10 Tools/Gadgets That Transformed My Reading Journey

A quick heads-up: we've just launched the secions Session of our members' workshop, and this month we'll give you a complete guide to analytical reading. Go check it out!

(1) The Idea: The Best Tools Will Disappear Into Your Life

My birthday’s coming up soon, and I started thinking about what I wanted to buy myself as a birthday treat.

Normally, I would choose from a list of random shit I’ve wanted for a while. Camera lens, audio equipment, a new phone, an eReader or anything that Amazon’s dumbass algorithm could predict. But this time around, I’m drawing a complete blank.

I think a part of it definitely comes from outgrowing old desires, but more importantly, I started viewing every purchase as a building block to a custom-tailored arsenal. The question turned from “will this make me happy now?” to “will this blend into my everyday life?” They are tools to help me enjoy life, not distractions to shut me out of experiences.

See, materialism is a bottomless pit, and I learned it the hard way. Over the years, I’ve collected a load of microphones, audio mixers and camera lenses from making YouTube videos, and most of them sat in my closet and collected dust. So, around August last year, I went on a rampage and sold 80% of my shit at Cash Converters, and I realised that the 20% that remained were invisible equipment/tools that offered real value.

And this is how we should see making a purchase: aim to buy things that will disappear into our lives, because flashy things are likely distracting us from living and learning.

So, below is a list of silent tools from my arsenal that make my work possible:

(I have no affiliation with any of these companies. They’re here to inspire you to come up with your own silent arsenal for your lifelong learning journey.)

1: Frank Green Water Bottle

Around my second year in university, I walked around with a chronic headache that refused to go away. It drove me insane, and I was an absolute asshat. It took two therapy sessions and a lot of CBT trash talk for me to face a simple truth: I drank more coffee than I drank water (at a 4:1 ratio).

So, I roamed around David Jones one Christmas and found this stand that engraved your initials onto these water bottles with straws sticking out of them. I bought it at a discounted price, and now it stays with me at my desk, at the dojo, and it even earned me the nickname: Sifu Waldun, because I looked like every old Chinese chauffeur when I carried the bottle into my car. And yes, the headache is gone, but the coffee fiend is still around.

2: Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen

My grandfather was big on calligraphy, so he beat the habit of using a fountain pen into me when I was 5. But the problem was that I kept losing the caps when I was in high school, and I ended up with half a dozen dried-out corpses of shitty plastic fountain pens.

So, 7 years ago, I found a fountain pen that worked like a clicky ballpoint. Enter: The Pilot Vanishing Point, the best of both worlds. I bought it on a whim and bankrupted my casual retail salary (I was an underage bookseller and they paid me diddly-squat), but I’m happy to report that it’s still the only pen I own after 7 years of daily heavy-duty writing. 

3: Kaweco Classic Sport Mechanical Pencil

The sidearm to my Pilot Vanishing Point. I’ve had the same pencil for 4 years now, and it’s great for taking notes in the margins, highlighting key ideas and making summaries at the back of the book. It’s small enough to fit into any bag, but not too small for my big hand to manoeuvre.

4: reMarkable Paper Tablet

Yes, the yearly subscription to their cloud services is daylight robbery, and the prices for accessories are extortionate, but I can’t live without this thing. Their original commercial model: reMarkable 2, dragged me out of a pool of scribbled psychobabbles on loose Post-it notes and printer papers. In a way, this newsletter would not exist without this thing. Nowadays, I use the latest reMarkable Pro Move every day to journal, capture ideas and sketch out workshop notes.

5: Leuchtturm1917 Soft Cover Notebooks

I’ve been searching for the perfect notebook for over 5 years. Karst notebooks write like scratching a chalkboard, Muji notebooks fall apart after 3 weeks and don’t even get me started on those godawful Moleskine notebooks that bleed like crazy, leaving paw marks on the reverse sides of the pages. But now, I think I found my temporary favourite in Leuchtturm1917’s softcover lineups.

The pages don’t bleed at all, even with an old fountain pen that struggles with bowel control, and all the pages lay flat. It also comes with these stickers that make them easy to archive. The only downside is their limited pages. The model I have only goes up to p.123, but all things considered, it’s a good size to keep me busy for a month. I do all of my journaling in these notebooks, and I don’t think I’ll switch to another brand anytime soon.

6: Dreamegg Sunrise 1 Alarm Clock

For years, I tried to implement a no-phone policy in my bedroom, but I always end up crawling out of bed at 1 pm without an alarm or a white noise playlist on Spotify. So, last year I decided to give one of these weird sunrise alarm clocks a try. To be honest, the sunrise component is full of crap, and it’s only useful as a nightlight. But this model has a great assortment of bird noises, forest hums and fireplace crackles that really helped with sleep. Plus, it looks great on my desk.

7: Qwerkywriter typewriter keyboard

For years, I thought keyboards didn’t matter. I insisted on using the standard iMac keyboard, but then my wrist started protesting halfway through writing my 80,000-word manuscript. It got so bad that I had to get a chiropractor involved, and he recommended that I invest in a mechanical keyboard. So, I hopped on Facebook Marketplace and found an older model of the Qwekywriter keyboard that looked like a typewriter. It feels great, the keys are weighted (built with aluminium), and now I can write for hours without taking a break.

8: Justus 140cm single motor standing desk

I’ve resisted this idea for a long time, fearing that it will trickle downstream into microdosing LSD while walking on a mini office treadmill, but now I can’t live without it. It only took a week with this desk for me to realise that humans are not supposed to sit for prolonged periods. Plus, I feel like it’s way easier to project my voice during a podcast while standing.

9: Tounee book stand

I thought this thing was only useful for cooks, old people and cooks who are old people. But it’s actually incredibly useful if you read a lot of long books that are 700+ pages. It keeps the book open, prevents you from turning into Quasimodo and frees up a lot of desk space if you want to take notes.

10: A 2025 MacBook Air

I left the most boring item last. This is a great little machine that I take with me on the go to write, to herd all the loose sheep in my inbox or to pretend that I’m writing when I’m sitting at a cafe. The best feature is its battery life, and sometimes it still works after not charging it for 3 days. The chip is also powerful enough to handle all the graphic design I need to run this newsletter and podcast editing.

So, these are the tools that I use daily to make sure everything runs smoothly. The prompts below will help you to make informed and balanced purchasing decisions.

(2) The Prompts

1: Look around your office/room and identify some tools you use daily. Chances are, they are silent tools that rarely announce themselves. List them out on a page and register that you already have a lot of the tools you need. This will help you move away from impulse gadget purchases that only offer marginal benefits.

2: Use the “will this item disappear after 1 month?” metric to judge if a tool is worth it. A lot of our purchases are trend-driven, and the best way to counter excessive consumption is to recognise that the best tools will disappear into our lives. If a tool is still visible, requires too much maintenance or is too flashy after a 1-month period, interrogate its place in your life.