I bought my first Kindle about 10 years ago (circa 2010). I still preferred reading paper books, but from time to time I read a book on my Kindle. I sometimes went as far as highlighting ideas or excerpts that resonated with me. And in some of those cases I felt compelled to use their terrible little buttons on the device to type out some notes to go with my highlights. I figured I would go back at some point to review those notes. However, I never did, until now.

How Readwise transformed my Kindle Highlights!

I learned about it from an Ali Abdaal YouTube video where he showed us how Readwise was a great way to bring together notes and highlights captured from various sources like Kindle, Instapaper, AirQuotes, etc. I remembered those occasional Kindle books I read and highlights I took. I figured, why not try out the app and pull in all those Kindle highlights and notes.

Probably the best feature of Readwise is that it takes all of my highlights and serves up 5 of them to me (at random) each morning in a short email. It’s cool because this is literally an email I wrote to myself years ago. It’s content I found valuable once upon a time ago served up to me on a daily basis.

I started reading these highlights during my ritual morning coffee walks and discovered something. Those highlights, a small insight that resonated with a younger me, connect with me today, just as deeply, if not more deeply than I think it did when I first captured it.

When I read those highlights today, I get new ideas. These new ideas are only possible because of everything that happened since the moment I first captured it. I’ve grown so much since that moment. However, I’m still me. And me back then, felt something when he read those lines. So he highlighted it. Today, I look back at that and think, wow, back then, that definitely caught my interest, but today, I can do something with that idea.

Do I feel bad for not having reviewed my highlights sooner?

No, because, I know my best is yet to come and what I can do with those ideas today is significantly better than what I could have done in years past. I look forward to digging into these highlights and extracting old ideas I can put into action today.