Your highlights are trying to tell you something

Finding truly valuable content feels like panning for a dwindling amount of hidden gold these days. Through my own journey of sifting through the huge number of incoming articles and posts, I'm always looking out for reliable ways to spot the gems worth investing my time and attention in. With one of my favorite tools, I found out I have another method to identify sources that consistently deliver insights that matter to me.

Information Overload

Every day, we face an avalanche of content competing for my attention. Articles, blog posts, newsletters, and social media updates flood the various screens we are in front of. Is it bad? Maybe.

Is there content out there that I really want to see, read, and consume? You bet.

The real challenge isn't finding content - it's finding the right content. I noticed that some sources consistently provided valuable insights, while others just added to the noise.

Through my experiments with different tools and approaches, I discovered that the answer was hiding in my own reading habits. The content I chose to save, highlight, and return to held important clues about what truly mattered to me.

With my stack of tools, this meant that Readwise was again going to help with the old signal to noise ratio.

This Week’s Favorite

Your Reading Habits Reveal The Hidden Truth

I've found that my Reader app acts like a personal content detective. It the background it is tracking which sources I consistently find valuable enough to save, read, and highlight.

When I look at my reading patterns, certain sources stand out. For example, I might save 26 articles from a popular news site, but that doesn't automatically make it high-value content.

The real insight comes from looking at how deeply I engage with each source. Do I highlight key passages? Do I actually read the full articles? Do I come back to reference them later?

Here's what I've learned to look for:
• Sources where I regularly highlight and take notes
• Content I return to multiple times
• Articles I read completely rather than just skim
• Topics that connect to my long-term interests

This pattern recognition helps me identify my valuable sources.

For instance, I recently discovered that while I occasionally save cooking recipes, they don't represent the kind of deep, meaningful content that helps me grow. Not a huge surprise, but a good example.

Now I can focus more time with content that matters and less time sorting through information that doesn't serve my goals.

The good news is that Reader gives this to you in an easy to see dashboard so that you can subscribe to the feeds you engage with:

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