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Here’s a question that sounds philosophical but turns out to be empirically testable:

When you highlight a sentence in an article, how much of that decision is you — and how much is just... what any reader would do?

We’ve been sitting on this question at Glasp for a while. We have millions of highlights from hundreds of thousands of readers. And recently, we decided to stop speculating and start measuring.

The answer surprised us. And it has implications for how we think about personalization, AI, and the future of reading itself.

The Experiment

We designed what researchers call a “co-readership identity control.” The setup is simple:

Take a document that multiple Glasp users have highlighted. Now ask: given a user’s highlighting history, can we predict which highlights in that document are theirs versus someone else’s?

If highlighting is deeply personal — a fingerprint of your mind — then yes, your history should predict your marks. If highlighting is mostly shared (we all find the same things important), then one reader’s history should predict another reader’s highlights just as well.

We ran this experiment at two “altitudes”:

1. Document selection: Which articles do you choose to read?

2. Sentence selection: Within an article, which sentences do you highlight?

The results were asymmetric — and fascinating.

Finding #1: Your Individuality Lives in Selection

At the document level, your reading history does predict what you’ll read next. We measured an “identity gap” of +0.12 to +0.17 — meaning your own history is a meaningfully better predictor of your future reads than another reader’s history.

This signal is real. It survived every robustness check we threw at it. And it held up even when we used “hard negatives” — documents on the same topic that you didn’t read, making the test much stricter.

But here’s the nuance: the signal is modest and topic-dominated. Most of what makes your reading history predictive is your interests — the topics you return to. Not some deeper stylistic fingerprint. Not a unique cognitive signature. Just... what you’re curious about.

This aligns with something Austin Kleon writes in Show Your Work!: “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.” Your reading selections are a form of self-expression — but it’s expression through curation, not creation.

What Is This “Individuality” Made Of?

We wanted to go deeper. If your reading history predicts your future reads, what exactly is doing the predicting? Is it some deep cognitive style — a preference for conclusions over introductions, for quantitative claims over anecdotes? Or is it simply... your interests?

To find out, we ran a “topic decomposition.” Instead of comparing you to a random other reader, we compared you to your topically-nearest peer — someone whose reading history overlaps most with yours in subject matter.

The result was striking: the identity gap shrank by about 8x when the comparison peer was topic-matched.

In other words, most of what makes your reading history “yours” is the topics you return to. Not a unique highlighting style. Not a cognitive fingerprint. Just... what you’re curious about.

This might sound deflating — “I’m just my interests?” — but we think it’s actually liberating. Your curiosity is your signature. The rabbit holes you go down, the questions you keep asking, the threads you keep pulling — that’s the individuality that shows up in your data.

A thin residual does survive even against a near-topic-twin (about +0.026 in our measurement). We can’t tell if this is a genuine “style” signal or just finer-grained topic we couldn’t capture. But either way, it’s small. The main story is clear: your individuality in selection is mostly stable thematic preference.

Finding #2: Within a Document, We’re All the Same

Here’s where it gets humbling.

At the sentence level — which sentences you highlight within an article — the personal signal nearly vanishes. The identity gap drops to +0.017. That’s almost nothing.

What does this mean? It means that when two people read the same article, they highlight remarkably similar sentences. The “salience” — what feels important, what deserves a yellow mark — is shared.

This isn’t a flaw in the data. It’s a feature of human cognition. We are social animals. We evolved to attend to similar things. When a sentence contains a key insight, a surprising claim, or a memorable turn of phrase, most readers notice it.

David Perell calls writing a “Serendipity Vehicle” — a way to send ideas into the world and see who resonates. Our data suggests the reverse is also true: reading is a convergence vehicle. We converge on what matters.

Finding #3: Personalized AI Doesn’t Beat the Basics

We didn’t stop at measurement. We also tested whether personalization could be useful.

Imagine a feature: you open a new article, and an AI pre-highlights the sentences you would probably mark, based on your history. A personalized auto-highlight. Sounds useful, right?

We built a two-stage system to test this:

• Stage 1: An impersonal model proposes candidate sentences (the ones “a typical reader” would highlight).

• Stage 2: A personal model re-ranks those candidates based on your highlighting history.

The result? Personal re-ranking didn’t help. In fact, it performed worse than just trusting the impersonal Stage 1 order.

And here’s the kicker: the Stage 1 model — a state-of-the-art LLM, including frontier models like GPT-5.5 — couldn’t even beat a trivial “lead baseline.” That’s just ranking sentences by their position in the document: first sentences first.

Let that sink in. A frontier AI model, asked to predict what humans would highlight, performed worse than “just read the beginning of each paragraph.”

We tested this carefully. The lead baseline — simply ranking earlier sentences higher — achieved an average precision of 0.237. The LLM? Around 0.22–0.25, depending on the model. The lead baseline also beat the user’s own highlighting history as a predictor (0.185). Knowing which sentences come first in each paragraph predicts what you’ll highlight better than knowing your entire reading history.

But here’s what’s interesting: the crowd still beats the lead baseline decisively (+0.103 in average precision). So the crowd isn’t just picking up on document structure — it’s capturing something more. Real human attention, aggregated.

This isn’t a failure of AI. It’s a revelation about salience. Human attention is governed by structural cues — position, paragraph breaks, topic sentences — that are so fundamental they’re hard to beat. LLMs can summarize, but they don’t see documents the way readers do. They don’t have the embodied experience of scanning a page, of eyes drawn to the opening line of a section, of attention flagging in the middle and reviving at the end.

Finding #4: A Few Dozen Highlights Is Enough

One practical question: how much history do you need before your “individuality” becomes visible?

We ran a scaling analysis, varying the number of past highlights used to build a user’s profile from 1 to 100. The answer: a few dozen highlights is enough. After that, more history doesn’t help.

At K=1 (just one past highlight), the model’s predictive power is already above chance. By K=20, you’ve captured about two-thirds of the maximum signal. By K=60, the curve plateaus — adding more highlights from 60 to 100 makes no measurable difference.

This is good news for new users: you don’t need years of history to have a meaningful profile. A month of active highlighting is probably enough.

But it’s also a ceiling. Unlike the crowd — whose predictive accuracy keeps rising as more readers contribute — your individual signal maxes out quickly. The crowd is data-hungry; your individuality is data-cheap.

This asymmetry reinforces our main finding: the path to better predictions isn’t deeper individual modeling. It’s broader aggregation.

Why This Matters for Glasp

At Glasp, we’ve always believed in the power of social highlighting. This research gives us the science behind the intuition.

1. Popular Highlights aren’t noise. They’re signal.

When you see “87 people highlighted this sentence,” you’re not seeing groupthink. You’re seeing collective salience — the distilled attention of many minds. Our data shows that this shared layer is the layer. It’s where the information lives.

This is why we invested in Popular Highlights as a core feature. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a knowledge primitive.

2. Personalization has a ceiling.

The tech industry has spent a decade promising hyper-personalization: feeds tailored to you, recommendations that know you better than you know yourself. Our research suggests this promise has limits — at least in reading.

Your “you-ness” shows up in what you choose to read. But once you’re inside a document, you’re not that different from other readers. The personal residual is a whisper.

This doesn’t mean personalization is useless. It means it belongs at the selection layer — helping you discover what to read next — not at the salience layer, trying to guess which sentences you’d mark.

3. Aggregation beats personalization.

If individual signals are modest and salience is shared, then the path to better reading tools isn’t deeper models of you. It’s better aggregation of everyone.

This is the Glasp thesis in a nutshell: your highlights, combined with millions of others, create something no individual can produce alone. A collectively annotated web. A living marginalia. What we call the “Chain of Readers.”

swyx talks about “learning exhaust” — the byproduct of learning in public. Highlights are reading exhaust. And when you aggregate reading exhaust at scale, you get a map of human attention.

The Limits of What We Found

A few caveats, because intellectual honesty matters:

• Our population is self-selected. Glasp users are not “readers in general.” They’re people who install a highlighting tool. The results describe social highlighting on a co-readership platform.

• Topic dominates the signal. Most of the predictive power in your reading history is your interests, not some deeper cognitive style. We couldn’t cleanly separate “topic” from “non-thematic style.”

• The LLM result is zero-shot. We didn’t fine-tune or prompt-engineer. A heavily optimized model might do better. But the point stands: off-the-shelf AI isn’t a shortcut to human salience.

What This Means for You

If you’re a Glasp user, here’s the practical takeaway:

Trust the crowd. When you see a sentence that dozens of people highlighted, it’s probably worth your attention. That’s not conformity — it’s signal.

Your selections matter. The articles you choose, the topics you return to, the rabbit holes you go down — that’s where your individuality expresses itself. Your Glasp profile isn’t just a log. It’s a portrait.

Highlight freely. Don’t worry about whether your highlights are “unique.” They don’t need to be. They’re your contribution to a collective layer that benefits everyone.

And if you’re building AI tools for reading? Our research suggests a counterintuitive direction: don’t personalize harder. Aggregate better.

Conclusion

We set out to measure where individuality lives in reading. The answer: it lives in selection, not salience.

What you read is personal. Which sentences you highlight is shared. And the path to smarter reading isn’t deeper personalization — it’s better aggregation of the collective.

This is what Glasp is for. Not to build a mirror of you, but to weave your highlights into a tapestry of us.

📄 Read the full paper: Selection, Not Salience: The Shape and Limits of Personalization in Social Highlighting

📄 Background reading: This paper builds on our earlier work, Personal Salience: Highlighting Is Social, but Individuality Lives in Selection, which first identified where individuality surfaces in highlighting behavior.

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The room is quiet. The people you love are nearby, or have already gone ahead of you. You have weeks, maybe days. You are clear enough to think but tired enough to be honest. And in that quiet, you begin to do what almost everyone, at this stage of a life, ends up doing: you look back, and you ask whether it meant anything.

This is the question every philosophy, every religion, every spiritual tradition has tried to prepare us for. It is the question that knowledge work, modern productivity, and most of how we spend our days do almost nothing to help us answer. And it is the only question that, in the end, will matter to you.

What will be the answer?

For eight years, the Australian palliative nurse Bronnie Ware sat with people exactly in that room. She kept a quiet record of what they said. Her book — The Top Five Regrets of the Dying — has now been translated into more than thirty languages, because the pattern she found turned out to be the same everywhere.

People nearing death rarely regret what they failed to achieve. They regret what they failed to express, who they failed to stay close to, what they failed to give. They wished they had been honest while there was still time. They wished they had let themselves be known.

But Ware’s quieter observation came from the other side of her work. Not everyone she sat with died in regret. Some — without fanfare, without drama — died at peace. And what they had in common was not wealth, or completed ambitions, or anything the world would call success. It was something stranger and simpler.

They could trace, from their lives into other lives, small lines of inheritance. A daughter carrying forward a kindness. A friend who had been changed by knowing them. A student who would remember the lesson. They had, somewhere along the way, given something to someone — and they knew it.

The people who reach the end at peace, Ware noticed, are the ones who can quietly answer yes to one question:

Did something of me reach somebody else?

This isn’t a soft observation. It is one of the most consistent findings in the psychology of adult development.

Erik Erikson, studying how human beings change across the entire lifespan, identified what he called generativity — the deep human need, especially in the second half of life, to feel we have given something to those who come after us. Without it, he warned, the final stage of life is despair. With it, we arrive at what he called integrity — the quiet ability to look back and accept that one’s life was, in fact, one’s own.

Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and watched others around him decide to live or die, came to the same conclusion through darker means. What separated those who endured from those who gave up was not strength. The people who survived were the ones who, even in hell, could still picture themselves as the kind of person they wanted to be on the other side.

Other researchers — studying centenarians, ordinary retirees, people who reach old age in good spirits across vastly different cultures — keep returning to the same finding: those who live longest, and die most peacefully, have a quiet, durable sense of being needed.

The pattern is everywhere. It does not depend on accomplishment, or income, or whether anyone outside your immediate orbit ever knew your name. At ninety, looking back, the question is not what you built. The question is whether anything of you traveled.

Glasp Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This presents a quiet problem for people who live mostly inside their own minds.

You read constantly. You think constantly. You learn things that, in another century, would have made you a scholar. But almost none of it leaves your head. The book you found life-changing in March is a vague impression by November. The careful thinking you did this week will reach almost no one outside the room you did it in. You are deeply generative by nature — but you cannot see your generativity.

And so a particular kind of reader arrives at sixty, at seventy, at eighty, with a strange and specific dread: I read a thousand books. I thought a thousand thoughts. I cannot point to a single one that lives in another person.

This is, we think, one of the silent griefs of intellectual life today. And it is exactly the grief that Bronnie Ware’s peaceful patients had managed to avoid.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about marking a page as a small act of fidelity to your future self — proof that you were here, paying attention.

But the same mark, without your intending it, also makes something else visible to anyone who happens to see it. It shows the way you read.

Not just what you read. Not just what you thought of it. How you read — what made you stop, what you went back to, what you couldn’t quite let go of, what you came at slowly. The texture and seriousness of your attention. The shape of your curiosity, sustained over years.

You were not performing this. You were just reading. But what your reading looked like — the patience, the consistency, the quiet care — is, in the end, often far more interesting to other readers than the books themselves.

This is, in Uchimura Kanzō’s framework, the noble life part. The way you lived as a reader, made plain by the marks you left without performing, for no one in particular.

The peaceful patients Bronnie Ware sat with were not strategic about their lives. They had simply followed what called them, paid attention as it called, stayed honest about what moved them. None of it was done for posterity. None of it was even done for any specific person who might one day need it. It was just how they lived.

What they discovered, slowly, was that how they had lived had been useful to other people.

Their kindness was useful. Their seriousness was useful. The texture of their attention was useful. People around them — and sometimes strangers — would say things like the way you read that book changed how I read it. The way you kept asking questions about that subject made me want to ask. The way you stayed patient with that difficult writer taught me to stay patient. These reports came back, unsolicited, over years.

