Content Management - Part 2

Last week we got into the basics of a system to deal with all of the content that you want, or need, to review in one way or another.

This week, I’d like to go to the next step - how we can take a basic read it later system and improve it’s functionality with a few different tools.

Why Extend The Functionality?

In the previous email, I covered the types of content that I consume and how I handle them in a basic way - using Readwise Reader as my aggregator.

It’s easy to use out of the box and I highly recommend it to anyone that is looking to streamline their content consumption and note taking.

If you, like me, take in information from additional sources, like podcasts and videos, then having some extra tools in the mix can make things much easier and help you find those “gold nuggets” much faster.

And “much faster” is no small thing - when you’re considering 2-3 hours of podcast audio, 1-2 hours of video, 5+ articles, it can become a huge time sink that we sometimes don’t consider.

When you want to get to the good stuff fast, having extra tools can help you speed up the process and find what you need quickly.

Recommended

Tools Of The Trade

For podcasts, I’ve been using Podwise since earlier this spring.

It’s been a great tool for a few reasons:

• API integration with Reader

• Mindmap to get a quick visual idea of the topics

• Keywords that give definitions of niche words or ideas

• Good on mobile and desktop

Using Podwise let’s me quickly see what the topics are during an hour long (or more) podcast so I can drill down to the stuff I need.

Alternatively, if I listen to a podcast while walking I can review afterwards to quickly find those areas that I found interesting and want to pull some info from, annotate, or otherwise save.

Previously I had used some apps on my phone that allowed me to press a button and save 5-90 seconds of the transcript before that point, but I ended up not using it as much as I thought I would - still useful so I thought I’d mention it here in case that sounded like a better fit.

Examples of this type of podcast tool: Snipd

The other major source of content that I find works better with a 3rd party tool is video.

That’s part of why I created Summarily - I wanted something that would take my YouTube channel subscriptions and automatically summarize them.

Not only the overall video summary, but break it down into a timestamped summary every few minutes so I could review where the content or conversation goes and quickly find the part I want to watch.

Your account in Summarily comes with an RSS feed, so you can add that to Reader - I’ve covered that in a video here:

By utilizing a tool like Summarily you can stay up to date on your favorite YouTube sources without the manual one-off summarization.

Using these types of tools can help you aggregate your content into one place, which makes the next steps easier - using that information to generate your own ideas, thoughts, or using it for a review…which we’ll be covering in next week’s email.

One quick question 👋

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