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An Honest Review of Blinkist
Like many of you, I am a sucker for a good book title.
Mastering the Art of Professional Development: Essential Strategies for Success
The Software Engineer’s Playbook: Proven Strategies for Advancing Your Career
The Trifecta of Success: Achieving Happiness, Health, and Intelligence for a Better Life
(these are ChatGPT-generated because I’m not gifted in the art of naming things)
The optimist in me says “well maybe that book contains a key piece of information that could better my life.” The pessimist in me replies “you’ve read seven books with almost that exact title and after wasting hours reading the book realized that it contained no useful information.” A waste of time and of money.
After cycling between optimism and pessimism for years, I stumbled across Blinkist. In other words, their advertising worked on me. And I’m so glad it did!
I am not paid by Blinkist and I am in no way affiliated with Blinkist. I am simply a happy user of the app who would like others to enjoy its benefits as well.
TL;DR
I will be a long-term user and promoter of Blinkist. Previously, I would spend hundreds of dollars and many hours on books I’m not interested in or I don’t find particularly useful.
Using Blinkist, I can find new books I actually want to read, vet those I’m interested in, and save money NOT buying books that suck.
If you’re a learner, like trying out new topics, and have time to listen to short summary snippets, then you ought to give Blinkist a try.
What is Blinkist?
Blinkist is an app that provides summaries or “blinks” of the most important content from a book. The number and length of the “blinks” do not necessarily correspond to the book length, chapters, or sections. Instead, they are proportional to the amount and complexity of information conveyed by the book.
You can either read the blinks or listen to the audio version of them. I typically listen to them during some downtime in my day. The app has even expanded into new directions like creating collections of books around a single topic, proposing book recommendations for…