A silo of wisdom
We read really good books and we highlight the snippets that resonate with us. And then those highlights… sit. They live in a beautiful repository – just not in the place where our thinking, planning and work actually happen.
A highlight’s value isn’t just in being collected; it’s in being put to work where you think. For you and I, that’s in WorkFlowy.
The bridge
Over the years, I’ve spent way too much time extracting book highlights from Amazon Kindle and formatting them in WorkFlowy – so that I could squeeze out every drop of worth. I mean, there’s a reason we highlight snippets in the books we read, right?
So I decided to create a Chrome extension, Readwise Anywhere, that streamlines getting your Readwise book highlights into WorkFlowy. You can install the extension in Chromium browsers, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi.
I’m not a Readwise user—I read on Kindle—but I use Readwise simply as a connecting app to get my book highlights into WorkFlowy. You can do the same whether you read books via Kindle, Google Play Books, Apple Books, etc.
All you do is connect the platform you read books on to Readwise, and you’re good to go: you can then use the Readwise Anywhere Chrome extension to grab all your highlights from any specific book you have in mind.
While in WorkFlowy, you just:
- Search for a book via the extension
- Click on the book you want to copy the highlights from
- Paste straight into the canvas where your projects and notes already live
No tab-hopping, no mental context switching.
Why book highlights are brain fuel
A clipped web page is conducive to hoarding…
… while a set of book highlights is different: it’s already been filtered as you read your book.
In my thinking, that makes book highlights second only to my own notes and journal entries – exactly the kind of material I want living close to my work.
Turning highlights into forward momentum
When your highlights land in WorkFlowy, you get to leverage them:
- Your highlights are accessible: they become a living, searchable cache of highly relevant thoughts.
- Your projects get context: instead of keeping inspiration buried in an app somewhere, in WorkFlowy you can mirror the snippets that inform your next steps into a project node.
- Your journaling gets an upgrade: pull a line or two from a book into today’s entry. Reflect on it for a few seconds and work it into your writing. It may very well spark a better line of thought or questions.
- Your insight becomes action: often, my book highlights have been the catalyst for many a “next action”, as I mirror them into my timeline.
- Run your highlights through AI: you can use WorkFlowy’s AI to surface patterns, suggest actions, or pose better questions – if you point it to the collective highlights from a specific book. You’ll find surprising connections can be made.
P.S. The video below shows the moving parts: opening the extension anywhere, a quick search, and dropping your book highlights into WorkFlowy.
Thank you so much Frank! This is so helpful.
I am a readwise reader user. I wish this extension can also support extracting highlights from articles in readwise as well.
I will think about extracting article highlights too!
And also tweets highlights if possible. I mean… bascially all highlights in Readwise. Thanks!
Thanks, Frank. This is incredibly helpful and will save me a lot of frustration and effort. I really appreciate the way you’ve approached this. Being able to pull a specific book as needed is a game-changer, especially since having an overwhelming amount of lifetime highlights can create more noise than clarity.
I can see myself using a similar approach you did with the highlight tag by filtering notes, particularly by the notes I add for title highlights (.h1) and subtitles (.h2). It makes it much easier to refine and adjust the format quickly. Thanks again for your effort on this—it’s much appreciated.
You’re very welcome, Jose! Glad this can make a difference 🙂
Et si on n’utilise par Chromium…?
Hi David. This is not an official WorkFlowy tool. It’s something I personally put together. One solution might be to temporarily use a Chromium browser to import your highlights and then move back to your non-Chromium browser.
It’s good, but what I’d really like is an extension that automatically synchs my Readwise collection in Workflowy, a la Tana.
Yep, I thought about doing that initially. I decided not to…
However… if enough people would like to sync the whole bang shoot, I may build that in too. It’s just a LOT of bullets 😬. I’m taking on the role of The Catcher in the Rye… saving people from themselves. I’m now heading to the mall to see if there are any new cuss words I can erase from the bathroom stalls.
¿Does it require a paid subscription to Readwise service?
Nope. Just create an account > connect to your reading service > grab your Readwise API Token and pop it into the box in the options menu, like you see in the video.
Extraordinario !!! Chicos, así como van los lanzamientos no me extrañaría que lleguen a Marte antes que el señor Musk
🚀