The internet has been called “the information super highway”. We have ready and easy access to the sum of the world’s knowledge. In many ways this is an incredible tool. But the sheer quantity of information out there is difficult to digest. Research has shown that the average adult spends as much as 20 hours online per week,[1] and in each second of that we are bombarded by information. We aren’t designed to receive so much information like this, so we are overwhelmed.
There is so much information out there that the good and useful information can be easily drowned out by information and articles that we have no use for. It’s easy to find yourself going through articles which prove to not be worth your time. Other times, even useful articles may be presented in ways that are difficult to read. Which in turn affects their ultimate usefulness.
What you need is a system that allows you to efficiently keep track of useful information and articles, and have them quickly accessible and easy to read. This would mean that you would no longer be distracted by useless information in order to find what you need again.
Such system exists and it’s an app called Instapaper.
Make Reading Easy and Focus
Instapaper allows you to easily store articles and text from the internet for future reading. What’s more, the text is immediately formatted into an easy to read manner. There is even a text to speech function that allows the text to be read to you.
1. Save any form of online text
Though in this piece, I’ve mostly focused on articles, Instapaper allows you to save any form of online information. So whether you want to save the lyrics to your favorite songs, great recipes, poetry, short stories, or news pieces, Instapaper allows you to create your own library of useful information.
2. Highlight and comment
Sometimes merely reading a piece isn’t enough, at times you might need to highlight particular sections or sentences of a text for future reference, some times you might need to make a comment about a section. This can be crucial if the pieces you are reading are for work or study.
Instapaper allows you to highlight and make comment to any part of your texts, ensuring both that you save time, and the pieces you store are useful as possible for you.
3. Easy customization
There is no such thing as a universal standard for readability. In fact, everyone differs. Some people like to read off white backgrounds, others like to read of brown backgrounds. Some people prefer one font, while others prefer another. The developers of Instapaper are apparently well aware of this, and I was pleased to see that it comes with a great many customization options.
You can easily change the font, text size, brightness, background color and even line spacing with ease. Thus, ensuring you will be able to read in a way that suits your preferences.
How to Get Instapaper
Instapaper has won a number of industry awards and has been featured in leading magazines such as Time, and Wired. So it is well worth the download.
There are download options for both IOS devices and Andriod devices, and it is even available as an extension for Web browsers like Firefox and Chrome. So whatever your preference, you can get it.
Best of all, of all, once you have saved the articles you want, you can access them both online and offline, so you will be able to access them at any time. Even if you are high in the sky or underground.
