Previous tools and systems I’ve been using Inoreader before, but the iOS app can’t be installed on the App Store in China, and I’m too lazy to switch regions, so I’ve been using both Inoreader + Cubox as my reading tools – when I have time, I sift through the articles I want to read and then bookmark the links to Cubox on the web. When I had time, I would sift through the articles I wanted to read on the web, then bookmark the links to Cubox, and then use Cubox to read those articles wherever I was. However, I soon realized that Cubox Pro, which costs 99 RMB per year, is the most expensive app I’ve ever subscribed to, with an average daily cost of ￥0.27. (Other than that, my most expensive subscription is Apple Music, which is about ￥0.2 a day with the college student discount.) Although it doesn’t seem like a big expense, I switched from the ¥99 yearly tickler to Apple’s native Calendar and Reminders, so why would I spend so much money on something as simple as “read later”? So I switched from Cubox to Notion Webclip, which is still free. In fact, before I switched tools, I was secretly uncomfortable with this “search with an RSS reader, then read selected articles in the Read Later app” model, and after I switched, this “uncomfortable” feeling was still there. So I started thinking about why. A big part of it is that ‘picking an article’ is more appealing compared to ‘reading an article’. People secrete more dopamine in the process of ‘anticipation’ than when they are actually doing the thing, which is why it’s so cool to buy things, but most of them go unused after a few times of not using them. The pattern of choosing before reading also creates this problem, where you initially think you’re choosing all the topics you’re interested in, only to be less inclined to read them once they’re in another basket. Ideas for a Solution Now that you’ve identified this problem, let’s figure out how to fix it! Too often, we overcomplicate the design of a system that solves a simple need, creating too much redundancy and inconvenience. My need is simply this: subscribe to the sources I’m interested in, and then pick from them the content I’m actually interested in. Obviously, I’ve set up ‘picking’ as a larger action, or rather, I’ve split what could have been done in one step into two. In my current system, my reading process is to open my RSS reader at regular intervals throughout the day and pick out the articles I want to read; then, when I have time, I read those pre-selected articles. However, I could have spent my free time skimming through the list of new articles in the feed, skipping the ones I didn’t want to read, and then reading on when I came across something I was interested in. What kind of problems does a system that is just slightly more complex bring? Maybe it’s hard to explain it in a few words, but I can present it as a result: there are still 21 unread articles in my Webclip, and a big part of them have been in Webclip for more than a week; since I cut down on my “favorites” habit, I’ve only had one article added to the library in two days, and most of the others have been read directly in the RSS reader or just thrown away because they weren’t interested in me. Most of the others were either read in the RSS reader, or just thrown away because they weren’t interesting. However, Inoreader still doesn’t work well, and I’ve tried Feedly before, but I don’t have a client that works in China. The key is that there’s no client that works in China. And the RSS readers I can use on iOS don’t have free native full-platform synchronization. I’ve tried Follow, but I don’t have an invite code, and I don’t need all the fancy subscription feeds, so putting my social media feeds in an RSS reader would be pretty messy …… (but I can’t really say, after all, I’ve never used it). And Follow doesn’t solve my biggest pain point – I need the iOS app, and the reading experience on the iPad is so much better compared to the desktop app.