You pick something because you will want it later next to something you have not written yet. A pick is a piece pulled out of what you read and put on a page you own, with a thread back to where it came from. It is the smallest unit of thinking in Ledgable.

What a pick is

A quote card, a link card, a crop of a page or a comic panel, a photo, a line from a letter, a moment in a podcast. Each carries its source. Picks land on today’s All Picks first, the pile you sort from, and go from there onto a note, a Pickings board, a Synthesize page or a task.

Why pick instead of star

A star says this mattered today and keeps the whole thing. A pick says this sentence, this panel and puts it in your hand. Stars are a reading log; picks are material. Most days you star a few things and pick from one or two of them.

Why pick instead of copy

• A pick remembers where it came from. Six months on, tap the card and you are back at the paragraph.
• A pick is dated. It lives on the day you found it, so it sits beside what you were thinking that day.
• A pick can be moved. Drag it from All Picks onto a board about the topic, and later onto the page where you finally write the thing.
• A pick is a picture and a text at once, so it reads on e-ink, on a phone, and in search.

How to pick, everywhere

• Select a passage in an article or a book and choose Pick.
• Hold a link in The Net and choose Pick.
• Send to All Picks on a letter.
• Hold a comic panel or any part of a page and pick the crop.
• Tap Pick on the Watch; it waits on the wrist until the phone is near.
• Share a link or an image into Ledgable from any other app and choose the gram lane.

Then

Once a day, walk Today → All Stars → All Picks → today’s note and sort the pile. Some picks stay where they landed. Some go onto a Pickings board for a topic you are circling. The ones that keep turning up become Roots.