We haven’t had much time to dabble in books over the last couple of years.
Part of the reason is the fast-paced environment that people at ‘Productivity Land’ work in and the fact that you don’t get to have that much time on your hands to read a book. Let’s be honest; after a day’s stretch of work, even if you have the motivation to read a book, you don’t have the energy to do so.
What’s the best thing you’d do under such circumstances?
Either you’d rely on someone to fill you in on the summary of the book that you’ve been looking to read for months. Or, you rely on a robust book summary application on the internet. And let’s be honest, there aren’t a lot of book summary apps that work as advertised.
Unless and until it comes off as something genuine and really stands up to the mark. You catch the drift, right?
Over the last few weeks, we have been trying to get the “gist” of a handful of popular non-fiction books through ShortForm book summary application. The experience was tremendously positive. We loved it. Period.
This post is dedicated to sharing insight, based on our experience, only about all there is to ShortForm, and why it’s worth a shot if you’re into reading books at lightning pace.
Why Try ShortForm Book Summary App?
If you are experiencing any of the following dilemmas, ShortForm is worth trying at least once to get the hang of what we’re about to fill you in on.
- Overall day-to-day lack of time management
- Lack of energy or drive at the end of your day/ night work shift
- General confusion about which books to read and which one’s to pass on
On top of it all, when it comes to trying a book summary application, there’s a legit concern along the lines of the app’s legitimacy. People don’t trust such tools because these programs don’t replace the actual book-reading experience. Especially when the title is a solid page-turner, you’re out on a limb, thinking whether you should “read” the whole book through ShortForm or any such application or not.
What Is ShortForm?
ShortForm, although it sounds like an online form-filling plugin for backend web developers, is a book summary application on the contrary. The intent behind this application is its purpose – i.e., give a brief overview of the book you’re reading through it, and top it off with a couple of add-in features to make it worth your time.
To that effect, we’d say that the main takeaway features that swayed us were:
ShortForm’s in-app book recommendations
These are based on your ‘picks’ and ‘choices’ related to subject matter within the non-fiction book realm.
Reading exercise
The app recommends thought-provoking talking points that highlight the book’s essence of key content areas. It’s not only a jog down memory lane to ensure that you have learned something from the book but also an overall exercise for the brain. The latter develops readers’ ability to retain the knowledge and drive some value out of the overall app user experience.
Because otherwise, if there aren’t exercises, what’s the point of pitching a book summary application? You’d go through mounds of online reading material, only to move on to the next big inspiration title while completely forgetting everything that the last one talked about.
In the end, it’s also a matter of practicality. If anyone’s specifically contemplating reading the non-fiction genre – and that too, from the productivity and self-improvement category, at least you should be trying to apply some of the book’s teachings in your real-life situations.
Otherwise, neither these books nor Shortform or any other book summary app stands to fulfill its purpose.
Moving on to what you might be thinking about how Shortform works in payments, we’d say that it’s a subscription-based platform where you don’t have to pay a one-off price for the software. Use it at your peril, for as long as you like, for a nominal subscription fee, and then you can discontinue the service at any time.
No pressure!
5 Things That Are Awfully Cool About ShortForm App
1. Quality Over Quantity
Remember the part where we talked about ShortForm’s ability to recommend books that really, and potentially, matter to you? It turns out that they don’t just make garbage recommendations. The recommendations are based on quality stuff to hone your learning skills or to better understand a value-driven book reading experience.
Sure, some people can boast about reading more than 50 books a month, but the big question is, how many of those books were high-quality stuff?
And that quality over superficial stuff philosophy is also enacted in ShortForm’s book summarizing capability. The app summarizes the most important parts of any book, so you can easily skim through the content that matters the most.
2. An Overall Fulfilling Experience
As we said earlier, it’s the principle that matters the most when reading anything. While some folks take pride in finishing tons of books in a few months, the actual whatever you learned vs. quantity ratio is always different.
ShortForm relies heavily on simplifying complex content and presenting information that is easier to retain for you for a long time. This is to ensure that the next time you’re in a room with a bigwig CEO or just talking to your friends about the common interest in books, you can relate to the discussion by bringing others up to speed on what you read in a specific book, key takeaways, and vice versa.
3. A Memorable Group Learning Experience
Believe it or not, ShortForm baffled us when we learned that they have a dedicated community where you can learn with others. Think of it as a book club, but it’s virtual, and you can potentially connect with thousands of people who share the same interests as you, in more or less the same books you drool over.
Users can interact with each other and learn together through ShortForm’s community learning feature.
4. It’s All About Action
Actions come off as applying whatever you learned from any book to real-life situations. That’s where they have exercises where there are actionable exercises that pose ‘thoughtful, open-ended questions to apply the book’s ideas to whatever you’re dealing with.
In moral terms, we’d say that these exercises are the best way to reflect on your ‘before’ state before reading the book and the ‘after’ state that comes into effect when you’re about to deal with future-related stuff.
5. There’s More To It Than What Meets The Eye!
ShortForm isn’t just an online SaaS platform where you can access thousands of books on desk OS. They also have a mobile application to enable 24/7 access for book connoisseurs, no matter where they are in the world.
The mobile app gives the same old book recommendations that are the signature to ShortForm’s popularity, plus a guaranteed recommendation about a bestseller title that you are supposed to read.
ShortForm Pros and Cons
These pros and cons are based on our own analysis of ShortForm. Depending on your reading habits, your use case may be different.
Pros:
- A large collection of nonfiction books.
- Learn the book’s main points, and read insights for a quick walk-through.
- Confusing points are explained in plain words.
- Share the key updates since the book is published.
Cons:
- Some users find it a bit pricy.
Additional Information About ShortForm
Mobile Apps (if any)
Customer Support and Documentation
- Link to help or documentation:
- Email for customer support: help@shortform.com
Social Media:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/shortform-summaries/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_shortform
- YouTube channel here
- Other Social Channels
Get a Full Access To ShortForm for 5-Days, and Enjoy 20% discount on Annual plans using this link.
Is It Worth It?
We agree that some subscription-based services are through the roof, which begs us to answer whether ShortForm is worth it.
If you go to their website and look at their pricing plans, you’ll see they’re charging $24 per month. However, if you are billed annually, the price drops to $16.42 per month. There’s not only a savings factor in there, but you are guaranteed access to the same premium features available in the apparent and slightly ‘pricey’ monthly plan.
That’s a lot of adverbs there, but the point is if you can go for it, go with an annual plan.
Besides, if it comes to books or any other passion hobby, there’s no price for it. Some people cash on “useless” things that don’t even harness productivity. But books? They’re like your genuine best friends who you can count on whenever they’re needed.
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