Blinkist: The Essence of Books

Whether you‘re looking for a next pick at the library or wishing to learn as much about a new topic as possible in one day, Blinkist allows you to read non-fiction books condensed to 15 minutes of easy to swallow content. Each day you can read one pre-selected book for free, and there’s an all-you-can-read (or listen) subscription if you crave for more.

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Why It’s Good?

I believe you like reading

That’s what you’re doing at the moment, after all. Immersing yourself in a good story is a great experience. So great, that sometimes we might even feel sadness or disappointment when we are suddenly brought back to reality.

But what about reading not for pleasure but learning? A lot of non-fiction books nowadays feature some stories or examples to make them more interesting to the reader. Pure scientifical facts don’t sell well unless wrapped in a narrative to which you can relate.

There are times when you need to get to the facts quickly. Having to skip the narrative can be problematic. You need to choose what interests you and what doesn’t. There is a chance you may miss some insights.

What if you’re only starting to learn an entirely new subject? The situation isn’t simple. How to choose which books you should focus on? The bestsellers? Maybe check some recommendations? What if you start reading and it turns out you wasted your time on an outdated book?

Blinkist tries to solve all these problems. It’s a service containing condensed versions of the most popular non-fiction books available on the market. They are divided into bite-size chunks of information. The whole book-in-blinks (as they call them) shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes to read. Or to listen, as most of them have an audio version as well.

Have you read “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss but forgot the most important ideas? Check it out on Blinkist, and you’ll recall them during your lunch break. Do you want to start a marketing campaign but don’t know from where to start? Check out the trending titles, read them in one afternoon and jot down what you learned. Then visit your local library or a bookstore and read the full version of a position that impressed you the most. Calling yourself an expert at this point would be an exaggeration, but you’re no longer a greenhorn either.

Imagine this: a walk of 10.000 steps allows you to listen to around seven titles.

By the way: Blinkist is active on Medium as well. They even have their own publication.

But Summaries Are Pointless!

I wholeheartedly recommend Blinkist to all my friend and sometimes present them with gifts of subscriptions. But some of the raise important questions. Why would I want to read a book’s summary instead of a whole book? What if this summary is biased? What if the original message gets distorted? What if the summary misses some important or interesting facts? What if I love the smell of paper and want to read real books?

The point is I don’t believe that Blinkist is a substitute for books. I treat it first as a kind of a gateway to worthy titles (if summarized version interests me, I’ll pretty sure grab the full copy). It also serves well as a means to recall the most important facts from the books I have already read. Finally, it helps me find interesting material outside my areas of expertise, be it marketing, nutrition, history or geography.

When you stop thinking of mutual exclusion you can find that summaries and whole books can coexist. Not only that, they can complement each other!

When Do Summaries Fail?

Most of us are aware of what is “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin. Blinkist showcases the book’s main ideas but leaves a lot of examples. Those examples constitute most of the book as it makes for quite a long read. But some of those examples, even though not relevant to the main topic, can still be interesting on their own. I was surprised to learn that lungs in mammals evolved from swim bladders in fish. We lose such details in the “condensation” process.

Missing knowledge is the price we pay for summarization. Is it a high price? The reader has to decide for himself. If I wanted to stop my reading journey at Blinkist, this price would be too high. Thankfully, I know my way around libraries, so I can always satisfy my curiosity there.

How Much Exactly?

At the moment of writing Blinkist offers three plans. There is always a free-tier called Blinkist Daily. Each day one book-in-blinks is available to read free of charge. Then there are Premium monthly and Premium yearly. Both offer a 1-day trial. Considering a waking day consists of 16 hours it means you could theoretically devour 64 titles during this trial. Bon Appétit!

How I Use It?

At the moment of writing, I have 544 books-in-blinks (not a very convenient term, if you ask me) waiting in my library. This number may seem like a lot, but I don’t feel overwhelmed, and I’m sure I’ll read all of them.

When I started with Blinkist, my use case was this: add only the most valuable books to the library and listen to them when going for a walk. This approach wasn’t the best. First of all, I had no rules in place when exactly should I listen to Blinkist. Sometimes I went for a walk and I wanted to listen to music. Other times it was an audiobook. Another time I wanted to meditate in silence. There was no way for me to make sure I will finish at least one book-in-blinks in a given time.

All changed when I made Blinkist a part of my daily ritual that I call “Exercise the Mind”. I simply aim to read at least one book-in-blinks daily and I have it anchored together with my other learning activities (like Duolingo). This reduces the anxiety that I’ll never empty my inbox. I know that I read at a pace of at least one position per day. If I settled for the minimum, it would, therefore, take me two years to finish what I have already collected.

But I do more than the bare minimum.

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