Obtaining information has never been easier. The internet puts it all right at your fingertips, be it on your computer, your phone, or your tablet, and there is so much to read, watch, or view that we become increasingly distracted with each new visit to the web. There is an inherent compulsion to bounce around from one interesting tidbit to another. How often have you signed on with the sole intention of reading your “newsfeed” for a few minutes, only to find yourself hours later watching a favorite 20-year-old comedy video and thinking, “How did I get here?”
Accessibility often leads to distractibility, and we have become a society dependent upon a cliff-notes of cliff-notes, bouncing from one condensed digest to the next.
We’ve blogged before about the need to carve out distraction-free time for reading; time away from the constant skimming and skipping. So what’s the best way to store digital content that you want to save for later?
Many apps and browsers offer the capability of adding website links to their exclusive reading lists. But having multiple lists you need to access is less efficient than storing all the content you want to save for later in one place. Luckily, there are many different “read it later” apps that allow you store links from a variety of other places, right from within the app on your mobile device. Many of these also have browser extensions so you can save things from your computer as well.
One such “read it later” app we tested is Pocket (previously known as “Read it Later”). Pocket is available on a wide variety of platforms: Android, iOS (Apple), Blackberry, Kindle Fire, OS X (Mac), Windows, and others. Installed as an app on your mobile device or an extension on your computer’s browser, Pocket allows you to add links to content that you want to reference later, from videos to articles and even images. Once these are stored in Pocket, you can share them with others (via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Buffer), tag them for better organization, or mark them as a favorite. You can also archive the links or simply delete them once you’ve reviewed the content. Best of all, Pocket is free! (There is a premium version available for power users who may want to store permanent copies of articles, or use advanced searches and tags.)
So how do you get started?
- Create a Pocket account at getpocket.com using your email address or your Google or Firefox account if you have one.
- Install the Pocket browser extension on your computer’s web browser. Pocket is available for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Yandex.
- Download the app on your mobile device(s). Pocket is available for a number of devices, including Android, iPhone/iPad, Kindle Fire, and Kobo.
- Start saving to Pocket from your computer or device, and have your content available to you wherever you go.
- Visit Pocket’s Help Center for everything you need to know.
Now all you need to do is set aside a distraction-free block of time to read and review all the articles and videos you have saved for later!