Sunday Morning Focused Reading

I wanted a way to read longer articles in a focused manner, away from the computer. While the Kindle is excellent for eBooks, it does not have a great way to browse the web for interesting content.

After a few tries, I came up with a simple, yet automated way to collect interesting pieces from all over the web onto my Kindle. The process is quite simple; here’s how it works.

I bookmark URLs on my mobile and desktop devices. These URLs are automatically compiled into a private digest and sent to my Kindle every weekend.

Left is the digest, right is a single article view on the Kindle Voyage

To get set up, you’ll need the tools below:

1. An Amazon Kindle (or use the iPad or iPhone Kindle app), I use the Kindle Voyage as it has page-turning buttons, backlight, and a sharp 300 PPI display.
2. A free Instapaper.com account
3. A free Raindrop.io account (technically you can skip this step if you want to use Instapaper.com as your bookmark service, I prefer Raindrop.io).
4. A free Ifttt.com account

Start by configuring Instapaper to send a digest of saved URLs to your Kindle via email. You can grab your kindle email address from the preferences on Amazon.com.

You can choose to receive a digest daily as well if you prefer

Next set Raindrop.io as your bookmark service. Raindrop offers browser extensions for all platforms. The service is quite excellent, offering ways to tag and search your entire collection. Once bookmarks are in Raindrop, I then leverage Ifttt.com to sync the bookmarks onto Instapaper.

Setting this up in Ifttt.com is a breeze

That’s it! Every weekend I now get a digest of bookmarked articles delivered right to my Kindle. This set up will work for any URL; therefore, sources can vary greatly. As I read through the items on the Kindle, I can choose to archive each within the digest with one-click. Archiving articles means they will not be present in next week’s digest.

Hopefully, you'll find this as useful as I did. Reading on the Kindle allows me to focus, which is especially pertinent for longer-form content. There’s something enjoyable about grabbing a coffee and sitting down to read your curated collection of findings.

Happy reading. To learn about new articles, follow me on Twitter.