this is what I’ve landed on naturally, I’m just putting it into words for the purposes of this post. If one day I go wild and read and highlight a fiction book on Kindle, which isn’t strictly covered in the use-cases below, I’ll survive.

So, I do what makes sense in the moment, but typically reading and note-taking fall into one of the following 4 categories.

1. Fiction reading for pleasure

2. Skim reading for interest

3. Deep reading

4. Academic reading

Separating workflows by mindsets and use-cases is something that repeats across my system.

Let’s look more deeply at these workflows.

Fiction

Mindset: chill, relaxed, slow, if I learn something that’s great, but really I pick up a book to unplug and enjoy the read.

I wrote about this last week, but the key points I’ll raise again here is I nearly exclusively read historical fiction, and I pick out books that align with my interests so it’s unsurprising that I have a fair few notes on the fiction books I’ve read.

But the act of reading is purposefully disjointed from my otherwise intentionally integrated PKM system and workflows, because reading is a chance to turn off my laptop. To this end, I choose to read physical books and make notes and annotations by hand.

Once I’ve finished the book, then if there’s something that I want to remember, which is common, I’ll put it into Capacities following the exact process described in this article:

Skim reading

Mindset: my interest has been piqued, let’s skim the piece and highlight anything that particularly piques my interest. It’s unlikely this is more than 1/2 highlights.

I’m interested in all sorts of things so save all sorts of content about it.

All links are collected via Raindrop, and I save what I want to read further to Reader. I could save them straight to Reader, but I choose not to, as actually when it comes to it, I end up archiving things I thought I wanted to read, so I do that all in Raindrop, meaning Reader is streamlined.

Reading in Reader is an excellent experience. It’s fast and beautiful and sends my highlights to Notion which I pick up to review whenever I want. That’s usually once every couple of months from the Readwise database in Notion, but also, I might never review them, there’s no pressure attached.

But if one day I think “wait where’s that article I read about an old country house in Norfolk”, it’ll be in Notion having read it via Reader, or if one day I think “I’m sure I saved an article about connection between mahogany and the British empire”, the link will be in Raindrop. I promise I am more fun at parties than those two examples would suggest I am.

Deep reading

Mindset: I’m really interested in a topic and I actively want to see what the piece says, to see how I can connect it with the rest of my knowledge in Capacities. How does this piece represent something I’m interested in?

This is what I do most commonly. The actual reading takes place both online and with physical books.

Online reading is done on Reader again for pdfs/articles etc, or on the Kindle app for some non-fiction. I read them and follow the process described here:

However in the aim of being more intentional and slowing down, I have started buying physical non-fiction books. I follow the same sort process as with online reading, except of course I can’t highlight a book and have these highlights appear in Notion.

So I write straight into Capacities but with one very strict rule. I link nothing until the source is summarised, so the end product is still the same: summarised information in capacities, that I can extract and work into the rest of my knowledge.

I learned this after obsessively linking every mention of a page in any other page. That wasn’t connected knowledge, it was just a list of mentions. By only linking content from my summarised thoughts, backlinks are useful, not bloating.

Academic reading

Mindset: critical analysis, further research, connecting with work I did in my previous studies.

Sometimes I wish to really get into a topic I read around in my university education, connecting to all the notes, ideas, theories and academics I learned about in that educational context. I suppose this is a more critical and extended exercise than what I do with deep reading, which is more about getting a summary of a source viewpoint and connecting it to what’s in Capacities, which is less and less in line with what I did in my studies as time goes on.

This critical reading of a source comes from granular reading, aiming to understand literally everything, and filling the research gaps. This is why I do it in Logseq, where the block based editor lets me dig further and further into the highlights I make until I understand it all and I’m ready to move on. At this point, opening Logseq puts me into this investigative mood, and that’s great for academic reading but certainly not needed for everything I read, hence the distinction between deep reading and academic reading.

I really don’t do this often but it’s a really fun exercise when I do. I still follow the exact same reading workflow I did during my masters which I described in the two articles linked below:

Takeaways

So those specific routines are personal to me, but if we break them down to their essence we see that they are actually the same two-step process, with different flavours for different contexts.

Capacities takes care of step 2, but because I will need different levels of reading and thinking to understand different types of sources, step 1 is varied and I change apps to suit the context the best.

This has emerged naturally too. I used to read everything in Logseq, but it just didn’t work for me, and over time I’ve realised why, and developed workflows from there. I really like changing apps because my brain is so noisy that separating apps for mindsets/use-cases helps cut some of that noise.

A key consideration is that I’m not repeating any work when I use multiple apps in a process. I’m doing specific things in specific apps for a specific reason, and I’ve thought a lot about these reasons as is probably evident from my content!

This article is probably ripe for one of those bell curve memes with someone saying “just read”, and that’s fair enough. But I feel this lets me get the most out of what I have actively chosen to read, in line with my other interests, and I really like that. Reading is my entry point to PKM and I love PKM, so it makes sense for me.

I will reiterate my point from the introduction though: if one day I go wild and read and highlight a fiction book on Kindle, which isn’t strictly covered in one of these routines, I will survive!