Little Helpers: Pocket
Have you ever found yourself wanting to check the weather forecast quickly, doing a short detour to Facebook, and ending up finding all these interesting articles that you’re starting to read although you don’t really have the time for them just now? Well, you could just bookmark them, but then you’d have to have some kind of system of bookmark folders or labels to find them again later. I did have that, but it wasn’t great and always took some effort to place the URL somewhere where I’d find it again (if I even remembered to look for it later). One place for all the stuff that you want to read later would be really useful, wouldn’t it?
I found that place. It is called Pocket (click), one of the most helpful little programs that I have been using to procrastinate less. When I found it a few years back it was called ReadMeLater which gives you a hint of what it does. Pocket is a reader program that saves interesting articles (mainly) but also websites or videos for you with one click for later reading (or watching), and it formats them very nicely into easily readable texts without advertisements or anything that is irrelevant to the article in question. Whenever you find yourself stumbling over an interesting article that you don’t really have the time for just now you just move it with one click (in your browser bar) into your Pocket where it remains until you can either give it your full attention (in your lunch break) or you decide that it isn’t worth reading after all and remove it from your Pocket with another click.
I find that with using Pocket, I get sidetracked much less and for shorter periods, but what I like most is the nice format that gets rid of all the other elements which distract from the article. What is left is the title, the author, when and where it was published, the article, and maybe pictures. For comparison, here is an interesting article about the Scottish independence vote as found on Economist.com (click):
I found that place. It is called Pocket (click), one of the most helpful little programs that I have been using to procrastinate less. When I found it a few years back it was called ReadMeLater which gives you a hint of what it does. Pocket is a reader program that saves interesting articles (mainly) but also websites or videos for you with one click for later reading (or watching), and it formats them very nicely into easily readable texts without advertisements or anything that is irrelevant to the article in question. Whenever you find yourself stumbling over an interesting article that you don’t really have the time for just now you just move it with one click (in your browser bar) into your Pocket where it remains until you can either give it your full attention (in your lunch break) or you decide that it isn’t worth reading after all and remove it from your Pocket with another click.
I find that with using Pocket, I get sidetracked much less and for shorter periods, but what I like most is the nice format that gets rid of all the other elements which distract from the article. What is left is the title, the author, when and where it was published, the article, and maybe pictures. For comparison, here is an interesting article about the Scottish independence vote as found on Economist.com (click):
Found the article? Hint: You can’t even see it as it hides in the bottom left corner of the screen under the picture. Now compare this to the Pocket version below.
There are some extra features which might be useful for some, such as variable font size, tags, archiving, folders, etc., but I only ever use its main functionality: putting articles in there for later reading, reading them later before I discard them.
Comments