They were not being told that they had given the right gift, or said the right thing, or made the right contribution. They were being told that their way of being had been good for somebody else.

That is the report a person can carry into their final weeks without flinching.

This is, we think, what Glasp is quietly for.

The acronym we sometimes spell out — Greatest Legacy Accumulated as Shared Proof — was never about engineering a legacy. A legacy you engineer is the kind Uchimura warned us about: bequests of money, monuments to oneself, displays of accomplishment. He thought the most universal legacy — the one available to anyone, regardless of station — was something far quieter: a life well lived, made visible.

What Glasp holds is the small evidence of such a life. Not the work you composed for the world. Not the things you achieved. Just what you marked when nobody was watching, over years, because something held your attention.

When that record becomes visible — when another reader finds the line you once stopped at and uses it to find her own line — she is not learning a fact from you. She is encountering a way of reading. She is inheriting a posture. And sometimes, slowly, something of that posture becomes part of how she lives, too.

You did not do this for her. You did it because the sentence held you. But it reached her anyway. And the way you had been living your reading life — patiently, curiously, honestly, year after year — turned out, without your having planned any of it, to have been useful.

Some of the time, you will hear about it.

A reader will write to say your notes carried her through a difficult chapter. A friend will mention that the way you paid attention to a particular writer changed how she paid attention. A student will, years later, say the way you read that book made me want to read more carefully.

When that arrives, it is not the satisfaction of having helped. It is something rarer and more precise.

It is the report that the way you lived your reading life was a way of living worth inheriting.

The peaceful patients had received this report, over decades, in small doses. They had not lived for the purpose of receiving it. They had just lived — paid attention, stayed curious, taken books and people seriously. And the living, it turned out, had reached people. And the people, sometimes, had let them know.

That is how a life comes to feel like it had meaning.

Not because of what you built.

Because of how you lived — made visible, here and there, through the small honest things you noticed along the way.

Have you ever realized — quietly, after the fact — that something you cared about, just for yourself, had ended up mattering to someone else? We’d love to hear about it. Share your story with us in the comments — we read every one.

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“The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.”

― Albert Einstein

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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📚 3 Good Recommendations

Collective Intelligence: How Shared Knowledge Makes Everyone Smarter
by Glasp (12 mins)

• Collective intelligence depends on conditions, not smart individuals. Research shows group performance relies on equal participation, social sensitivity, and diverse perspectives—not high IQs.

• Four requirements for success: diversity, independence, decentralization, and proper aggregation. Without these, crowds produce groupthink and misinformation.

• AI amplifies but can’t replace human judgment. The future is human-AI collaboration—AI synthesizes patterns while humans provide the attention and context that feed collective knowledge.

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The Google Capital Company
by Ben Thompson (11 mins)

• Google as the new Berkshire model: Just as Buffett used See’s Candies profits to fund capital-intensive BNSF Railway, Google is using its high-margin advertising cash to build out AI/cloud infrastructure—betting on larger absolute dollars over relative margins.

• Berkshire’s $10B bet: Alphabet is raising $80B in equity, with Berkshire finally investing in Google. The signal: AI compute demand is massive, and Google’s TPU advantages make it the best vehicle for deploying Berkshire’s $373B cash pile.

• Cash wins the compute race: When compute capacity becomes the bottleneck, the company that can deploy the most capital wins—and Google’s combination of ad revenue, equity issuance, and chip infrastructure positions it to dominate.

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Things I Think I Think... The New Internet Era
by Ted Neward (6 mins)

• AI is a tool, not a destination: Like electricity and the internet before it, companies succeed when they treat AI as a means to an end—not the end itself.

• Diversified giants survive; pure-play AI won’t: Apple, Microsoft, and Meta have fallback products. OpenAI and Anthropic, branded entirely around AI, will likely collapse and get acquired.

• Expect broad fallout: VC debt unwinding could rival the sub-prime crisis, NVidia’s GPU dominance will erode, and public backlash against AI will create PR problems for AI-centric brands.

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📣 Community Updates

• 🟥 Export Kindle Highlights via the Glasp API:
  You can now export your Kindle highlights programmatically through the Glasp API. See the docs here.

• 🟦 Kindle Highlights in the Obsidian Plugin:
  The Glasp Obsidian Plugin now supports exporting your Kindle highlights straight into your vault. See how here.

• 🟩 Glasp MCP Connector:
  We launched the Glasp MCP Connector, so AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT can connect to and read your library directly. Get started here.

• 🟨 Audio Transcription Milestone:
  We’ve now transcribed over 70,000 audio sources on Glasp. Turn any video or podcast into highlightable text — give it a try here.

❤️ Gratitude

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• ChatGPT for YouTube: The FREE extension that instantly summarizes videos with AI on Inteligencia Aritificial Blog

• Kazuki Nakayashiki, cofounder of Glasp on Inception Studio

• Glasp.co: Social Web Highlighter on ToolsFine

  

• Glasp on WebCatalog

  

• Glasp on Hidemium

• ✪ My Curation Lineage: A Personal Knowledge Map You Can Borrow From - #74 by on

• Glasp: AI Annotator on AI Tools Explorer

• 96 Ferramentas de IA alternativas para 2026: lista organizada por categoria com links para consulta (96 Alternative AI Tools for 2026: List organized by category with links for further information.) by

• Best AI Tools for Literature Review and Thesis Writing 2026 on iLovePhD

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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📣 Community Updates

📌 Community Milestones

• Kindle highlights imported: 68,000+ unique books

• Glasp’s YouTube channel subscribers: 7,000+

• Glasp posts published: 7,500+

🔧 Feature Updates

• Glasp API — You can now access your highlights programmatically. The new Highlight Export endpoint lets you pull all your highlights — including imported Kindle books — into your own tools and workflows. Read the API docs.

• Kindle Auto-sync (Beta) — Glasp now imports your new Kindle highlights automatically on a schedule (Daily, Every 3 days, or Weekly) — no manual export needed. Enable it in Extension Settings → Kindle Integration. We’ve updated this tutorial with the steps.

• MCP Connector — Bring your Glasp highlights into Claude and ChatGPT. Connect Glasp as an MCP server and ask your AI assistant about everything you’ve read, highlighted, and saved. Read-only and private to you — it can never post, edit, or delete. Connect it here

📖 New Tutorials & Posts

• Top 3 Most-Highlighted Kindle Books in May

  • The Great Omission — Dallas Willard

  • Mindset — Carol Dweck

  • Educated — Tara Westover

  • Full breakdown coming in a separate post.

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🌍 Glasp in the Wild

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• AI-trainer on Telegram in one evening | Vlad Kuklev x Dima Matskevchi | Brain Love & Robots on matskevich ai’s YouTube

  

• Ep. 7 – Building a Knowledge Legacy: From Silicon Valley to AI with Kei Watanabe on Bridging Connect

• Top 25 AI-Powered Browsers and Browser Extensions in 2026 on Pickaxe

  

• Best Text & Writing AI Tools in 2026 on Luxoret

• 9 AI Tools for Hospitality Marketing and PR Professionals That You May Not Know About Yet on Point Taken Communications

• SHAAA: The Strange Name With Hidden Story (BH Films) on Rabbi Yaron Reuven’s YouTube

• ❗ The HIDDEN ALARM that TRIGGERS in the DIABETIC’s body in the early morning (it’s SERIOUS) on Dr. Rocha’s YouTube

• How to TRANSCRIBE YouTube Video to Text for FREE ONLINE 2023 ✅ 🚀 Converting a Video to Text on Dr Tutoriales’s YouTube

  

• 🚀 Tingkatkan Produktivitasmu dengan AI Video Summarizer Gratis! (🚀 Increase Your Productivity with Free AI Video Summarizer!) on Rizal Consulting

• Glasp on AI Tools Directory by Cliptics

  

✍️ Write for Glasp

Do you write about learning, reading, or AI? We occasionally feature guest contributors. Share a link to something you’ve written in the comments — we’ll reach out if it’s a good fit.

→ Past guest posts

💛 Did you know?

Did you know Glasp can email you a random highlight from your Kindle books every day? It’s a simple way to resurface what you’ve read and reinforce it — without opening any app. Please check this tutorial.

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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But you read the lines, and something happens. They were marked by someone who saw the world differently than you do now. Someone with different fears, different reasons for finding that sentence important on that day.

That someone was you.

This is one of the strangest experiences of a long reading life: meeting a version of yourself you no longer are. And it raises a question worth sitting with — what was she trying to tell you?

Joan Didion thought about this for most of her career. In her essay On Keeping a Notebook, she defended the seemingly pointless habit of recording the small details of one’s life — overheard conversations, weather, what someone wore. Why bother? Her answer became one of the most quoted lines in American letters:

“I think we are all well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”

You change. You become someone else, gradually, while pretending to remain yourself. The person who underlined that book five years ago had a different relationship with ambition, with loss, with what was worth wanting. If you can’t find your way back to her, you’ve lost something more important than a memory.

You’ve lost the thread that makes you, you.

Without a record of who you were, you become a weathervane.

Every new event spins you in a new direction. Every loud opinion pulls you off course. The career you wanted last year is forgotten by next week, replaced by the next thing that caught your attention. You believe you are choosing. Mostly, you are reacting.

Identity — the sense that the person waking up tomorrow is the same person who went to sleep tonight — is not given to you. It’s kept. And it’s kept by the small, almost mundane practice of looking back.

Every culture that took the self seriously developed some version of this practice. Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations not for us. He wrote them for himself — daily entries meant to be read back, to remind him who he was trying to be when the day’s events tried to make him forget. Montaigne wrote his Essays in part to track his own changing mind, returning years later to add notes in the margins. Thoreau’s journals ran to two million words, most of them never published. Their authors weren’t recording for posterity. They were keeping themselves company across time.

The form barely matters. A journal. A daily log. A notebook of overheard things. A folder of saved passages. A line in a book.

What matters is that something exists outside your head that you can return to — a record you didn’t write for anyone, that survives your own forgetting, that proves you had a center even when the world tried to scatter you.

Without it, you drift. With it, you can recognize yourself.

Most of us already keep some version of this — old journals, photographs, drafts of essays we never sent. But these capture the expressed self. The performed self. The one we composed for our future selves to find.

Highlights are different. Highlights are not composed. They are the trail of small involuntary recognitions — this. this matters. I don’t know why yet. You weren’t writing for anyone. You weren’t even writing.

You were just paying attention.

Which is why, when you read your own old highlights, they hit harder than your old writing. There is no posture in them. They are the most honest record you have of who you used to be.

Glasp Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The stranger you’ll be in 2030 needs the same thing the stranger you were in 2020 needed from you — proof that she existed, that she paid attention, that she was here.

She will be confused, changed, looking for a thread back to herself. She will not remember why the year you are living through right now felt like it did. She will need someone to have left a record — not the performed kind, not the public kind. Just the honest kind.

She will need you to have marked the page.

The honest thing about reading is that you forget most of it. The kind thing about reading is that the small parts that mattered — the lines that stopped you, the passages that made you put the book down for a minute — can be saved. Not for the world. Not for a noble cause.

Just for the person you become.

Open a book you read years ago. Find a line you underlined. Read it slowly.

She is talking to you. She has been waiting.

Have you ever opened an old book, notebook, or journal and found a line you’d marked — one that suddenly made more sense, or one that no longer did? We’d love to hear about it. Share your story with us in the comments — we read every one.

And if this resonated, forward it to someone who keeps books with their own handwriting in the margins.

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Hi, I’m Bobby Powers! I run the Leader & Learner publication, where I share two posts per week that will help you become a more curious leader and learner.

Today, we’re taking a peek into personal values. I’ve been drafting a list of life rules for the past decade or so, and whenever I stumble across a new principle that resonates with me, I add it to my list.

Life rules are a personal thing. Some of mine may resonate with you, but others definitely won’t. I share this list to inspire you to reflect upon which principles guide your own life.

Here are 70 of my linchpins for living:

1. Completely own who you are. There’s no force more powerful than someone fully embracing their uniqueness. Harness your version of weird. It’s a superpower.

2. Define your own version of success. Some of the saddest people have fat wallets and big houses. Riches, fame, and power don’t bring happiness. Instead, aim your arrow at fulfilling relationships, passion-fueled hobbies, and meaningful work.

3. Never lose your childlike sense of wonder. Kids never lose sight of the little things: they gleefully run through sprinklers, pick up rocks to search for creepy crawlies, and view every snowfall as a chance to resurrect last year’s snowman. Most adults could benefit from an extra dose of that mentality in their lives.

4. Always be a student. School should be the beginning of learning, not the end of it. Make it your goal to learn something new every day.

5. Drink deeply from good books. They’re a chance to get mentored by dead emperors, business titans, and Olympic athletes. People whom you could never normally ask for advice are as close as your local library or Kindle account. You have wisdom on tap, waiting for you, whenever you’re ready. (HT: John Wooden)

6. Exhibit confident humility. Have the modesty to understand whether you’re the best person to make a particular decision. Learn from others when they’re the expert. Act with boldness when you’re the expert.

7. Assess yourself with third-party objectivity. Whenever you find yourself in a conflict, ask yourself what an unbiased journalist would write about the situation. What are the facts? How did you contribute to the mess?

8. Less certainty, more inquiry. Doubt yourself. As Bertrand Russell says, “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” (HT: Maria Konnikova)

9. Operate in permanent beta. Your personal operating system is still an early model. Many more upgrades are on the way, but only if you watch for them. (HT: Reid Hoffman)

10. Follow your curiosity. Curiosity doesn’t just point to areas of intrigue; it points to areas of potential competitive advantage. The people who succeed are often those who work the hardest, and those who work the hardest are often the ones who love what they’re doing.

11. Hypothesize and test, then repeat. Thinking is usually the worst way to learn if something works. The best way? Just trying it out. Rather than thinking your way out of problems, experiment your way out of them. (HT: Anne-Laure Le Cunff)

12. Create your own weather. Choose to never have a bad day. Will Arnett puts it like this: “If you say, ‘Things are gonna be hard for me,’ then guess what? Things are gonna be hard for you…My starting point is: I’m happy no matter what. I create my own weather…How you feel is a direct result of what you think about. The only thing you can control is what you think about.”

