Increader works best when you understand how its four core mechanisms fit together.
The reading queue
The reading queue is Increader’s most unique feature. Its purpose is to make it easy to jump back into reading and to ensure that you’ll eventually get through everything you bookmarked. Instead of having to decide what you want to read every time you open the app, you can just click Continue Reading and Increader will open up the bookmark that is next in line.
If you don’t like what the reading queue pulls up (not every situation is suitable for every type of bookmark), there’s no need to force yourself through it. Simply click next in the top right to go to the next item in the queue. The bookmark you skipped will be put back at the end of the queue.
Repeat this until you see something that piques your interest. When you land on something you like, simply start reading.
Sometimes bookmarks are very long, or very complicated, or both. That makes it impractical to read them in a single session. But just as nobody expects you to read a book in a single sitting, Increader does not expect you to read articles in a single sitting either. We think you should only need to read something to the very end if you’re truly enjoying yourself. To solve this issue, we encourage people to read in passes.
Reading in passes
A reading pass is a short session on a single item. You might only read a few paragraphs, make one highlight, and stop. That is normal. Good writing deserves to be read with your full concentration. If your concentration wanes or you get bored, you shouldn’t force yourself to continue. That’s not enjoyable. So just stop. Increader continually saves your reading position so you can leave an article or move on to the next one at any point, without having to remember where you left off.
Since Increader removes all the overhead of picking a bookmark back up, it also does not make a difference how much you read in a single session. A page, a paragraph, a single sentence. Just read as much as you want to and stop as soon as you’re getting bored.
Highlights and annotations
Highlights mark the passages that matter. Annotations explain why they matter.
Together they turn passive reading into active processing. A short note on an important passage is usually more valuable than reading another ten paragraphs on autopilot. So far that’s not a super special feature. You can do those things in an actual book. What makes Increader different is the Review Queue. We noticed that people are often ambitious at highlighting passages, but then never review their annotations. We put all of your highlights into the review queue, where you can revisit them and continue to ponder their insights. We always show you the surrounding context of your highlights, so you can read up on the source material if your annotation did not contain enough context.
Eventually you should decide if something is worth remembering forever. If it is, you can turn it into a Spaced Repetition Card. To learn more about this process, check out our Review Annotations and Create Cards guide.
Spaced repetition
Spaced Repetition is a proven mechanism to effectively remember things forever. A lot of other spaced repetition software exists (you may have heard of Anki), but none of it integrates spaced repetition cards and source material so tightly as Increader does. Increader always remembers where a card originally came from. So you can always return to the original bookmark if your card was ambiguous or you want to read up on its context. To learn more about our spaced repetition system in detail, check out our dedicated guide here: Review Spaced Repetition Cards
Once you understand why and how these four ideas are so tightly coupled in Increader, you’ll be ready to get the most out of it. We’re sure that it will become quite obvious after using it for a while, so we encourage you to just go out and try it.