Most people who use “Pocket” or any similar capturing tool, may have accidentally turned it into a “content graveyard”, meaning its stacked up with lots of content that they will never actually find time to read.
So that makes it a complete waste of our the time – we have a web-tool that turned into another never-ending pile of content in our digital life.
So here are my ideas as to how to use “Pocket” wisely and make sure that it doesn’t waste our time and energy
- Beware of the fabulous headline – Often we find that the content pieces we captured to Pocket are not as interesting as we thought they’d be. Most of the time is because of the “click-bate” headline that doesn’t deliver what is promised, other times we don’t respond well to the writer’s style thus making it hard for us to consume their content.
That is why when I open pocket I get into a fast reading mode, a scanning mode (unlike when I read a book where ill be in a much more focused mode).
I recommend that you start by quickly scanning the article and then slow the pace down if you feel that it’s actually quite interesting. - Find the right place and time for emptying your pocket – this is a topic I normally talk about for an hour in my workshop when I discuss the term HIME = High impact minimum effort. What it means is that for each task there’s a certain energy that is required, so we must find the time and day of the week when reading our Pocket will demand minimum energy and will provide high impact (meaning we go over tones of articles, and feel that we made progress and slowly emptying our reading list) . My HIME for my Pocket reading is usually Thursdays afternoon, I’d finish my work week, lay down in my balcony, have a pillow under my knees, open my Pocket in my tablet, have my notebook and paper beside me to write down ideas or quotes or names I want to follow up on, and in one concrete hour ill be able to scan an average of 30-50 articles.
- If you haven’t emptied your pocket in a month – stop saving new items until you find the right time and place to empty it and start saving new items again. By stopping to collect you are actually “punishing” yourself for not putting the time to read everything, and it will drive you crazy that you cannot save more – and that should be motiving enough to seek for a quite 1-2 hours to go in and clean your pocket.
- Remember to tag the videos you save to pocket – I tag “Videos” – so that way you can quickly sort them out when you’re walking or driving and listen to these videos with ease.
- Print PDF’s (on both sides pls) – if you can print the PDF’s that you saved to pocket, then I guarantee you will read them much faster. Scanning or reading from paper is faster, don’t forget that option every once in a while.
You’re welcome to join one of my seminars in Tel-Aviv, SF or NY – and learn many other tricks and tips to that will make your digital life a whole lot easier: See you @MyMethod: Your Survival Kit for Working in the Digital Era
https://youtu.be/YtJAIC0QDNw