13. Love all seven days. Don’t live for the weekend. If you only enjoy two out of every seven days, you’re sacrificing 71 percent of your life. Figure out how to love Mondays—either by shifting your perspective, finding the right workplace, etc.

14. Find perfect in the average. Even if you’re not on a beach sipping on a Piña colada, there’s a good chance you can inject a few perfect elements into your average Monday, like enjoying a beautiful sunset, taking a peaceful walk, or catching up with an old friend over the phone.

15. Be hyper-present. If you’re out to dinner with a friend, be out to dinner with a friend—not answering texts or scrolling social media. Live in the current moment by prioritizing the person in front of you.

16. Take joy in others’ success. The zero-sum mindset of “I win, you lose” leads to unnecessary competitiveness. Instead, embrace a positive-sum mindset. Cheer on other creators, entrepreneurs, and artists. If they win, we all win.

17. Focus on the smooth water while paddling. Kayakers are more likely to wipe out if they look at the rocks they’re trying to avoid. Similarly, you’re more likely to botch a presentation or interview if you’re focused on what can go wrong. Instead, focus on the smooth water: how well you’ve prepared, what’s in your immediate control, and what can go right.

18. No bad beats—focus on the process. Hang around a poker room for five minutes and you’ll hear several players complaining about their “bad beats” (poor luck). Don’t be that guy. Sometimes the odds will fall your way, and sometimes they won’t. Either way, focus on what you can control.

19. Use setbacks as alternative fuel. Rejections can be constructively molded into a chip on the shoulder. It’s not bad to have something to prove. Use those setbacks as fuel in the tank—to learn, to grow, to overcome. Here’s a perfect example from Jay Yang, who went on to publish the Amazon bestseller You Can Just Do Things:

20. Ask “What can I learn from this?” Every challenge in life is an opportunity to practice a virtue. Treat every event as neutral. It’s not “good” or “bad.” It’s just something that happened, and now you get to decide how to respond.

21. Widen the space between stimulus and response. When someone pisses you off, it’s easy to lash out. But remember, there’s a difference between a reaction and a response. The former is emotion-driven and instinctive. The latter is a chosen move. Five deep breaths can be the difference between one versus the other.

22. Use fear as a compass. It’ll show you which option will teach you the most. If a project or challenge looks scary, don’t run from it. Instead, run toward the fire. You’ll learn more than you imagine and become known as someone who can solve any problem.

23. Choose dreams that scare you. Be willing to pursue goals that are so big, you’d be embarrassed to share them with 90 percent of the people in your life. (HT: Benjamin Hardy, PhD)

24. Identify the first step. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when thinking about a big project like writing a book, starting a business, or running a marathon. But that overwhelm generally comes from thinking about Step #50, and you don’t need to know Step #50 right now. Just identify Step #1…and do it.

25. Start with rubbish. The best way to work up the gumption to tackle Step #1 is to lower the bar. Rather than sitting down to “write a bestseller” (a daunting proposition) on the first day of your writing project, tell yourself you’re just going to “jot down some thoughts.” By so doing, you’ll avoid procrastination, get out of your own way, and begin actually making progress.

26. Practice radical incrementalism. If you want to do something BIG, just bite off a tiny bit each day. Big things get accomplished through small, consistent actions. Follow the Latin adage of festina lente: Make haste slowly. (HT: Oliver Burkeman)

27. Prepare for a long road. Meaningful accomplishments take longer than you think: finishing your novel, finding the right job, breaking through with your business idea. Because of this, it’s important to do three things:

    1. Set reasonable expectations for yourself.

    2. Start today.

    3. Enjoy the journey.

28. Fall seven, rise eight. The victors in any arena of life are determined by those still standing at the end, not those who avoided falling along the way. (HT: Japanese proverb)

29. Be the bull in the china shop. Do you know someone who can be given any project and they’ll figure out a way to succeed? Make it your goal to become that person. Develop the ability to run through walls. It’s the most hireable skill on the planet.

30. Choose alive time over dead time. In most situations, you can either wait for something to happen or you can take action. I bet you can guess which usually works out better. (HT: Robert Greene)

31. Close every loop. If you say you’ll do something, follow through. The size of the task doesn’t matter. And as soon as you complete what you promised, close the loop by telling the person it’s done. Simple actions like this build trust.

32. Die on the treadmill. One of the most inspiring quotes I’ve found:

“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?” -Will Smith

33. Be worthy of remark. “Remarkable” hits differently when you think of it as “something worthy of remark.” How can you embrace that principle in your own life? How can you become so good that others can’t help but notice and share it?

34. Expand your job beyond its official boundaries. The best way to earn a promotion is to start living into that role today. Want to become a manager? Act like a leader. Want to run a big project? Make yourself helpful by coordinating group tasks.

35. Be efficient with processes and effective with people. Efficiency is meant for computer programs and job tasks—not interactions with humans. For people, effectiveness is key: doing the right things, not the fast ones. Examples: building early buy-in for a project, hearing everyone’s opinions, etc.
    

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36. Respect those not in the room. The easiest way to prove you’re trustworthy is to avoid speaking poorly of people who aren’t around. The least trustworthy person is the one who backbites the guy who’s not in the room.

37. Impatient with actions, patient with results. Big changes often take time. Don’t get worked up if you don’t see instant successes, but do demand instant effort.

38. Talk about emotions without getting emotional. Emotions aren’t bad, but not being able to control them is. In many situations, the one who keeps their cool will prevail. Examples: negotiations, sports, debates, etc. (HT: Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien)

39. Be loving, candid, and assertive. It’s possible to be both candid and kind. If you can master those two skills, you’ll have a successful career as a leader and communicator.

40. Disagree without being disagreeable. This represents the highest bar of communication. Avoid the two extremes of passivity and aggressiveness. Find the middle ground of assertiveness: sharing your perspective in a courageous, respectful way.

41. Facts > Interpretations. The fastest way to derail a conversation is to label someone with a term like “lazy” or “entitled.” Interpretations are controversial; facts are not. In tense situations, stand on the firm footing of facts.

42. Assume positive intent. When people do things we don’t understand, it’s easy to jump to conclusions about their intelligence, work ethic, or character. But you’ll never go wrong by first asking yourself, “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?” (HT: Crucial Conversations)

43. Find common ground. “Us vs. Them” thinking is a surefire path to lose-lose decisions. Whenever you’re negotiating with someone, look for opportunities to use “we” language (like “We both want…” or “We can probably agree that…”).

44. Strong opinions, loosely held. Courageously defend the things you care about, but be willing to admit when you’re wrong. Or, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

45. Relentlessly single-task. As Steve Uzzell once said, “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” Do one thing at a time, and do it spectacularly.

46. Make time for walks and nature. If you’re cranking away on a big problem and can feel yourself getting tense and stressed, unplug and go outside. A light walk can often jostle big ideas from the brain.

47. Pre-make your decisions. Roy Disney said, “When values are clear, decisions are easy.” To expedite your future decisions, determine the rules you want to guide your life: “Whenever [this situation] arises, I’m going to [take this action].”

48. Put in the work to become an overnight success. Inevitably, any time someone’s career skyrockets “out of nowhere,” when you dig into the details, you’ll see they’ve been preparing for that moment for years. What are you doing today to prepare for your moment five years from now?

49. Write with your pen, not your mouth. It’s way easier to talk about something than it is to do it. But as Ryan Holiday says, “Talk depletes us. Talking and doing fight for the same resources.” Instead of talking about something you haven’t done yet, be the person who works in humble, quiet isolation, then emerges from hibernation having completed something of substance.

50. Life is about direction, not speed. Don’t get worried about not achieving your dreams fast enough. Instead, focus on whether you’re working on the right things. (HT: Sahil Bloom)

51. Improve by being boringly predictable. Success is more dependent on consistency than flashiness. It comes from daily singles and doubles, not weekly home runs.

52. Find your plus/minus/equal. To become great requires finding a mentor to guide you (+), a mentee you can guide (-), and someone at your level who will challenge you and make you better (=). (HT: Frank Shamrock)

53. Desire less. Contentment is the real path to happiness. Or, as Naval Ravikant says, “Every desire is a chosen unhappiness.”

54. Use failure as a cue to try harder or differently. Failure can be a powerful teacher, but only if you have the humility, curiosity, and grit to learn from it.

55. Take ferocious self-accountability. Be willing to hold up a microscope to your own behavior. Doing so can be impossibly difficult but also life-changing. (HT: Elizabeth Gilbert)

56. “Be a river, not a reservoir.” When you learn something, immediately share it with others. By teaching, your knowledge will only grow, not diminish. (HT: John Maxwell)

57. In the long term, the slow way is the fast way. Working too quickly leads to mistakes, which cost time and money. Counterintuitively, the best way to move quickly is often to slow down. Effectiveness leads to efficiency, or as the Navy SEALs say, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

58. Compare you against you. The most meaningful yardstick in life is who you were yesterday versus who you are today. As Hemingway said, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

59. Believe in Wilson’s Law. If you prioritize knowledge and intelligence, money will inevitably follow. (HT: Giacomo Falcone)

60. Make a decision, then take imperfect action. There are always a hundred ways to do something. If you try to work out the perfect answer in your head, you’ll find yourself living in a purgatory of analysis paralysis. Instead, choose a path, commit to the path, and take immediate action on that path. (HT: Oliver Burkeman)

61. Use comparison as teacher, not torture. There are two ways to view a peer’s accomplishments: inspiration or jealousy. Which do you think will make you better? (HT: Mel Robbins)

62. Compare little things, not big ones. James Clear puts this well: “To improve, compare little things: marketing strategies, exercise technique, writing tactics. To be miserable, compare big things: career path, marriage, net worth. Comparison is the thief of joy when applied broadly, but the teacher of skills when applied narrowly.”

63. Balance ambition and contentment. You always have a choice between one of two focuses: (1) what you want and (2) what you have. To live a great life, build your house in Camp #2 with occasional glimpses at Camp #1.

64. Push through the dip. Anything worth doing will have lumpy results. Most creative ventures hit a bone-chilling dip, where you question everything and aren’t sure if anyone cares about your work. This is when most people give up. Don’t be most people. (HT: Seth Godin)

65. Seek to express, not impress. When talking to others, you have the choice of whether to speak vulnerably or arrogantly (trying to impress them). “Impress” mode is the surest way to torpedo a conversation, whereas “Express” mode forges genuine relationships. (HT: Tristan de Montebello)

66. Love the questions. Many important topics in life don’t have easy answers: religion, politics, relationships, etc. Instead of seeking black and white answers, fall in love with the questions themselves—and find others who also love pondering those questions. (HT: Rainer Maria Rilke)

67. Don’t hunt small game just because it’s easier to kill. It sure feels good to cross items off a to-do list, but most tasks don’t move the needle in a meaningful way. Instead of attacking 100 tasks that ultimately don’t matter, target the one that will make a difference.

68. Exhibit a next-play mentality. Okay, so you struck out this time. So what? Success hinges on what you do next. (HT: Brad Stulberg)

69. Focus on others. The more you’re paying attention to yourself, the less you’re paying attention to others. That means that the more comfortable you are being yourself, the closer you can get to other people. (HT: Tim Grahl)

70. Fear being stupid, not looking stupid. The best time to ask a dumb question is today. (Trust me, it will look way dumber tomorrow.)

The most powerful life rules are the ones you choose for yourself. May these serve as inspiration for drafting your own “linchpins for living.”

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.

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“It is not possible for one to teach others who cannot teach his own family.”

― Confucius

📚 3 Good Recommendations

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by Glasp (18 mins)

• The problem isn’t tools—it’s systems. Notes apps answer “where do I put this?” but not “what should I read?” or “what will I do with it?” Most people let algorithms pick their curriculum by default.

• A Learning OS has six layers: Inputs → Engagement → Synthesis → Memory → Output → Feedback. Your weakest layer is your bottleneck—fix it first before optimizing others.

• AI handles volume; you handle stance. AI excels at summarizing and scaffolding, but the struggle of wrestling with ideas is where learning happens. Outsourcing it skips the point.

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Why books donʼt work
by Andy Matuschak (20 mins)

• Books assume reading equals understanding: Most readers absorb far less from non-fiction than they realize, because the medium is built on “transmissionism”—the flawed idea that words on a page automatically transfer knowledge.

• Readers are left to do all the hard work: Real understanding requires active thinking, self-testing, and reflection, but books offer no support for this—leaving readers to struggle alone with metacognition.

• We need new mediums, not better books: Instead of fixing an inherently limited form, we should design mediums where engaging naturally leads to understanding—like the author’s Quantum Country, which weaves spaced repetition into reading.

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What if the browser was the server?
by Arthur Cornil (5 mins)

• SaaS is overkill for personal tools: Single-user apps like journals or habit trackers don’t need remote servers—users pay subscriptions just to store data elsewhere while suffering network latency.

• Browsers can now run backends locally: WebAssembly (WASM) compiles any language to run in-browser, and OPFS provides persistent storage—enabling SQLite and backend logic entirely client-side.

• Tradeoffs exist but are manageable: Data is browser-bound (requiring export/import), and real-time collaboration still needs servers, but for personal productivity tools, this eliminates unnecessary server dependencies.

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📣 Community Updates

• 🟨 Glasp Crossed 1M Backlinks & DR 70:

  We just crossed 1,000,000+ backlinks and reached a Domain Rating of 70 on Ahrefs 🎉 Every blog mention, highlight share, and link from our community helped get us here. Thank you for being part of Glasp. 🙏

  

• 🟥 YouTube Channel Tracking, 2,700+:

  The number of YouTube channels tracked on Glasp just passed 2,700 🎉 Glasp automatically pulls transcripts from your favorite channels so you can highlight, summarize, and revisit them anytime. If you haven't tried it yet, please check this tutorial.

