Blinkist Conrete use cases
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Content preparation
I noticed through many observations in user interviews and conversations with friends and relatives that many started using Blinkist but do not leverage it’s full potential. I run an experiment to learn about my usage. As employee at Blinkist, I’m given a free Blinkist access too. But I decided to also have my own paid account. This way I can understand, if I get enough value from it through my usage and can get much better in a users perspective. Let me share some of my behaviors I build over years of using Blinkist to inspire you to extend your use cases and get more benefits too.
1) Make a time investment decsision For me Blinkist became the first option when I discover a non fiction book and want to know more about. I discover many new books, while reading articles, while watching presentations and especially while reading other books. As time is limited I need to control my appetite and be very selective in what books I want to invest a full deep dive. So I first search in Blinkist for the title and read through the key insights. I already take highlights and integrate these highlights to my Second Brain. If I discovered really new insights and want to dive deeper, then I also buy the book. This read to buy ratio is about 20:1. The use case is to make a more informed time investment decision.
2) Support my research and wide range learning on a topic A second strong use case I observed is for cross topic learning. When I’m designing our Leadership group coaching sessions, I also embed two Blinks that connect well to the topic of the course. In addition I can also extend my insights on the topic, find exercises, get multiple perspectives and with a time invest of some hours I can scan many key insights, often from more than 10 books. I take highlights in each books and export these highlights to my Second Brain. This way I can then rediscover and leverage a lot of my already existing knowledge. A small world for each new session appears and reading through Blinks adds a component of inspiration and discovery. And this experience is deeper and different from working with ChatGPT for this use case. (although I need to dive deeper to analyzing the difference here)
3) Getting inspired on further content for a topic Another use case is getting inspired. I love playing with Blinkist AI (available in the Web version and you automatically have the web version when you use the Blinkist app. I put the link in the comments too). I just put the topic I’m interested in there and get 3 recommendations. And often I discover interesting titles that I can scan through right away. And the benefit of Blinkist AI is that it has access to all the Blinks available and can provide a more advanced match than AI alternatives that so far have no access to the real books or such extended book summaries).
4) Spent my time meaningfully when traveling by car Blinkist is my companion when I’m on a longer car ride. For such traveling activities I actively prepare a Blinkist space and add titles that I want to listen too. I find it fascinating how time flies and how one can listen and explore new topics. Sometimes I also just follow the recommendation flow from Blinkist to have more random discoveries. And it became much better with that recently. My reward in that situation is the feeling of having spent time well. Especially in a car, where one only has limited engagement capabilities.
5) Sharing insights with others I love having Blinkist Spaces that allow me to share titles with others, without the need for them to have a paid Blinkist account too. That makes connecting on a topic so much easier. Although I observe that some do not yet follow through. I guess that often relates to not fully understanding that one can really access that shared content for free.
So in summary, I established several behaviors over the years of using Blinkist, where I really have an added value and my own subscription pays off.
Link to my post about 10 features of Blinkist
Posted on LINKEDIN on 2024-02-09_Fri
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