If you’re an avid reader like me, you might have experienced this frustration with bookmarks.

You open up your book to the bookmarked page, but you aren’t sure where on the page you left off. So you go to the beginning of the page and start reading. But soon you realize that you’ve already read this paragraph, and the next…

A minor annoyance, fair enough. But I’d like to share a trick that neatly solves this problem.

Take any bookmark. (This doesn’t work as well if the bookmark has lots of contrasting colors)

Draw a line through the bookmark at somewhere around the 2/3 or 3/4 mark. Do this only on one side.

We’re done.

Now every time you stop reading, orienting and aligning the bookmark stores enough information that you can start exactly where you left off the next time you start reading. Examples:

I’m not sure whether I’m the first to come up with this or if it’s common knowledge elsewhere, but this trick has saved me a great deal of time and frustration. Hopefully you will find it useful!