• 🟦 Top 10 Kindle Books of April 2026:
  We just published our monthly roundup of the 10 most-highlighted Kindle books on Glasp in April — with the single passage that the most readers independently highlighted from each title. See the full list here.

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Here are the 10 Kindle books Glasp readers imported and highlighted the most in April 2026 — along with the single passage that the most readers stopped on in each. Where the same book has also been highlighted by Glasp readers in other languages — Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French — you’ll find those linked too.

New here? Here’s how to download and import your Kindle highlights to Glasp

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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📚 The Top 10

1. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — · 28 readers

Oliver Burkeman, the former Guardian columnist behind This Column Will Change Your Life, argues that we get about 4,000 weeks alive — and that productivity culture is a doomed attempt to deny that limit. The book reframes time management as the art of choosing what to neglect.

“The fundamental problem is that this attitude toward time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time—instead of just being time, you might say—it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally ‘out of the way.’”

— Top Highlight: 10 of 28 readers · 36%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: 日本語 (38) · Español (4) · Português (1) · Deutsch (1)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

2. The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel · 48 readers

Morgan Housel, partner at Collaborative Fund, makes the case that doing well with money has more to do with behavior than intelligence. Across 19 short stories, he shows why patience and humility tend to outperform credentials over the long run.

“If expectations rise with results there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the same after putting in extra effort.”

— Top Highlight: 23 of 48 readers · 48%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: 日本語 (7) · Español (6) · Português (6) · Deutsch (3)

Get a copy on Amazon

3. The Daily Stoic — & · 48 readers

Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman pair 366 passages from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus with short modern meditations — one for each day of the year. Holiday has done more than anyone to bring Stoicism to a contemporary audience.

“Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it — no Stoic would tolerate that assumption — but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t.”

— Top Highlight: 14 of 48 readers · 29%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: 日本語 (6) · Português (2) · Deutsch (1)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

4. Deep Work — Cal Newport · 35 readers

Cal Newport, computer science professor at Georgetown, argues that the ability to focus without distraction is becoming both rarer and more valuable. The book lays out a set of rules for protecting concentration in an economy designed to fragment it.

“Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities.”

— Top Highlight: 15 of 35 readers · 43%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: Español (1) · Português (3) · Français (1)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

5. Unlimited Memory — Kevin Horsley · 28 readers

Kevin Horsley, one of fewer than two dozen people in the world to hold the title International Grandmaster of Memory, walks through the techniques memory champions use to learn faster and remember more — including the method he used to memorize the first 10,000 digits of Pi.

“You can have success or excuses, but you can’t have them both. People that learn quickly focus only on the information and skills that matter. Excuses don’t matter — they are ‘thought viruses.’ The only things that keep you from getting what you want are the excuses you make to yourself.”

— Top Highlight: 6 of 28 readers · 21%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

6. Excellent Advice for Living — · 12 readers

Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired, spent his 70th birthday distilling decades of observation into 450 short proverbs for his children. The result reads like a personal Whole Earth Catalog for living well.

“Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.”

— Top Highlight: 8 of 12 readers · 67%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

7. The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk · 14 readers

Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who has worked with trauma survivors for over 40 years, shows how trauma reshapes both brain and body — and which kinds of treatment actually help. The book has become a foundational text for understanding modern PTSD.

“The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders.”

— Top Highlight: 4 of 14 readers · 29%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: Español (1)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

8. Meditations for Mortals — · 7 readers

Oliver Burkeman returns with a four-week course in giving up the fantasy of getting everything done. Where Four Thousand Weeks made the argument, this one turns it into daily practice.

“The main point – though it took me years to realize it – is to develop the willingness to just do something, here and now, as a one-off, regardless of whether it’s part of any system or habit or routine. If you don’t prioritize the skill of just doing something, you risk falling into an exceedingly sneaky trap, which is that you end up embarking instead on the unnecessary and, worse, counterproductive project of becoming the kind of person who does that sort of thing.”

— Top Highlight: 6 of 7 readers · 86%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

9. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman · 48 readers

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economics, introduces the two systems that drive human thought: fast, automatic intuition (System 1) and slow, deliberate reasoning (System 2). The book maps the cognitive biases that emerge when intuition gets ahead of itself.

“Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions.”

— Top Highlight: 13 of 48 readers · 27%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: 日本語 (28) · Español (7) · Português (16)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

10. Thinking in Systems — Donella H. Meadows · 26 readers

Donella Meadows, environmental scientist and lead author of The Limits to Growth, offers a primer on systems thinking — how to see the world as interconnected feedback loops rather than linear chains of cause and effect.

“The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.”

— Top Highlight: 11 of 26 readers · 42%

🌐 Top highlights in other languages: 日本語 (13) · Português (2)

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Get a copy on Amazon

⭐ The Highlight of the Month

Out of every book on this list, one passage drew the strongest collective pause: 6 of 7 readers who saved Meditations for Mortals highlighted the same paragraph — an 86% consensus, the highest of the month.

Oliver Burkeman, on the trap of becoming-the-kind-of-person-who:

“The main point – though it took me years to realize it – is to develop the willingness to just do something, here and now, as a one-off, regardless of whether it’s part of any system or habit or routine. If you don’t prioritize the skill of just doing something, you risk falling into an exceedingly sneaky trap, which is that you end up embarking instead on the unnecessary and, worse, counterproductive project of becoming the kind of person who does that sort of thing.”

A fitting capstone for a month where Burkeman appeared twice on the list — readers are clearly wrestling with how to actually live inside their finite time, rather than perpetually prepare to.

📅 Want the bigger picture?

If you’d like to see what Glasp readers highlighted across the whole quarter, here’s the Top 20 from Q1 2026 (January–March):

👉 The Top 20 Books Glasp Readers Highlighted in Q1 2026

Bring your Kindle highlights to Glasp

Every reader in this list imported their Kindle highlights to Glasp. Once imported, your highlights become searchable across every book, article, and PDF you’ve saved — and part of the collective data that shapes lists like this one. If you haven’t imported yours yet, here’s how it works:

👉 How to download and import your Kindle highlights to Glasp

Closing

Click any title to read the other highlights Glasp readers left behind. Each book is a window into how the community is thinking — and a shortcut to the ideas that shaped their month.

Every highlight is a breadcrumb for the next reader. That’s how knowledge sharing works on Glasp.

Would you like to take Glasp on the go?

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📣 Community Updates

📌 Community Milestones

• Bookmarks saved: 75,000+

• YouTube Channels Tracking: 2,500+

• Kindle highlights imported across 63,000+ unique books

• Glasp posts published: 7,000+

• Domain Authority: 70

🔧 Feature Updates

• Chat with PDF & Copy PDF text — Ask questions about any PDF and copy text in plain text, Markdown, or XML

• PDF upload limit expanded to 500MB — Bigger reports, textbooks, and research papers now welcome

• Relevant Highlights on My Profile — Past highlights that connect to what you’re currently reading, now surfaced directly from your profile

  

• CSV highlights import — Bring highlights from other tools into Glasp in one click

📖 New Tutorials & Posts

• How to Auto-Sync Kindle Highlights with Glasp

• How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

• The Top 20 Kindle Books Glasp Readers Highlighted in Q1 2026

• The Top 20 Kindle Books Glasp Readers Highlighted in Q1 2026 (Japanese)

⚠️ Known Issue

• YouTube Summary widget overlapping in South Korea — Some users in South Korea are reporting that the YouTube Summary widget appears over the top-left corner of the video instead of beside it. We’re investigating. In the meantime, a few users have found that switching YouTube to Theater mode restores the correct layout — please give it a try and let us know if it works for you.

  

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🌍 Glasp in the Wild

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

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• Glasp on Grokipedia

  

• Glasp - Company Profile on Tracxn

  

• How to Automate Your Life With AI: AI Systems, Automation Tools, and Repetitive Tasks on ClickUp

• Glasp on AppCritica

  

• Learning Memory By Glasp Turns Highlights Into A Searchable AI Brain on Trend Hunter

  

• 別只會用ChatGPT！19款日系AI工具：製作簡報、圖像生成、數據分析一鍵搞定 (Don’t just use ChatGPT! 19 Japanese AI tools: create presentations, generate images, and analyze data with a single click.) on 商業周刊

• Glasp on portal4AI

  

• My Entire PM and Growth Tech Stack by

• 😺 AI breaks the bank on The Neuron

✍️ Write for Glasp

Do you write about learning, reading, or AI? We occasionally feature guest contributors. Share a link to something you’ve written in the comments — we’ll reach out if it’s a good fit.

→ Past guest posts

💛 Did you know?

Did you know Glasp now has an API? Pull your highlights, notes, and tags into your own scripts, second brain, or AI workflows — every saved passage becomes data you can build with. → Read the API docs

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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When we leave this world, what can we actually leave behind?

The most systematic answer I’ve found came from an unexpected place: an 1894 lecture by Kanzo Uchimura — a Japan-born thinker educated at Amherst College, who spent his life writing in conversation with Locke, Bunyan, Carlyle, and Cromwell. The lecture was simply titled The Greatest Legacy for Future Generations.

Uchimura rejected the obvious answer — a name in history books, a monument to yourself — and offered four candidates instead:

1. Money — accumulated with purpose and spent for the common good. His example: Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, the French-born merchant whose accumulated fortune built what was, in Uchimura’s day, the largest orphanage in the world.

2. Business — enterprises and infrastructure that outlast the builder. He cited David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer whose expeditions opened Africa’s interior, and Oliver Cromwell, whose political work still shaped 19th-century Britain two centuries after his death.

3. Thoughts — written ideas that require no wealth or position. Uchimura singled out John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which he argued moved through Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Mirabeau to ignite the French Revolution. He also named John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress — written by a largely uneducated tinker who had been imprisoned for his preaching.

4. A noble and courageous life — living with integrity and overcoming hardship. Available to anyone, regardless of wealth, education, or position.

He then ranked them. Money and business depend on talent you may not have and opportunities you may never get. Thoughts are more accessible — anyone with something honest to say can leave ideas behind. But the greatest legacy, the one he insisted anyone could leave, was the fourth: a sincere, courageous life.

This is the lecture that named our company.

GLASP = Greatest Legacy Accumulated as Shared Proof.

When we ask what Glasp is actually for, the answer sits inside Uchimura’s framework. Of his four legacies:

• The first two — money and business — are not our domain. They require capital, position, timing.

• The last two — thoughts and a noble life — are exactly what we’re building for.

Thoughts, because every highlight you make, every note you write, every passage you share is a small piece of your thinking preserved and made accessible to someone you’ll never meet. This is what swyx — host of the Latent Space podcast and the developer-writer who popularized “Learn in Public” — calls “learning exhaust”: the byproduct of your learning that, when made public, becomes fuel for someone else’s.

But here’s what’s easy to miss: the trail of your reading is also a noble life.

What you chose to mark is what you thought. But how you marked — over what years, at what hours, with what consistency — is how you lived.

This is something a profile page can show that a finished essay cannot. A decade of weekly highlights. A reader who kept returning to the same author for fifteen years. Someone who logged thirty notes the month after losing a parent. Someone who, between full-time work and raising two kids, still read sixty books a year. None of that shows up in the polished output. All of it shows up on a profile page.

When we look at someone’s library of highlights and notes, we’re not just seeing their thoughts. We’re seeing the shape of a life spent learning — the patience, the persistence, the seasons of obsession, the quiet years. That’s what other readers respond to. Not the cleverness of any one annotation, but the dignity of a life spent paying attention.

This is, in Uchimura’s sense, a noble and courageous life made visible — not in monuments, but in the steady accumulation of attention over time.

This is what Austin Kleon, the artist and author of Show Your Work!, argues — that working in public, with honesty, is itself a form of legacy. You don’t need to write an Essay Concerning Human Understanding or chart the interior of a continent. You just need to be sincere about what you’re learning, and generous enough to share it.

A century later and thousands of miles away, Steve Jobs reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction — through product, not philosophy. In the final pages of Walter Isaacson’s biography, Jobs dismissed the prevailing Silicon Valley playbook — founding a startup to flip it, cashing in, moving on. Real work, he insisted, means building something that will still stand for a generation or two. And you do it, in Jobs’s words, to “add to the legacy of those who went before.”

Gratitude for the past. Contribution to the future. More than a century apart, the same idea.

This is why, in Hatching Growth #16, we coined a term for how we build: Legacical Thinking — thinking not in years or decades, but in centuries. Uchimura’s lecture is the source code. Every product decision at Glasp is filtered through a single question: does this help someone preserve, express, or pass down their thinking in a way that still matters centuries from now?

Uchimura would recognize it. He spent the last third of his lecture arguing that the greatest legacy isn’t reserved for the rich, the powerful, or the literary. It belongs to anyone willing to think in public.

Which brings us to the only thing worth saying directly, before we close:

Your thoughts are a legacy. Your honest life is a legacy.

You don’t need wealth, position, or a name in history books. You only need the willingness to think out loud — and to share what you found worth marking.

That’s what we’re trying to make easier.

👉 Full translation of the lecture: The Greatest Legacy for Future Generations

👉 How this philosophy shapes our daily decisions: Hatching Growth #16 — Building for Centuries

What’s something you learned recently that you almost didn’t share — and what held you back? Leave a comment. We read every one.

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“Technology is the application of knowledge to control the natural world. It’s the greatest driver of both human prosperity and our capacity for self-annihilation.”

― Naval Ravikant

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Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

📚 3 Good Recommendations

Securing AI agents: the defining cybersecurity challenge of 2026
by Amit Karp, Mike Droesch, Yael Schiff, and Elliott Robinson (9 mins)

• AI agents are now the #1 cybersecurity threat: 48% of security pros see agentic AI as the most dangerous attack vector, with shadow AI breaches costing $4.63M on average. Compromised agents can escalate access faster than humans can respond.

