I recently went through my RSS backlog and inbox where articles, blog posts, and emails are constantly piling up, which is fine for me, since I have a personally curated place of all sorts of topics tailored to my interests, where I can choose on my own time to read through stuff, and discover new things and ideas. So, while doing that recently, I stumbled across a post from Ivaylo Durmonski, who is writing Farview, a newsletter fostering long-term thinking in a world driven by impatience. This specific newsletter issue of Farview was written around the question of "At what point does piling up resources to read/watch becomes a problem?". I felt aimed at, as I scooped out this newsletter from my very own pile of resources to read.

What a coincidence, right?

What Ivaylo Durmonski is pointing out in his newsletter is that a lot of people are suffering of the Collector's Fallacy, as they believe that they need more resources to solve their problems, when the reality is that they simply need to do more with the knowledge they already have. I agree with that. I keep adding more and more articles I want to read to Readwise Reader, and my backlog continues to grow. At the same time, I am working with all the information I have hoarded over time. Opening up my RSS feed or read-it-later backlog feels like grabbing a book from my shelve, as I decide to what read next. And when I am finished with an article or blog post, I usually search for similar ones, especially when the one I just read led to new writing ideas for my own projects.

So, again I felt aimed at, as Ivaylo Durmonski further points out that more content introduces you to even more content, which leads to even more content, and while you might feel like you are making progress as you consume the content, no actual progress is made until you do something with the information you have gathered from all the consumed resources, as Ivaylo Durmonski continues. And this is where I stop agreeing with the points he made. I do not consume articles, blog posts, books, videos, podcasts because I feel the need to do something with the information I have consumed, most of the time I do that for pure joy and entertainment. The moment you realize that, I believe you do get into a way more healthy relationship with the way you are consuming content. It is not all about consuming to create, and being creative. You can just consume for fun, joy, and entertainment, and do that without feeling any guilt.

When I do stumble across something I would like to work on, a topic I would like to write about, I do expose myself to more content around the same topic, I explore my personal notes, my highlights, and the articles and blog posts I have already saved to Readwise Reader. To me, this is also the main reason I actually capture notes and highlights from what I am reading, as well as saving numerous articles and blog posts which are sitting in my backlog, since I want to expand on the topics I am consuming, I want to remember it or even create my own posts from it (but in general, I am also just consuming for pure entertainment and joy).

My process of doing that feels a bit rigid: Saving articles and blog posts to Readwise Reader, capturing highlights there which then sync to Readwise, adding the article or blog post to Capacities where I process it and add my notes in order to make connections and spark some thoughts and ideas for whatever I am planning to create. Besides that, I am stumbling across a lot of stuff online, which usually goes into Raindrop, where I manage all my bookmarks.

So, when I am planning to write a post about a specific topic it needs checking different places, Capacities, Readwise Reader, Readwise, and Raindrop. Surely I should not add another app to those, right? But what about replacing some of them, or better said, using them more purposefully?

I have overcome shiny-app-syndrom already a while ago, nevertheless, I keep following the development of specific apps just for pure interest. One of them is Sublime. I have been following Sari Azout, the founder of Sublime, for quite some time already, as she is writing a great newsletter called Check your Pulse (unfortunately on Subtack). The first time she mentioned Sublime, I immediately added it to my bookmarks (ha, I know, I am hoarding information). Initially, there was only some vague information about what Sublime will be, but fast-forward to today, and Sublime is open to everyone, and it even offers a free-forever plan to explore and test it out. Lovely.

Although, I have been following Sublime for a while, I have never really tried it out, I mean initially it was only available for paying subscribers, but even after adding the free forever version, I did not immediately jump at it (see, I really managed to cure shiny-app-syndrom). But at the same time I realized more and more that the way how I am processing all the stuff I am consuming feels a bit clunky, and especially when I am into a specific topic it feels like I have to navigate through loads of obstacles, a video by Anna Howard, who creates the Wild Geese podcast, got swilled into my timeline. In that video, she extensively talks about her process and system to go from research to creation, how to deal with lack of concentration, how to let your curiosity free, how to research to improve your writing, and how she is using, you guessed it, Sublime during all those processes.

Here is what got me intrigued: now, let us just say I discovered a post in my backlog in Readwise Reader, I read it, I capture some highlights within Readwise Reader, which are then synced to Readwise. I add the post to Capacities as an object, copy over the highlights from Readwise, and start adding my notes to them. While doing that, some notes spark creativity and the idea for a new post. Therefore, I search through my own notes in Capacities to find related ones, I open up Readwise Reader again to search for related articles I could read or have already read, and then I manually check Readwise for more related highlights I might have captured in the past. Reading those posts, capturing those highlights, and adding my notes is what I like to call seeding for creativity. Ultimately, I am looking to have a constant stream of inspiration, a way to expand on my ideas. And while I enjoy the above outlined process, it is time-consuming. Now, I am not looking for any shortcuts, but a way to make more out of the things I save, turn those ideas into a universe of inspiration, and go from curation and research to creation more efficiently.

And this is where Sublime comes in.

Sublime is not designed to replace your note-taking app, it is not designed to be your new read-it-later app, it is a great app to go beyond bookmarking to build a living library of connected ideas, or extend tools like Readwise to make more out of your highlights and connect, retrieve, discover, and create with your knowledge with ease. It is not just about capturing and bookmarking, it is about capturing, connecting, and creating ideas. As you fill Sublime with links, articles, quotes, videos, etc. Sublime will instantly resurface related ideas from other people's libraries. So, there is a social component to Sublime. You can save bits and pieces privately, but if you save them publicly, you and others can play with your ideas and discover new connections.

To me, Sublime perfectly fits into my idea of seeding for creativity. It has a Readwise integration, which means I was able to bring over all my highlights I have captured with Readwise so far, but thanks to Sublime, I was instantly able to see related ideas and concepts as part of this public knowledge archive. While I will continue to use Readwise Reader and Readwise when it comes to reading and capturing highlights, I can see how I can benefit from adding Sublime to my toolstack in order to benefit from Sublime's communal discovery, rich search capabilities, and features to create new ideas and posts from what I am saving. It is a more purposeful way, a more efficient way to work with all the highlights that have been accumulating within Readwise. I can see how this would shift my focus from collecting to creating.

I am excited to give Sublime a try, explore the app and its capabilites, but especially see how the idea of using it to seed for creativity works out over the upcoming weeks and months.

I will keep you posted.