I have a couple of questions for you. Are you someone who likes to save articles to read later? If so, how do you do it? Do you simply save them as bookmarks in your browser? Or, are you someone, like me, who uses an app that’s specifically designed for this purpose? Additionally, how do you feel about the rate in which you are consuming this content that you have saved? Does it feel like an abyss that you never go back to? Or, have you made it an important part of your life? When it comes to the last major question, I would say that I am in the abyss camp, and it is one reason why I conducted a User Experience (UX) Case Study that explored whether there were other people who encountered the same problem while using the first major player in this space, i.e. Read-It-Later / Pocket. I believe I have found the answer, and it has to do with your mindset.

Now, we are all busy living our lives. Not all of us have commutes where we can just read something while we are waiting to get to our destination. However, what’s a common time and place where we could choose to read something from our read-it-later lists? Two places come to mind, i.e. (1) when you are out eating lunch (2) when you are on your couch after you get off work. I’ll focus on the second option. When we hit our couch, we just want to chill out after a long day. But, does this situation instill an interest in reading from your list of saved articles? Unless that activity is important to you, you will likely need to use an app to help you along.

One app that does a great job at doing this is called Sofa, and it calls itself the “Downtime Organizer.” It was originally just for saving things like movies, tv shows, and video games. However, with its latest update, you can save whatever you want to it, ex. articles, apps, links, music albums, and totally custom object types. I was originally using Readwise Reader at the start of this year, but now I only use it to follow RSS and Newsletter feeds. I have moved the activity of saving articles for later to Sofa, and I have started to engage with saved articles more often than I was in the past. I love how Sofa is my treasure trove of things that I want to do when I’m winding down every day.

Now, one problem that Sofa has is that it is only available for iOS. If you use Android, I recommend that you create a custom shortcut that points to the app that you are currently using to save articles for later. I would call it Sofa and see if you can find an icon, like the one that Sofa uses. I haven’t used the app that is mentioned in the video, but I suggest that you follow the instructions that are laid out in the following video in order to learn how to create a custom shortcut to an app on your phone: 🍖 how to change app icons using shortcut maker app - simple and easy

So far, this approach has helped me make more progress in getting through the articles that I have saved for later. I hope you experience the same thing.