• Security requires three stages: Visibility (inventory all agents and permissions), configuration (continuous posture management to limit blast radius), and runtime protection (real-time detection and intervention at machine speed).

• Treat agents as identities, not tools: Each agent needs scoped credentials, action-level guardrails, and auditing like any employee—start narrow, expand deliberately.

Save to Glasp

Getting AI Agents into Production, Fast
by (11 mins)

• Speed is the surprise — agentic AI workflows can run in 2-3 weeks versus months for traditional software, because you describe tasks in natural language rather than coding every rule.

• Hold four lenses at once — decomposition, context engineering, explainability, and evals must be worked simultaneously, not sequentially; they inform each other through iteration.

• Ship rough, then refine — get something running in days, study failures to diagnose what’s broken, and iterate fast; the bottleneck isn’t model intelligence but the system around it.

Save to Glasp

Taste Is the New Bottleneck: Design, Strategy, and Judgment in the Age of Agents and Vibe-Coding
by Itamar Medeiros (21 mins)

• Taste is the new bottleneck: When AI handles execution, human value shifts to judgment—discriminating among abundant viable options, not generating them.

• Taste is learnable: It’s not innate “eye” but trained judgment—developed through exposure, comparison, critique, and reflection. Teams can build it collectively.

• Taste operates at three levels: Deciding what problems are worth solving, judging what’s “good enough” among AI-generated options, and governing what standards get encoded into systems at scale.

Save to Glasp

📣 Community Updates

• 🟨 Pricing Update:

  On May 1, 2026, Glasp will update its pricing for the first time since launch. The Pro Plan will move from $12 to $15/mo, and the Unlimited Plan from $30 to $36/mo. Existing subscribers won’t be affected until their next billing cycle. The Free plan remains unchanged. See full details here.

• 🟦 Top 20 Kindle Books of Q1 2026:

  We just published our quarterly roundup of the 20 most-imported Kindle books on Glasp — with the single passage that the most readers independently highlighted from each title. See the full list here.

• 🟩 Post Milestone, 7,000:
  We’re thrilled to announce that the number of posts published on Glasp exceeded over 7,000! 🎉 We’ve seen so many amazing insights shared by our community. Thank you for writing and contributing such great content. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a try here.

• 🟥 Auto-Sync Kindle Highlights:
  We published a new tutorial on Auto-Sync Kindle Highlights — a new (Beta) feature that automatically imports your Kindle highlights to Glasp on a daily, every-3-days, or weekly schedule. No more manual syncing. Check the tutorial.

  👉 How to Auto-Sync Kindle Highlights with Glasp

  

❤️ Gratitude

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• Glasp: Audio Transcriber on FactCheckTool.com

  

• Glasp on i10X

  

• Digital Tools That Can Support Government Social Media Managers on Social Media Strategies Summit

• Glasp on TopTools.ai

  

• Glasp for reading later on curtismchale.ca

  

• Chrome Just Got Smarter: 11 AI Extensions That Save You Hours Every Week 🚀 on

• AI Browser Extensions: Pros/Cons and 8 Extensions to Know in 2026 on Seraphic

• Glasp Review: Features, Use Cases & Alternatives on Future Directory

  

• Islamic Soft Power in a Contested World Cup: YouTube Media Framing and Audience Responses to Qatar 2022 on Arab Media & Society

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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Hi, I’m Bobby Powers! I run the Leader & Learner publication, where I share two posts per week that will help you become a more curious leader and learner.

I used to think classic literature was boring, so I steered clear of it. I’m guessing you may do the same. But once I realized that the sour taste in my mouth was residual from required reading in school, I decided to give the classics another chance.

I’m glad I did because I ended up falling in love with a bunch of old books. In fact, now I’m even working my way through a list of the Top 200 Books of All Time.

If you’re hesitant to read classic lit, this post is for you.

I’ve read some literature duds, but these 15 are the best ones I’ve found. Each one is engaging and well worth the time—even if you’ve already seen the movie or think you already know the story.

I sorted the list by author’s last name and included a brief description of each. I also included the number of pages (so you can get a feel for the time cost of reading each one), along with my subjective measure of readability, which I based on the complexity of the language, the intricacy of the storyline, and the length of the book.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• # of Pages: 480

• Readability: Medium

As a guy in his late 30s, I pre-judged this book and figured I wouldn’t enjoy it. If it came out today, I think the publisher would have given it a different title so readers would understand it’s a book for everyone. But regardless of title, this book is fantastic. Alcott’s classic tale about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy Marsh is meaningful, fun, and inspiring.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

• # of Pages: 256

• Readability: Easy

Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books that taught me classic literature can be fun. I was immediately sucked in by Bradbury’s dystopian world that turns the role of “firefighter” on its head. (In the bleak world of this story, the government has banned all books, and society’s firefighters are government agents tasked with burning any books that are discovered.) Protagonist Guy Montag wrestles with his role as a book-burner.

The Master and Margarita by Alexander Bulgakov

• # of Pages: 448

• Readability: Difficult

Bulgakov’s classic novel served as a scathing critique of the political and religious oppression in Stalinist Russia. The devil comes to earth and wreaks havoc in Russia alongside his motley crew of a black cat, a tall man with broken glasses, and a hitman. I’m still trying to process the allegorical layers because there’s so much to unpack.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

• # of Pages: 160

• Readability: Medium

Short book with tons of depth. Sailor Charles Marlow decides to join an ivory trading firm. After joining, Marlow keeps hearing stories about a powerful and enigmatic man named Kurtz. His obsession with Kurtz grows until he finally meets the man. Marlow meets Kurtz much later than I expected, and the story’s conclusion brilliantly connects back to the book’s title in multiple ways.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

• # of Pages: 192

• Readability: Easy

I’ve watched the old Gene Wilder movie multiple times (as well as the subpar Johnny Depp version), but reading the book gave me the chance to experience the joy anew when Charlie unwraps the chocolate bar containing that glorious golden ticket. Dahl is one of the best children’s authors of all time, and this book is a must-read for both kids and adults. It’ll help you rediscover your childlike wonder and whimsy.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

• # of Pages: 1,312

• Readability: Difficult

Simply put: the most epic revenge story of all time and my favorite novel I’ve ever read. It’s girthy but so worth the time that I’ve actually read it twice. Everyman Edmond Dantès is condemned to prison for a crime he didn’t commit—a plan masterminded by two men Dantès thought were friends. When he emerges from prison, he strives to enact his vengeance. You’ll read this book not only cheering for Dantès but feeling like you’re right alongside him.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• # of Pages: 208

• Readability: Easy

The Great Gatsby relates the emptiness of fortune and the pangs of love better than any novel I’ve read. It’s also a lurid portrayal of the Roaring Twenties that will make you want to suit up and talk your way into one of Gatsby’s lavish parties. At roughly 200 pages, this is a quick read and another one of my favorite novels of all time.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

• # of Pages: 336

• Readability: Easy

Such a fascinating premise: A group of boys turns Darwinian after getting marooned on a small island. Their time away from their mommies and daddies originally seems fun, but things turn violent after divisions form within the group. This 1954 book seems to have spawned many other stories of children placed in horrible situations, such as the 1999 book Battle Royale (and its 2008 American copycat The Hunger Games), along with TV series like The Wilds (2020–2022).

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

• # of Pages: 336

• Readability: Easy

Easily one of the most heartbreaking books I’ve ever read. I assume you’re familiar with this story by now and have likely at least watched the award-winning movie. But even so, you should read the book. It’s a powerful depiction of racism in 1930s America with sprinkles of optimism and hope for humanity.

1984 by George Orwell

• # of Pages: 304

• Readability: Medium

Orwell’s classic dystopian novel lives up to the hype. It was the origin of the phrase “Big Brother,” the name Orwell gave to the fictional dictator in Oceania. Just like any good dystopian fiction, 1984 holds up a magnifying glass to the present day, calling into question any form of government surveillance, censorship, and propaganda.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

• # of Pages: 200

• Readability: Easy

“Jekyll and Hyde” is such a popular concept these days that I didn’t realize how late in the book Stevenson reveals the truth about those two characters. It was fun to read the story with today’s knowledge and consider how shocked UK readers must have been in 1886 when they read Stevenson’s epic reveal.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

• # of Pages: 512

• Readability: Medium

Stoker uses journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings to tell this iconic story, making it one of the most unique stories I’ve ever read. Dracula is a touchstone of Gothic horror: a spooky setting, weird stuff happening, a mysterious count who seems to be behind it all, and supernatural creatures that pose an existential threat to humankind.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

• # of Pages: 320

• Readability: Medium

Bilbo Baggins gets more than he bargained for when he opens his door to find a wizard and a collection of dwarves. Bilbo leaves his slow-paced life in the Shire to set out on a mythical quest with his new retinue, kicking off arguably the most famous fantasy series of all time. I loved the characters and the entire epic world that Tolkien paints. Read this one first, and if you like it, I’d definitely recommend the entire Lord of the Rings series.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

• # of Pages: 128

• Readability: Easy

H.G. Wells broke new literary ground with this book, which popularized the concept of time travel and became the first modern-day science fiction novel. Wells explores fascinating questions about the potential future of humanity as the gap between the rich and the poor expands. This one is easy to read, fast-paced, and intriguing.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

• # of Pages: 304

• Readability: Easy

The core concept behind this book is enough for it to warrant a spot on my list. A young man sells his soul for eternal youth, but his portrait continues to age, revealing Gray’s physical (and moral) deterioration. But the book is so much more than that. It’s also a story of forbidden love in a society that disallowed homosexuality. Tragically, Wilde’s novel was even used in court as evidence against him in an indecency lawsuit.

*Honorable Mention: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

• # of Pages: 1,232

• Readability: Difficult

My list wouldn’t be complete without this book. Although it is massive and took me forever to read, it became one of my favorite novels of all time because it contains several of the best examples of unconditional love I’ve ever read. It’s also a great primer on the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris, shortly after the French Revolution. (I’m listing it as only an Honorable Mention because it’s daunting and not the first one to tackle on this list if you want to dip your toes in the water of classic lit.)

Note: If you buy this book, be sure to get the Norman Denny translation. The translation matters a TON for this book.

I hope you enjoy these great books. Each one includes an affiliate link from Bookshop.org. (If you buy one, you’ll support me as well as local bookstores. Win-win!)

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Bobby Powers:

  Glasp Talk features intimate interviews with luminaries, revealing their emotions, experiences, and stories. The guest, Bobby Powers, is a dedicated learner passionate about leadership and personal development. With over a decade of experience managing teams, leading onboarding, and Learning and Development programs at various startups and SMBs, Bobby is also an avid reader, having read over a thousand books in the last 15 years.

  ✨ Want a concise summary before diving in? Install the YouTube Summary with ChatGPT extension by Glasp for instant video summaries!

• 🟦 Chat with PDF:
  We published a new tutorial on how to chat with PDFs on Glasp. Upload any document, ask questions, and get instant summaries with page citations — all while keeping your highlights and notes in one place. Free accounts can upload files up to 500MB and store up to 30 PDFs, well beyond the typical 10–15MB limits elsewhere.

  👉 How to Chat with PDF on Glasp

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For each book, we also surfaced the Top Highlight — the single passage that the most readers independently highlighted. When many strangers stop at the same sentence, that sentence matters. This is the knowledge layer Glasp was built on.

New here? Here's how to download and import your Kindle highlights to Glasp

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

1. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — · 50 readers

Mark Manson, a blogger-turned-author, argues that the good life isn’t about caring more but about choosing what to care about. His counterintuitive framing has made the book a go-to for readers burned out on conventional self-help. Our #1 most-imported book of Q1.

“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

— Top Highlight: 15 of 50 readers · 30%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Share this on X

Get it on Amazon

2. $100M Offers — · 72 readers

Alex Hormozi, founder of Acquisition.com, breaks down how to build offers prospects feel stupid saying no to. Dense with frameworks and examples, it’s become a modern playbook for anyone selling products, services, or ideas.

“The Grand Slam Offer only becomes valuable once the prospect perceives the increase in likelihood of achievement, perceives the decrease in time delay, and perceives the decrease in effort and sacrifice.”

— Top Highlight: 16 of 72 readers · 22%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Share this on X

3. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson · 60 readers

Eric Jorgenson distilled a decade of Naval Ravikant’s tweets, essays, and podcast appearances into a single volume on wealth, happiness, and how to think. Short chapters, high density — tailor-made for highlighting.

“Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”

— Top Highlight: 28 of 60 readers · 47%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

Share this on X

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman · 27 readers

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman maps two systems of thought: System 1 (fast, intuitive) and System 2 (slow, deliberate). The foundational text on cognitive biases, and still the most-cited popular psychology book of the past two decades.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

— Top Highlight: 7 of 27 readers · 26%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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5. The Daily Stoic — & Stephen Hanselman · 46 readers

Ryan Holiday, who has done more than anyone to bring Stoicism to modern audiences, pairs 366 short meditations from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus with daily commentary. One page per day, built for a year-long practice.

“Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it — no Stoic would tolerate that assumption — but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t.”

— Top Highlight: 13 of 46 readers · 28%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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6. The War of Art — · 34 readers

Novelist Steven Pressfield (Gates of Fire, The Legend of Bagger Vance) names the invisible force that stops creative work “Resistance” — and treats fighting it as a lifelong discipline. A cult favorite among writers, founders, and anyone who makes things.

“When I began this book, Resistance almost beat me. This is the form it took. It told me (the voice in my head) that I was a writer of fiction, not nonfiction, and that I shouldn’t be exposing these concepts of Resistance literally and overtly; rather, I should incorporate them metaphorically into a novel.”

— Top Highlight: 11 of 34 readers · 32%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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7. Atomic Habits — James Clear · 69 readers

James Clear, whose newsletter reaches millions, lays out how tiny habits compound into remarkable results. His cue-craving-response-reward framework has become the default mental model for behavior change.

“A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.”

