Ideas that Revisit You
Social Repetition & New Readwise Daily Emails
Some of our favorite software combines technology and networks to spin magic from pedestrian inputs. Like Strava: by pushing one Record when I go for a bike ride, I unlock brilliant maps, accrue Kudos from others, stack up leaderboards and achievements, and get goal tracking. Like my iPhone camera: I take a picture of my kids, and it’s on my TV when I get home, on my Dad’s TV in Wisconsin, delivered to both of us in a book, and bubbled up a year from now to remind me of the moment.
Frictionless input. Fantastic output.
Large, largely-useless digital collections are no longer impressive. Give us magical benefits or get the heck out. Give us leverage. We’ve designed Highly so that the simple action of highlighting as you read yields compounding benefits over time.
Highlighting habitually, every time you read, has intrinsic benefits: keeping you actively engaged in the story, affording you a cue to bail out when something’s not good, and of course leaving a trail of what matters for later readers to benefit from. But. Education research consistently reports that highlighting, by itself, is a generally ineffective study technique.
The same study calls out distributed practice — revisiting key ideas multiple times, over time — as the most effective technique. Getting hold of key ideas isn’t all that useful if you just leave the keys in your pocket.
You shouldn’t have to visit your highlight collection for it to be valuable. Your highlight collection should visit you.
Social Repetition
Highly’s approach is to launch your highlights into social circulation: in posts, in chats, and in front of other readers, all of which trigger new connections between, frames for, and occasions to revisit the ideas. We use network signals like Re-Highlights and Reads to bring the ideas you loved back to mind in a socially-spaced repetition. These new social connections strengthen your own bond with the idea.
Readwise Daily Emails
To complement this social approach, we’re introducing an integration with Readwise, a service that’s purpose-built to reinforce your knowledge over time. Remember that best-practice study skill, distributed practice?
Readwise uses daily emails to surface a few ideas at a time, chosen according to their secret recipe. (A thoughtfully designed bonus: groom your collection progressively by adding tags and hearts as your highlights bubble back up.) Originally conceived to put book highlights to work, Readwise now supports web highlights from Highly and venerable Instapaper, too.
How To Use Readwise With Highly
When you connect Highly to Readwise, your Highly highlights will be pulled into your Readwise highlight collection, and thus into the Readwise emails, tags and app.
- Visit your Highly Settings to view and
Copyyour private access key. - Visit your Readwise Services to connect Highly.
Readwise is a paid service.
Highly is the Internet’s Highlight Layer
Highlight darn near anything, share the meaty parts instead of timesucking links, and see your peoples’ highlights as you surf the web.
Start the day with your Highly newspaper: the important ideas in the stories your people are reading.
It’s unprofessional to share a story without highlighting it. Save your team time, spark productive convos, and maximize knowledge sharing with Highly for Teams — in Slack, too.
