The Thing That Made Me Read

Two weeks ago, I posted a poem with a shade of mindefulness. Last week, a guacamole recipe with a dash of democracy. Dear reader, you'd be forgiven for wondering what this blog is actually supposed to be about.

In my defense, my working structure here is to interrogate the intersection of humanity and productivity — how does one "get things done" without losing sight of identity? By my count, virtually every productivity book or article is written at the expense of the human at the center of whatever system or process is being proselytized. Surely that doesn't end well.

But to keep the structure of this blog alive, it's probably important to occasionally post something more purely in the productivity category. To wit:

This post is brought to you by the Boox Palma. Not brought to you in the they're-paying-me-or-sent-me-a-free-device sense (wouldn't that be nice); it's just that this little device rocks so much that it made me reflect on my whole idiosyncratic system and on the importance of reading as a productivity tool and measure.

I generally don't like "hacks," but here's one anyway: find your productivity enabler. This is an actual conversation with mine:

Within 15 minutes, we both had one on order. We checked in with each other after 10 days of usage (we're fun at parties, as evidenced by the fact that we literally had this follow up conversation at a party), and we're both unequivocally glad we bought this thing. For the Palma-curious, here's the link to David Pierce's excellent article in The Verge where I first learned about it.

The Palma does something quietly ingenious: provide a Kindle-like experience for everything you can think of. It's obvious once you see the end product, like how Cards Against Humanity just asked and answered, "What would happen if Apples to Apples was R rated?"

There's an e-reader revolution happening for a reason right now. People want something clean and focused. And something that doesn't need to be charged every night. And something that works at the beach.

This little Palma (with a delightful wavy texture on the backside, I might add), combined with the right apps, lets me read just about every digital thing I want to read in one lightweight place. It's a simple e-ink device running an older version of Android that allows you to not only download the Kindle app, but also any news app or RSS reader of your choosing.

For that matter, you can download any app of your choosing, though the thought of scrolling Instragram reels on this thing sounds like some type of low grade torture. That's part of the charm — the Palma is quick enough to provide a pleasant experience across apps focused on reading, but slow enough to discourage you from doing much else. Less is more, but only when less is just enough. And this thing is just enough.

Hiya! If ya like what you’re reading, why not forward to a friend and subscribe for a short post on the intersection of productivity and identity every Tuesday morning?

Other than some background system stuff, I only run four apps: Kindle, Readwise Reader, Readwise, and Obsidian. It fits nicely in the pocket and the battery lasts forever. When I'm around or near the house, I slide it into my pocket and leave my phone behind. My watch will ding me if there's any urgent notifications (a post for another day — in the modern attention economy, it's mission critical to turn off every notification you reasonably can).

This works particularly well for me because I've gone full hog on RSS, which I have found to be the perfect way to collect articles from every source I'm interested in in one neat little place without having to review a bunch of individual websites or apps. But even if you aren't deep down in this RSS rabbit with me, I've heard from others that this thing does well running news apps from all major sources.

If you set it up in the right way (zero notifications or bust), it just becomes a dedicated reader for whatever you deliberately choose to read. With a bit of finessing, like downloading a non-native keyboard to facilitate quicker typing, it's also quick enough to highlight and take notes on anything you're reading. I'm a firm believer in taking fleeting notes — notes taken in the moment while you are consuming information, which you'll revisit later as the fodder for permanent notes — so that particular functionality is key.

And what, you rightly ask, does this actually have to do with productivity?

For starters, it's a device the fits neatly into my established workflow. Because of its ideal balance of what it does and does not offer, it has dramatically increased the amount of books and articles, both short and long form, I've read. Systems can and should be optimized over time, and sometimes a new device sparks that optimization.

As a partial demonstration of my system, that screenshot above shows a highlighted / underlined line from Blake's excellent article. That highlight, and any note I scribble along with it, gets automatically pushed into Obsidian along with all my other notes across all mediums. So if I month or year from now I want to find it, I know which database to search.

I'm churning through General Mattis' book right now (I’m confident he envisioned readers consuming his work on a Palma). An early quote in there comes to mind: "If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you."

Reading feels productive because it is productive. From the heady to the inconsequential, what we read shapes us. It activates us. In a way, it becomes us, and we it.

The Palma has helped me reclaim a focus on reading that I haven't felt in quite some time, inching closer to the general's definition of what it takes to be sustained.

And if nothing else, "Boox" is really fun to say. BOOOOOOOOOOX. Go ahead, say it out loud. You won't be disappointed.