— Top Highlight: 24 of 69 readers · 35%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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8. The God Delusion — · 8 readers

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins makes the case against religious belief and for a scientific worldview — a sharp challenge to faith that has drawn both admirers and critics since its 2006 release.

“Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: ‘When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.’”

— Top Highlight: 3 of 8 readers · 38%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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9. Four Thousand Weeks — · 18 readers

Journalist Oliver Burkeman reframes time management as an existential question: a typical life is only about 4,000 weeks long. The book is an antidote to hustle culture, arguing that the point isn’t to do more but to accept what we can’t do.

“Principle number one is to pay yourself first when it comes to time. If you take a portion of your pay cheque the day you receive it and squirrel it away... you’ll probably never feel the absence of that cash. But if, like most people, you ‘pay yourself last’ instead, you’ll usually find that there isn’t any.”

— Top Highlight: 8 of 18 readers · 44%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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10. Unlimited Memory — Kevin Horsley · 27 readers

Kevin Horsley, a Grand Master of Memory, shares the visualization and association techniques competitive memory athletes use. Practical, not mystical — useful for anyone trying to learn faster.

“When your mind is at peace, you can enjoy the moment and your mind becomes like a laser beam. Peace and concentration are the same thing.”

— Top Highlight: 6 of 27 readers · 22%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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11. Building a Second Brain — · 50 readers

Productivity teacher Tiago Forte introduces the PARA method for organizing digital notes into a searchable external memory. Arguably the most on-brand book for Glasp readers on this list — and our Highlight of the Quarter (see below).

“The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, ‘How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?’ Surprisingly, when you focus on taking action, the vast amount of information out there gets radically streamlined and simplified.”

— Top Highlight: 30 of 50 readers · 60%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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12. The Miracle Morning — Hal Elrod · 22 readers

Hal Elrod lays out a morning routine built around six practices — Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing — designed to be done before 8 AM. Simple, repeatable, and still one of the most-imported productivity books.

“Always remember that who you’re becoming is far more important than what you’re doing, and yet it is what you’re doing that is determining who you’re becoming.”

— Top Highlight: 7 of 22 readers · 32%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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13. Deep Work — Cal Newport · 32 readers

Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport argues that the ability to focus without distraction is the defining skill of the knowledge economy — and that it’s becoming rare. A manifesto for anyone doing cognitively demanding work.

“In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.”

— Top Highlight: 18 of 32 readers · 56%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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14. The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel · 47 readers

Morgan Housel, partner at The Collaborative Fund, tells 19 short stories about how people actually think about money. His thesis: personal finance is less about math than about behavior, psychology, and long time horizons.

“But it’s one of the most important. If expectations rise with results there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the…”

— Top Highlight: 23 of 47 readers · 49%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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15. Becoming Supernatural — · 9 readers

Joe Dispenza, a former chiropractor turned meditation teacher, blends neuroscience, meditation, and quantum-physics metaphor. A more spiritual pick than most on this list — but clearly finding an audience in the Glasp community.

“Every person, object, thing, place, or situation in our familiar physical reality has a neurological network assigned to it in our brain and an emotional component connected to it because we’ve experienced all these things. This is how our energy becomes bonded to our past-present reality.”

— Top Highlight: 4 of 9 readers · 44%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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16. The Millionaire Fastlane — MJ DeMarco · 24 readers

Entrepreneur MJ DeMarco argues that the “save 10% and retire at 65” model is the slow lane — and that real wealth comes from building businesses that scale. A cult classic in the entrepreneurship corner of the internet.

“Priorities: Some want to look rich, and others want to be rich.”

— Top Highlight: 5 of 24 readers · 21%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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17. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — J.K. Rowling · 14 readers

The only fiction in our top 20. A reminder that Glasp readers don’t just highlight business books — sometimes they highlight the opening chapters of a story they first read as kids.

“Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel — Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.”

— Top Highlight: 7 of 14 readers · 50%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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18. Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari · 14 readers

Historian Yuval Noah Harari tells the story of humankind from the cognitive revolution to the present in 400 pages. Sweeping, provocative, and endlessly quotable.

“The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.”

— Top Highlight: 3 of 14 readers · 21%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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19. Mindset — Carol Dweck · 22 readers

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck introduced the terms that now saturate educational and workplace discourse: fixed mindset vs growth mindset. The original source is still worth reading.

“Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?”

— Top Highlight: 10 of 22 readers · 45%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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20. Die With Zero — Bill Perkins · 12 readers

Hedge fund manager Bill Perkins makes a counterintuitive case: optimize your life for peak experiences, not for your net worth on your deathbed. Money is a tool for memories, not a scorecard.

“Start actively thinking about the life experiences you’d like to have, and the number of times you’d like to have them. The experiences can be large or small, free or costly, charitable or hedonistic. But think about what you really want out of this life in terms of meaningful and memorable experiences.”

— Top Highlight: 5 of 12 readers · 42%

👉 See the 9 other most-highlighted passages

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The Highlight of the Quarter

Across all 20 books, this was the passage with the strongest reader consensus of Q1 2026:

“The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, ‘How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?’ Surprisingly, when you focus on taking action, the vast amount of information out there gets radically streamlined and simplified.”

— Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain
— Top Highlight: 30 of 50 readers · 60%

This passage topped both metrics — the highest absolute number of readers marking the same sentence (30), and the highest consensus rate across the top 20 (60%). Fitting that the quarter’s most agreed-upon highlight came from the book about organizing your highlights.

Closing

Click any title to read the other highlights Glasp readers left behind. Each book is a window into how the community is thinking — and a shortcut to the ideas that shaped their quarter.

Every highlight is a breadcrumb for the next reader. That’s how knowledge sharing works on Glasp.

Bring your Kindle highlights to Glasp

Every reader in this list imported their Kindle highlights to Glasp.

Once imported, your highlights become searchable across every book, article, and PDF you’ve saved — and part of the collective data that shapes lists like this one. If you haven’t imported yours yet, here’s how it works:

👉 How to Download Highlights and Notes from Kindle

Would you like to take Glasp on the go?

With the Glasp mobile app, you can highlight and organize your favorite content anytime, anywhere. Stay productive on the move and never miss an insightful quote.

Download for iOS

Download for Android

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

Sponsor an Edition

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* Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Bright Data.

One MCP to access the Web

If you’re building AI agents, you’ve probably hit the same wall everyone does.

• Pages don’t load.

• CAPTCHAs stop your workflows.

• JS-heavy sites break your scrapers.

• Geo-blocks kill your data coverage.

You spend more time fighting the web than building your product.

Bright Data’s MCP Server fixes that.

Instead of stitching together proxies, browsers, and scrapers, MCP gives you one access layer between your agents and the web. You make the request. It handles the rest.

Try it for free

We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to chat with PDF

PDFs are everywhere — research papers, reports, textbooks, ebooks. But reading them cover to cover takes time, and finding the one answer you need often means scrolling through hundreds of pages.

Glasp lets you upload any PDF and chat with it — ask questions, get summaries, and pull out insights instantly, without losing your highlights or notes.

Once set up, Glasp will:

• Upload any PDF — research papers, reports, textbooks, and more

• Answer your questions with citations pulled directly from the document

• Upload PDFs up to 500MB and store up to 30 files for free

• Search across your PDF and web highlights from your profile page

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to upload a PDF to Glasp and start chatting with it — so you can get to the ideas that matter, faster.

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

🪄 How It Works

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Select a browser: Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.

On your search tab, type in “glasp.co“ and you will be automatically directed to the page of Glasp. Or access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp - PDF Chat

Upon reaching it click “Sign up” and continue using your Google Account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, please go to your profile page by clicking “Dashboard” at the top right. If you cannot see the “Dashboard,” please visit glasp.co again.

Step 2: Install the Glasp extension to your browser

Click Add to Chrome to install the Glasp extension.

👉 Glasp — Chrome Web Store

👉 Glasp — Safari Web Store

After installing the extension, make sure to pin it to your toolbar. This makes it easier to open Glasp from the sidebar. If you’re prompted to sign in to Glasp in the sidebar, simply sign in with your account.

Step 3: Go to your Glasp profile

Once you’ve installed the Glasp extension and signed in, click the Profile icon in the sidebar to open your profile page.

This will take you to your profile page. From there, click the + button in the left sidebar.

Step 4: Upload a PDF to Glasp

When the upload modal opens, drag and drop your PDF file into the area, or click Select Files to upload it from your device.

Select a PDF file from your computer to upload.

After selecting a PDF file, click Upload PDF Files in the modal. Your PDF will begin uploading to Glasp.

Step 5: Chat with the PDF

Once your PDF is uploaded, you’ll be taken to the page showing your uploaded PDFs. To start chatting with the PDF, please click “Chat” at the top right.

Then, type any questions about the PDF in the chat box at the bottom right.

In this example, I asked "What are the key takeaways from this paper?" and Glasp returned a structured response with page citations.

You can also ask follow-up questions to dig deeper. In this example, I asked "How does the Transformer compare to RNNs and CNNs in terms of training efficiency?" — and Glasp returned a detailed explanation with page citations.

If you want to save the response, click the copy icon below it.

Step 6: Copy the PDF text

If you want to copy the full text of the PDF, click Copy text at the top right. You can choose from three formats: Plain text, Markdown, or XML.

Here’s an example of the Plain text format pasted into Obsidian.

Here’s an example of the Markdown format pasted — notice how each page is formatted as a heading (## Page 1), making it easy to navigate long documents.

Here's an example of the XML format pasted into Obsidian — with page markers (<page n="1">) designed for LLMs.

Step 7: Highlight the PDF

To highlight text, select any sentence in the PDF. A popup with a four-color palette will appear—click the color you’d like to use.

To view all your highlights, click Highlights in the top-right corner.

You can also add notes to each highlight. Click the pencil icon in the popup to write your note.

Glasp is built around sharing knowledge publicly, so highlights from web content are usually visible to others. However, PDFs you upload and highlight in Glasp are saved privately and are not visible to anyone else.

Step 8: Search highlight

Glasp also lets you search across all your highlights — from PDFs, web pages, and YouTube videos — in one place. To start, click the Profile icon in the left sidebar.

On your profile page, click the Search icon at the top of the Highlights tab.

Then, type your search term in the search bar. Glasp will return matching highlights across all your sources — PDFs, web pages, books, and YouTube videos — in one unified list.

Your PDFs shouldn’t stay locked in your downloads folder.

With Glasp’s Chat with PDF, you can upload any document, ask questions, and turn dense PDFs into reusable knowledge — all while keeping your highlights and notes in one place.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start making the most of everything you read.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 How to Highlight PDFs on Glasp — Highlight and save PDFs you find on the web

👉 How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts — Turn your YouTube videos into reusable text in seconds

👉 How to Import Kindle Highlights into NotebookLM with Glasp — Use your book highlights as sources for AI-powered research

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

Sponsor an Edition

Subscribe to Glasp

Subscribe now

“The 2 hardest things you’ll have to do when running a company are recruiting and talking people out of leaving.”

― Marc Andreessen

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

📚 3 Good Recommendations

The Building Block Economy
by Mitchell Hashimoto (5 mins)

• Building blocks win over polished apps: Well-documented components (libraries, forkable apps) drive more adoption because AI agents excel at gluing proven pieces together, removing traditional technical barriers.

• Maintenance gets easier: Offering building blocks lets you say “no” to feature requests, outsource R&D by watching what others build, and reach niche communities organically.

• Mainline apps benefit, not die: Polished applications become more stable and focused thanks to the larger user base and external experimentation happening on top of the building blocks.

Save to Glasp

Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO)
by (12 mins)

• AI agents read docs differently: They fetch pages in 1-2 requests, skip all client-side analytics, and silently fail when content exceeds their ~100K-200K token context limits.

• AEO = SEO for AI agents: Optimize for discoverability, machine-readability, token efficiency, capability signaling, and proper robots.txt access control.

• Quick wins: Add llms.txt (agent-friendly sitemap), skill.md (declares what your API can do), serve clean markdown, and keep pages under ~25K tokens.

Save to Glasp

Good Taste the Only Real Moat Left
by Raj Nandan Sharmas (8 mins)

• AI made competent output cheap, so judgment is the new differentiator. The scarce skill is no longer generation—it’s knowing what to reject.

• Taste alone isn’t enough. Reducing humans to curators of AI output is a trap; real value comes from building with stakes, not just selecting.

• The edge is AI speed plus human specificity. Use AI to clear away the average faster, then add what it can’t: real constraints, domain truths, and a point of view you’ll stand behind.

Save to Glasp

📣 Community Updates

• 🟨 Pricing Update:

  On May 1, 2026, Glasp will update its pricing for the first time since launch. The Pro Plan will move from $12 to $15/mo, and the Unlimited Plan from $30 to $36/mo. Existing subscribers won’t be affected until their next billing cycle. The Free plan remains unchanged. See full details here.

• 🟦 New PDF Features:
  You can now chat with any uploaded PDF directly inside Glasp, and copy its text as plain text, Markdown, or XML with a single click. Turn dense research papers and reports into conversations — or clean text you can paste anywhere. Try it here 👉 PDF Chat

  

• 🟥 Known Issue — YouTube Summary Extension (South Korea):

  Some users in South Korea are reporting that the YouTube Summary widget appears in the top-left corner of the video and can't be clicked. We haven't been able to reproduce this on our end, so if you're running into the same issue, please reply to this email with your browser, OS, and region — it'll help us track down the cause. In the meantime, you can use Glasp Reader to summarize YouTube videos instead.

❤️ Gratitude

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• Best AI Study Apps for Getting Ahead in 2026 on Tool Finder

  

• Highlight & Summarize: PDF Companion on FactCheckTool.com

  

• The Complete Chrome Extension Guide for Better Productivity (2024) on Shu Omi’s YouTube

  

• 善用AI工具，幫你秒懂外語影片在說什麼 (Make good use of AI tools to help you understand what foreign language videos are saying in seconds.) on Vista Cheng

• Glasp。Chromeの拡張機能でYouTube動画を一瞬で文字起こし。(Glasp. A Chrome extension that instantly transcribes YouTube videos.) on 事業の作り方チャンネル’s YouTube

  

• Top 7 Free AI Tools to Summarize Long Articles Instantly on iTechFever

• 13 recommended Chrome extensions!【Google Chrome】 on 【ガジェット】みくちゃんねる

  

• 50 BEST Chrome Extensions You NEED to Have in 2026! on YouTube

  

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

--

Would you like to take Glasp on the go?

