I Want to Have Read This Story

But I Won’t Make Time to Read It

Andrew Courter
Happy Highlighting
3 min readDec 7, 2016

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Have your people highlight the stories you won’t otherwise have time to see. Get yourself a Gist List.

Read Time (Download Wallpaper for Phone, Tablet, and Computer)

Chuckle and ignore the shallow notion that Read Later lists are valueless wastelands. (More like Read Never amirite? You are wrong.) The truth is: we’re interested in knowing much more than we have time to read about. Bookmarks, by any name, are how we capture our interests on the internet.

Pinterest constitutes “a database of intentions.” And assuming that intentions have power and value, it stands to reason that the places where they accumulate do, too.

Diana Kimball, Save for Later: Bookmarking Apps and the Wish Economy

Every Highly user’s public highlights contribute to the nascent Highlight Layer. Here’s an early example: cross your bookmarks with highlights from your trusted friends and you get direct access to the best parts (as judged by your people) of stories that interest you (but not enough to make time to read). Parlay your time-shifting into time savings.

Get the gist of stories you’d otherwise have missed.

This is your Gist List: the important ideas in your Read Later list, as filtered by your people. Stories that interest you, resized proportionally to your interest.

Somebody you trust probably already highlighted it.

It’s surprisingly powerful. Let the niche communities that comprise your social network(s) brief you on the best stories in each niche. Gladwell called them the Mavens. Trust your camera nerd friend to pick out the right rig for you, and your sports friends to find the best sportswriting.

And spoiler alert: you’re a maven for somebody else, too. I read a lot about design, and my design highlights unlock those stories for my engineering partners who’d never take time to read about the 15 distinct text spacing characters (it’s important! to some people).

You can learn a lot without spending a lot of time.

And by highlighting as you read, you can unlock stories for others without spending more time at all.

The Highlight Layer enables a virtuous cycle where the 80% of people who want the gist can get it from the 20% who care deeply about a given topic. And the 20% are rewarded with social validation and an expanded audience for simply doing what they love.

How To See Your Gist List

  1. visit highly.co/list
  2. Bring your people to Highly: invite them, and connect your social account(s) to Highly: Facebook, Twitter.
  3. Connect your save-for-later services: Pocket, Instapaper, Medium or Request a Channel.

Medium Bookmarks

Use these IFTTT applets to automatically sync Medium bookmarks.

Safari Reading List

Closed to integrations like this, unfortunately.

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Andrew Courter
Happy Highlighting

Designer @TribesXYZ. Founded @HighlyTM, helped @Twitter.