With the Glasp mobile app, you can highlight and organize your favorite content anytime, anywhere. Stay productive on the move and never miss an insightful quote.

Download for iOS

Download for Android

Partner With Glasp

We currently offer newsletter sponsorships. If you have a product, event, or service you’d like to share with our community of learning enthusiasts, sponsor an edition of our newsletter to reach engaged readers.

Sponsor an Edition

Subscribe to Glasp

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No one else will ever see this video. It doesn’t exist for anyone but you.

Now imagine the same thing happens to movies. You watch Titanic, but in your version, Rose dies too. Your friend watches the same title — but Jack survives. Your coworker’s version? The iceberg never appears. Same movie poster. Same title. Completely different stories.

This isn’t science fiction. AI-generated video is already here — and the economics of personalization push toward exactly this future. When the cost of producing content approaches zero, there’s no reason not to generate a unique version for every viewer.

And when that happens, something fundamental breaks.

You finish the movie. You’re moved. You want to talk about it. But there’s no one to talk to — because no one saw what you saw.

You can’t even scroll through the comments, because there are no shared comments for a film that only you experienced.

Over a decade ago, Eli Pariser, internet activist and author of The Filter Bubble, warned that personalization algorithms were creating a unique informational universe for each user. His famous example: two people Googled “BP” and got entirely different results — one saw investment news, the other saw the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

That was about filtering. The same pool of content, sorted differently for each person. Concerning, but manageable — you could still find the same article if you looked hard enough.

What’s coming is qualitatively different. AI doesn’t rearrange existing content. It creates new content that never existed before — for an audience of one. There’s nothing to find, because there’s nothing shared to begin with.

Pariser’s filter bubble hid things from you. The AI creation bubble eliminates the very idea of a common experience.

You lose the ability to say, “Did you see that?” — not because the other person missed it, but because “that” only ever existed for you.

The Loneliness of the Perfectly Curated Feed

Think about what you do after watching a YouTube video that moves you. You scroll down to the comments — not for more information, but to find someone who felt the same way. You’re scanning for the comment that says exactly what you were thinking, and when you find it, you hit the thumbs up. That tiny act — “yes, someone else saw what I saw” — is deeply satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain.

It’s the same impulse that sends you to Reddit or X after breaking news. You’re not looking for facts. You already know what happened. You’re looking for reactions — for someone whose response mirrors yours, or challenges it in a way that sharpens your own thinking.

That spark of recognition — “You read that too?” — is one of the most basic forms of human connection. It’s why book clubs exist. It’s why colleagues forward articles to each other. It’s why your friend texts you a link at midnight with no context except “THIS.”

In a hyper-personalized world, these moments vanish.

Not because people stop consuming content. They consume more than ever. But because no one else has seen what you’ve seen. The documentary was generated for you. The essay was adapted to your reading level and philosophical leanings. Even the examples were swapped to match your cultural background.

The content is perfect. And perfectly isolating.

William Nicholson, the screenwriter of Shadowlands, gave the character of C.S. Lewis a line that has since become one of the most quoted phrases about reading: “We read to know we’re not alone.” The line resonates because it captures something true — reading is not just about acquiring information. It’s about discovering that someone else has felt what you felt, noticed what you noticed, struggled with what you struggled with.

But this only works when multiple people read the same thing.

Why We Crave Shared Experience

Research in social psychology confirms what we intuitively know: shared experiences are more intense than solitary ones. A study from Yale University (Boothby, Clark, & Bargh, Psychological Science, 2014) found that even something as simple as tasting chocolate feels more vivid when another person is tasting the same chocolate at the same time. The experience isn’t better because of conversation — it’s better because of the mere fact of co-experiencing.

We are, at our core, creatures who want to compare notes. We want to know: Did you catch that detail? What did you think of the ending? Did it change how you see things?

This is not a minor social nicety. It’s a fundamental driver of how culture forms. Shared texts — the Bible, the Analects of Confucius, Shakespeare, the Constitution — became civilizational touchstones not because they were the “best” texts, but because enough people read them to create a common language.

Classics endure for this reason. When Clifton Fadiman, the literary critic and longtime editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club, wrote about rereading classics, he observed that the book doesn’t change — but the reader does. Each reading reveals something new in you. And when millions of people across generations read the same text, the accumulated interpretations create something larger than any single reading experience.

AI-generated content, by definition, cannot do this. It has no shared audience. There is no community of readers. There is only you.

What Stays When Everything Is Personalized

If AI-generated content fragments the shared experience, what holds it together? Two things.

First, canonical works become more valuable, not less. In a world where most content is ephemeral and individualized, the books, essays, and ideas that millions of people have read become rare common ground. Sapiens. Thinking, Fast and Slow. The Analects. These aren’t just good books — they’re shared reference points. The more personalized everything else becomes, the more we’ll gravitate toward works that let us say, “I read that too.”

Second, the traces we leave behind start to matter more than the content itself. Shawn Wang (swyx), developer and author of the influential essay Learn In Public, coined the idea of “learning exhaust” — the byproduct of learning that, when shared publicly, becomes fuel for others. His point was about career development, but the principle runs deeper. When you highlight a passage, write a note in the margin, or share a reaction — you’re creating a signal that says: I was here. This mattered to me.

In a hyper-personalized world, these signals become the connective tissue that AI can’t generate for you. A highlight is proof that another human read the same sentence and stopped. A margin note is evidence that someone else wrestled with the same idea. These aren’t content. They’re presence.

This is what we’re building at Glasp — a place where the highlights, notes, and reactions of real readers are visible to each other. Not algorithmically generated. Not personalized into isolation. Just one person’s honest mark on a passage, available for anyone else who reads the same text to discover.

The internet’s 1:9:90 rule tells us that in any online community, 1% create, 9% contribute, and 90% lurk. But highlighting changes the math. You don’t have to write a blog post or record a video. You just have to read — and leave a trace. That trace becomes someone else’s moment of recognition: “Someone else underlined this exact sentence.”

AI can personalize your feed. It can generate content tailored to your taste. What it cannot do is tell you that another person — a real, specific, unpredictable human being — found the same paragraph meaningful.

That’s not a feature. That’s the foundation of connection itself.

→ Browse what people are highlighting on Glasp

→ Start highlighting the web with Glasp

What’s something you learned recently that you almost didn’t share — and what held you back? Leave a comment. We read every one.

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There’s a question I keep hearing from marketers, newsletter creators, and founders alike:

“Is email marketing still worth it when AI is doing… practically everything?”

Look, it’s a fair question, and I think many folks are pondering this themselves.

The short answer is yes. Emphatically! But the longer answer is a little more interesting, because the way email works is changing faster than most senders realise (or are able to get comfortable with).

And this has nothing to do with email being broken. It’s built around the premise that the inbox itself is getting quite a bit smarter.

Allow me to explain (and grab a cup of coffee because I’m taking a deep dive into this one).

Your inbox has a new gatekeeper

There’s an uncomfortable future ahead for email senders, and there are elements of this already happening. And it begins with the fact that your subscribers may wind up never actually reading your email. Well, not the way you wrote it, anyway.

Inboxes are already generating AI-powered summaries that appear before an email is opened. Apple, for example, is replacing your carefully crafted preheader text with a machine-written preview. Gmail’s Gemini integration does something similar post-open, summarising your content into a few bullet points before a reader scrolls to your words.

Let that sink in for a minute. In the short-attention-span economy, this is going to mean folks aren’t even skimming anymore. They’re getting things told to them by AI, and choosing what to dive into from there.

Yes, your subject line still matters. And yes, your content still matters (even more so). But there’s now an intermediary AI layer sitting between your send and your subscriber’s attention. And that AI is making editorial decisions about your email on your behalf.

The almost scary part is that this isn’t even a future scenario. It’s happening now. Gmail made its AI summary features free to all personal account users in the US earlier this year, and Apple Intelligence has been summarising emails since late 2024 on supported devices. If your audience skews toward Gmail or Apple Mail (and for most of us, close to 90% of inbox usage comes from these two clients), this directly affects how your emails are consumed.

So what do you do about it?

The answer is what’s going to separate email senders that send from those that perform, and it begins with a relatively simple concept: You write for two readers, both the human and the machine.

Writing for AI (without losing your soul)

This doesn’t mean stuffing your emails with keywords or writing like a robot. In fact, it almost means the opposite.

AI summaries extract meaning from structure and clarity, so if your email rambles, the summary will too…or worse, it’ll pull the wrong takeaway entirely. Now, if your email is clear, scannable, and has one obvious point (likely per section), the AI in the inbox is far more likely to surface the thing you want it to surface.

And if you want to see what that looks like in practice:

Lead with the value. You don’t want to be burying your most important point below an insanely long intro. If AI is summarising your first 100 words, you’ll want to make those words count. Treat the opening of every email like a headline and a subheadline had a proverbial baby: punchy, clear, and (hopefully) impossible to misinterpret.

One idea per section. This has always been good email practice (the Rule of One, as I call it), but it’s now almost structurally critical. AI models parse sections, so if each section has a distinct, clear point, the summary will likely reflect that. Mix three ideas into one paragraph, and the machines will pick whichever they fancy, meaning less control over what you want your readers to see.

Use descriptive headers. Not clever ones. Descriptive ones. “The Secret Sauce“ tells an AI very little unless it’s extremely contextually supported. “How to Improve Open Rates With Segmentation” tells it all it needs to summarise that section well. This is a trade-off, I’ll admit, and for creative writers, it’s weighing up personality vs. parsability. But the best email writers find a way to do both, and it can be done well.

Should you care that LLMs might cite your email content?

This one’s interesting, and it feeds on both the email and SEO worlds. You may have heard the term AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation). Essentially, it’s the practice of structuring content so that AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews can find it, understand it, and cite it when answering user questions.

Now, most of this conversation lives in the SEO world, true, but if you’re publishing your newsletter on the web (think Substack, Beehiiv, Ghost, or even your own site), your email content is web content. And that means AI search tools can, and likely will, pull from it.

So, the question begs: Should you optimise for this? And, like any good email advice, it depends.

And here’s what it depends on.

If you’re writing actionable, original content with clear structure and genuine expertise, you’re already doing 80% of the work. AI models favour content that’s well-sourced, clearly structured, and factually dense. Sound familiar? That’s just good writing practice and the stuff you should be doing for email anyway.

Where it gets tactical? Well, my advice is often that you’ll need to make sure your web-published newsletters have descriptive titles, clear meta descriptions, and aren’t locked behind a paywall that blocks AI crawlers (unless this is your strategy, of course, but that’s a discussion for another day).

Structure your posts with headers that mirror the questions your readers actually ask. If your newsletter answers “What’s the best email platform for creators?” in a detailed, opinionated way, there’s a real chance an AI search tool surfaces that answer.

This isn’t necessarily about gaming a system either. You want to create content and structure advice that’s genuinely useful (making that usefulness discoverable). Which, if we’re being honest, has always been the email marketer’s job.

AI-Generated content (The current elephant in every inbox)

I have a few strong opinions on this one, because we’re seeing a turning point in the value of content of late. AI should help you write emails. AI should not write your emails.

And that distinction matters more than you think, because your audience is, and will, notice.

Yes, the tools are extraordinary (especially in getting things done and fitting that into the limited time we all have). I use AI regularly. For brainstorming, researching, restructuring drafts, testing different angles on a paragraph, and mainly for understanding the intricacies of my audience behaviour.

It’s brilliant at accelerating the process and removing that blank-page paralysis we all sometimes face as writers and creatives. But if you hand over the entire creative process to a machine, your emails will sound like everyone else’s emails, and then the point of sending something falls away. In a channel where trust and voice are absolutely everything, sounding generic is almost worse than sounding imperfect.

But the balance is tricky, isn’t it? Your readers can now spot AI-generated copy far more easily than ever, precisely because they’re exposed to so much of it (cue the “delves”, “it’s this, it isn’t this, the poor “em-dashes”, you know the drill.

Phrases, cadence, the relentless positivity…it all starts blurring lines. And then, when everything sounds the same, nothing stands out. You see where this is going?

To give this an analogy, you want to use AI as a co-pilot (yep, there’s even AI called that, thanks Microsoft). You should ALWAYS remain the captain.

Let it generate options. Let it tighten your prose. Hell, let it even write something in different angles to help you define some creative approaches if you need to, but make sure the final product sounds like you. It’s your experiences, your observations, your voice that your subscribers signed up for, and it’s the one thing AI genuinely cannot replicate (at least, not until they plug it into our brains, which, hey, may still be coming).

Which email platforms enable you for AI well?

Because I work with many email senders looking to grow in the right direction, I get asked this almost constantly. Truthfully, my answer is always the same: the best platform is the one that fits your stage, your end-goal, and your budget.

That said, a few stand out for different reasons:

Beehiiv and Substack have become a go-to for newsletter creators.

Both have strong growth tools (referral programmes, recommendations, boosts, etc), clean editors, built-in monetisation features, and audience growth opportunities..

I’m intrigued to see where their AI-tools begin transforming things, as this is where the majority of newsletter-specific senders are finding the most traction right now.

Stripo is another surprising email platform with strong AI-led tools. Now, Stripo isn’t being used to send and manage emails, but their AI-assisted modular and HTML building tools are exceptional for time-saving and pushing email boundaries, and if you’re in the more visual email space, a solid consideration for email design generation.

Brevo and ActiveCampaign remain solid for businesses running broader email marketing campaigns (think e-commerce, B2B lead nurturing, and transactional emails alongside newsletter content).

They deserve a mention here because they’re also doing a heap to ensure email senders are enabled with strong AI-led tools around email metric analysis, campaign composition and strategy optimisation across various elements within their platforms.

The common thread here, though? Whatever you choose, you’ll want to make sure it supports the fundamentals before any fancy AI features: clean list management, solid deliverability, segmentation capabilities, and analytics you’ll actually use.

No platform (or its AI tools) will save a bad strategy, and a good strategy can work on almost any platform.

What’s actually working right now

Rather than simply theorising, here’s what I’m seeing work in practice among the email senders I’m working and collaborating with, and who are adapting well to the AI era that we’re moving into:

Hyper-relevant segmentation. AI tools inside platforms like Beehiiv are making it easier to segment audiences based on engagement patterns (and not just demographics, which is what we’ve all been doing for ages). Senders who use this are seeing stronger click-through rates and more engaged audiences because they’re matching content to behaviour, not merely on what they assume audiences want to engage with.

Cross-promotion and discovery networks. One of the most effective growth strategies I’ve seen for audience growth is newsletter cross-promotion. Essentially, finding complementary newsletters and sharing audiences is almost a staple for most growing newsletters, so finding solid cross-promotion tools and building on those is now becoming a strong recommendation.

Plain-text and hybrid formats. There’s a growing shift back toward simpler email design. We’re talking fewer images, more text, and even more conversational tone (likely, to stand out amongst the AI-sludge). This isn’t merely a style preference; simpler emails tend to render more consistently across AI-summarised views and are less likely to have their key message buried by a machine-generated preview that pulls from an image alt tag instead of a headline.

Consistent, audience-first content. This one never changes. It will never change (well, for good email senders anyway). The newsletters thriving in the AI era are the ones that always treated their audience as people first and metrics second. They write with empathy, specificity, and some genuine expertise, because no amount of AI can substitute for that.

What to do with all of this

Email marketing isn’t being replaced by AI. You can stop worrying about that.

Email is, however, being mediated by it, and this is out of your control.

Inboxes are moving from neutral containers to interpretative layers. AI decides what to surface, what to summarise, and increasingly so, what to actually prioritise, meaning email senders need to think about their structure, clarity, and discoverability in ways they haven’t (a.k.a, shifting your mindset from what it was five years ago).

The most important thing for any email sender right now is to realise that the fundamentals haven’t changed. Write something worth reading. Send it to people who want it. Make the value obvious. And, folks, be human. That’s why your audience is there.

That’s also why knowledge-sharing communities matter more than ever. When AI can generate a passable email in seconds, the voices that cut through are the ones rooted in real experience, contain genuine curiosity, and have a willingness to learn publicly.

Communities built around that kind of exchange (where practitioners share what’s actually working, not just what sounds good) become a beacon of light in a tumultuous digital ocean filled with tons of AI noise.

AI raises the bar on all of those things. And honestly? That’s not a bad thing. The senders who were already doing this well are the ones who’ll continue to thrive. The ones relying on sheer volume, generic (read “bland”) content, and spray-and-pray tactics are going to find the AI era increasingly unforgiving.

The inbox is telling you what it wants. My question, dear reader, is will you be listening, or will you pass that on to AI too?

Des Brown is an email marketing expert and the creator of Email Advice in Your Inbox, a newsletter for email professionals, marketers, and creators. He’s also the co-founder of CrossLetter, a platform for cross-promoting, finding email sponsorships and discovering newsletters. Connect with Des on LinkedIn.

📣 Community Updates by Glasp

• 🟥 Glasp Talk with Des Brown:

  In this episode of Glasp Talk, Des shares how to achieve 50%+ open rates — from nailing deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and crafting personalized emails, to re-engaging inactive subscribers and using AI for smarter segmentation. If you want to build an email list people actually read, this one’s for you.

• 🟩 Updated PDF upload limit:

  You can now upload PDFs up to 500MB per file to Glasp — perfect for lengthy research papers, full ebooks, and dense reports. Start highlighting without worrying about file size! Check the tutorial below.

  👉 How to Upload and Highlight Local PDFs on Glasp

• 🟨 New Tutorial - Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts:

  Did you know you can bulk download transcripts from your entire YouTube channel with Glasp? Connect your channel, select the videos you need, and export everything at once in .txt, .md, .csv, .json, or .srt — no copy-pasting required. Check the tutorial below.

  👉 How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

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“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

Hi friends,

We hand-picked 3 good pieces of content to inspire and motivate you now and in the future. Keep track of the insights that resonate with you by highlighting them with Glasp💡

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

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📚 3 Good Recommendations

The 2nd Phase of Agentic Development
by (4 mins)

• From clones to reimaginings. Early agentic projects copied existing software using test suites. The new phase—like Cloudflare’s EmDash (a serverless WordPress successor) and Cheng Lou’s Pretext—rethinks old problems from scratch.

• Cheap code enables challengers. Coding agents lower the cost of taking on entrenched software, making it practical to attack incumbents that were previously too risky to compete with.

• Agents accelerate battle-testing. New projects can use AI to synthetically test and harden software rapidly, closing the reliability gap with mature tools that took decades to stabilize.

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Google’s 20-year secret is now available to every enterprise
by (7 mins)

• Consumer tech’s secret is now accessible to enterprises: Companies like Google and Netflix built trillion-dollar empires by capturing user behavior and feeding it into learning systems. Enterprise software never had this loop because decisions were scattered across meetings, emails, and people’s heads.

• AI agents are the key enabler: When humans edit an agent’s proposal (e.g., adjusting a discount due to competitive pressure), tacit expertise becomes a structured, learnable signal—creating the instrumentation layer enterprises never had.

• The opportunity is “context graphs” that capture decision reasoning: Incumbents store outcomes but lose the “why.” Winners will capture rationale at decision time, compounding institutional judgment that even frontier AI models can’t replicate.

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Bad Analogies
by (13 mins)

• The Amazon analogy is overused. Bezos had a calculated strategy where growth generated cash; WeWork used the same defense but had broken economics. Not every money-losing company is building toward dominance.

• AI labs face a key difference: competition. Amazon and Uber emerged from their spending with strategic monopolies. AI labs are all pursuing identical scaling strategies against each other—no clear path to a runaway winner.

• Analogies are starting points, not conclusions. The real work is examining why a comparison fits. Whether AI labs become the next Amazon or the next AOL depends on deeper analysis than “they’re losing money too.”

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📣 Community Updates

• 🟨 Pricing Update:

  On May 1, 2026, Glasp will update its pricing for the first time since launch. The Pro Plan will move from $12 to $15/mo, and the Unlimited Plan from $30 to $36/mo. Existing subscribers won’t be affected until their next billing cycle. The Free plan remains unchanged. See full details here.

• 🟦 Relevant Highlights:
  Did you know Glasp now surfaces highlights from articles you’ve read in the past that are relevant to what you’re currently viewing? With Relevant Highlights, you can instantly connect new content to your existing knowledge — making every reading session smarter. Try it on any highlight page today.

  

• 🟩 PDF Upload Limit Increased:
  You can now upload PDF files up to 500MB — giving you more room to save and highlight your most important documents on Glasp.
  👉 How to Upload and Highlight Local PDFs on Glasp

• 🟥 New Tutorial: Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts:
  We published a new tutorial on how to bulk download YouTube transcripts from your saved videos on Glasp. Instead of copying transcripts one by one, you can export multiple at once — perfect for reviewing, studying, or repurposing your own content. Check the tutorial below.
  👉 How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

❤️ Gratitude

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• YouTube Summarizer with ChatGPT on FactCheckTool.com

  

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• 5 Ways to Transcribe A YouTube Video To Text: Fast, Free & Simple on Drost Video’s YouTube

  

• Try using 4 AI tools to summarize YouTube clips into easy-to-read text in just a few seconds. on Peesamac’s YouTube

  

• Top AI Chrome Extensions Every Developer Should Use on ScriptandTools

• Glasp on AI Collection

  

• 13 narzędzi/rozszerzeń summarizera YouTube opartych na sztucznej inteligencji, które oszczędzają godziny (13 AI-Powered YouTube Summarizer Tools/Extensions That Will Save You Hours) on Newsblog

• Revolutionize Your Learning with Glasp: The Ultimate Web Highlighter on AI Authority’s YouTube

  

We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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We’re excited to announce a new tutorial on Glasp: How to Bulk Download YouTube Transcripts

Most YouTube creators script, record, and edit their videos — but the transcript rarely goes anywhere after that. It stays locked inside the video, unused.

Glasp lets you bulk download transcripts from your own YouTube channel — automatically syncing all your videos so you can export them at once, in the format of your choice.

Once set up, Glasp will:

• Sync all public videos from your YouTube channel

• Let you select one video, a few, or your entire catalog

• Download transcripts in bulk — .txt, .md, .csv, .json, or .srt

• Allow you to track up to 30 videos per channel (Pro plan)

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to connect your YouTube channel to Glasp and bulk download your transcripts — so the ideas you’ve recorded actually stick.

Note: Please use this feature for your own content and use transcripts responsibly. Make sure to comply with YouTube’s terms of service and the copyright laws in your country.

If you want to reread or highlight this newsletter, save it to Glasp.

Save to Glasp

🪄 How It Works

Step 1: Sign up for Glasp

Select a browser: Google Chrome, Brave, Safari, Microsoft Edge, etc.

On your search tab, type in “glasp.co“ and you will be automatically directed to the page of Glasp. Or access it from the link below.

👉 Glasp - YouTube Transcript

Upon reaching it click “Sign up” and continue using your Google Account.

You can sign up for Glasp with either Google Sign-in or Apple Sign-in. If you’re not an iPhone/iPad user, we strongly recommend you use Google Sign-in.

After finalizing your account, please go to your profile page by clicking “Dashboard” at the top right. If you cannot see the "Dashboard," please visit glasp.co again.

Step 2: Go to the “Channels” Tab

On your Glasp profile page, click the Channels tab at the top. Then, click “+ Add YouTube Channel.”

Please check your YouTube channel's handle. You can find it on your channel page, right below the channel name.

Then, type the channel handle on the modal and click “Add Channel.”

After you click “Add Channel,” Glasp will connect your channel and start syncing all your public videos.

Step 3: View Your Channel

Once your channel is added to the list, it shows up on your page. Click it to see the videos’ transcripts.

You can see all the videos in chronological order by publication date.

Step 4: Download the Transcripts

To bulk download the transcripts, click the check box at the top. Then, click “Download All” at the top right.

Choose your preferred file format and click it. Your transcripts will be downloaded as a zip file.

Unzip the downloaded file to access your transcripts.

To download transcripts from more than 20 videos at once, click "Load More" at the bottom and select the checkbox again.

To download the transcript from a single video, click the download icon next to that video and choose your preferred file format.

You can also copy the transcript directly by clicking the copy icon next to each video.

Your video transcripts shouldn’t stay locked inside YouTube.

With Glasp’s YouTube Channel Tracking, you can connect your channel, bulk download all your transcripts, and turn your videos into reusable knowledge — in the format of your choice.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Glasp and start making the most of everything you’ve recorded.

👉 Sign up for Glasp

💡 Pro Tips

Go further with these resources:

👉 How to Import YouTube Transcripts into NotebookLM with Glasp — Use your video transcripts as sources for AI-powered research and insights

👉 How to Highlight YouTube Transcript — Save and annotate the most important moments from any video

👉 How to Turn a YouTube Video into an X Post and Article — Repurpose your video content into written posts and articles

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1. $100M Offers — · 70 highlighters · Save to Glasp

   

2. Atomic Habits — James Clear · 66 highlighters · Save to Glasp

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📣 Community Updates

📌 Community Milestones

• Kindle highlights imported: 60,000+ unique books

• Hatch ideas generated: 400,000+

• Audio filese transcribed: 60,000+

🔧 Feature Updates

• Audio files — You can now upload audio files up to 5 hours long

• PDF upload — Free users can now upload up to 30 PDF files

📖 New Blogs & Articles

• Best Free Kindle Highlight Exporter: Glasp, Readwise, and Clippings.io Compared

• Glasp Articles — Research-backed articles on learning, focus, and knowledge management. Please check it out!

  • Intellectual Compound Interest: Why Connecting Ideas Across Fields Makes You Unstoppable

  • Knowledge Creators: How to Turn What You Learn Into What You Earn

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🌍 Glasp in the Wild

Thank you for sharing and mentioning us on X, LinkedIn, and/or your blogs. 🙂 We appreciate your support! Please don’t hesitate to ask us anything at any time. Also, feel free to join our Reddit Community ;)

• Glasp: Kindle Highlights Exporter on FactCheckTool.com

  

• YouTube Summary Powered by ChatGPT: Save Time and Learn More! (Google Chrome Extension # 02) on Thiyagu Suriya’s YouTube

  

• YouTube video summary using ChatGPT | Chrome Extension on Hacks360’s YouTube

  

• How to Get YouTube Summary Glasp AI Chrome extension using ChatGPT & Claude on EasyTutoFlow’s YouTube

  

• YouTube Summary with ChatGPT Chrome Extension on AI in 5 Minutes’s YouTube

  

• The Ultimate YouTube Hack: Glasp + ChatGPT = VERY Powerful Insights! on REtipster’s YouTube

  

• 📡 What Experts Should Pay Attention To: Curation Signals - #01 on ’s

• 3초만에 유튜브 요약 끝!!👍by YouTube summary with ChatGPT on 잼이찌 엑셀’s YouTube

  

• Cara mudah membuat youtube summary chat GPT mudah ternyata #chatgpt on nurulilmarsah’s YouTube

  

• 【2026年版】ChromeをAI化する拡張機能おすすめ10選【無料】 on MiraLab AI

• How to convert Youtube videos into text | Bui Duy Phuong on YouTube

  

• Curate web content and manage Knowledge for Research on Fred Blauer musings on Web3, Defi and other blockchain buzz words

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We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
See you next week ;)

Best,
Kei and Kazuki

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