I know that heavy feeling well, and while I do feel guilt for not getting to everything, I almost never revisit any of it. If I need to read something again, it’s usually faster to just use a search engine than dig through thousands of saved links or videos.
So why am I still compelled to save them?
Aside from the fear of forgetting or imagining some smarter future version of myself that will make use of it all, there is a certain satisfaction derived from the act of saving itself.
Slavoj Žižek calls this interpassivity. We outsource our enjoyment to a proxy that will enjoy the thing for us and free us from the burden and intensity of experiencing it directly while still feeling like we’ve consumed it. The example he often cites is the VCR, but the same principle applies to watchlists and read-later apps.
I don’t know that I have a solution. It’s always going to be easier to forage than to digest. The interpassive satisfaction derived from saving is no less real just because I can identify it for what it is. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to just close the 100 tabs I have open at any given time without feeling like I’m missing out on something.
Like others have suggested here, writing some quick notes might be one way to both reduce the number of things I decide are worth saving and increase recall without digging through endless links with no context.
What is your current approach to dealing with this impulse btw? Being the type of person you describe, I imagine that deleting everything and never saving another link wouldn’t necessarily get rid of the desire to do so or the discomfort with letting things go.
I checked my bookmark count, it is 43K. The good thing here is it is completely managable and scalable. Because it has been built in that way. And this system relies on one phenomena - human brain’s visual indexing capability - We are indexing everything we see biologically. We just need a little help to retrive them quickly. You are literally building shortcuts for your brain - To find and extract the right information when you need it again. Think of yourself like you are living in an endless library of things - information, ideas. You are literally spending your life there, researching, reading, digesting, extracting value. You need to return to a specific information as fast as and as efficient as possible. Searching online again is not the answer because your findings were laying deep. You arrived them by following every clue possible. Finding them had cost you hours, days. You can’t go the same long way again.
I LOVE that idea of interpassivity! I am going to explore that more. It seems it has to do with experiencing pleasure, but jives well with another idea I have been thinking about and trying to write about that has to do with my task list and overall productivity system (which has been GTD). It seems to me that I’m almost offloading the doing of tasks to my task list. So kind of like interpassivity is talking about offloading the experience of pleasure, it’s almost like offloading the actual action of doing something. I think this also leads to my task list getting unbelievably bloated. As I have been reflecting on it, I really think I do maybe 10% of the things on the list while the others lie dormant. I also think that the tasks I actually do complete hardly needed to have been on there in the first place, I know I need to do them (there is an interesting book that has stuck with me called “Time Surfing” that was written by a Zen monk if I remember right that leans more into your intuition for what needs to get done that I plan to go back to and think about).
In terms of a solution, you’ve actually caught me at an interesting time when I’ve been rethinking all of this stuff. I am going to give it an honest try to stop saving so much, but I totally agree with your feeling of missing out on things or the fear of losing or forgetting something that’s interesting. But I’ve really been reflecting on it, and I just don’t really think that even saving all this is adding much to my life. It is so rare that I go back to read an article that I saved 3 months ago or progressively summarize (a la Tiago Forte) an article or book I highlighted.
I’ve currently been thinking that if something’s not worth it to read right then, then is it really worth reading? Of course, sometimes I can’t literally read at the exact moment I see, but if I am going to read it, it should probably be that day or not at all. What I have been noticing lately is that, if something is truly interesting to me and pulling at me, I really don’t forget it, and when I have a spare moment, I pull it up, but I am not saving it to my reading list. Joan wrote something that she heard that rings true to me about important things resurfacing. I figure, if I do forget an interesting thing I saw to read, if it is still resonant in my life, it will pop back up.
The only little caveat for me right now is: Is there something that I want to read or refer to that is very specifically tied to a project or something that I’m working on? Then that can be saved for reference for when I work on that project (instructions being a good example– I would have the reference up next to what I am doing in order to follow the steps). I’ve been using the term “strong reference” to myself when I think about things that are to be referenced very specifically vs. read and processed into my own thoughts and ideas.
Sorry this is a little rambling! These ideas are still developing for me.
Today I started thinking about how to create a light weight system for tracking user-defined relationships between text files. I went down a huge rabbit hole designing and then realized it wasn’t going to get me what I wanted. Then I reconsidered and realized that what I really wanted was the ability to link my text files together.
Expressing the relationships between text files outside the text files is a very different way of organizing text blobs. It’s a compelling way to organize things that you can’t edit (like pdfs or media files) but for text blobs, it’s also good to put the relationships inside the text blobs by linking. Which is what Obsidian vaults do for me.
I realized that what I like better about text files over obsidian files is that there are times I want to turn off the formatting. I want to type dashes or dots or indents and create my own visual structure without using markdown. To me this is more “free form” and better for thinking as opposed to “writing.”
It seemed like Obsidian must have a way to turn off the markdown formatting. I looked for “text file” plugins, but that didn’t lead me anywhere. I don’t mind putting my words in a file ending in .md, I just want a free-form typing experience. Obviously this is pretty much what codeblocks do, and I’ve been using them sometimes. But not much.
After some thought I realized the reason I don’t use codeblocks more is that my current theme (minimal) doesn’t highlight the boundaries very strongly at all. When I look at a page with a codeblock, the edges of the codeblock are almost invisible. Since whitespace is one of the most important things to put in a “plain text” area, that’s no good.
So I poked around and inside the “Style Settings” community plugin you can change the background color of a codeblock. So I did that. From now on when I get the urge to do my thinking in a text file, I’ll try to go to my daily journal and open a codeblock. Fingers crossed.
Using an actual text file for thinking is fine, but at some point I always end up needing to figure out what to do with it. I already have domains of text defined by Obsidian vaults. So splatting the text into an obsidian vault is a good step forward for me. I already have a default “place to dump stuff” in Obsidian, as my daily journal.
A piece of software and a thought after I read your post.
For the piece of software, I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Hookmark (it is Mac only, so may not hep you). It does just what you’re saying, which is it hooks together different files outside of the files themselves. It works with many formats.
The thought when I read your post: is the system the problem? I wonder how long you spent going down the “rabbit hole” as you mention, of trying to build a system or find a plugin. I know for me, it is so tempting to feel like, if I just find the right system, everything will just fall into place and I will create or work with ease. I just think this is a trap. If you are needing to find something to do with the files and content you have, are those things even valuable or worth it? What would happen if you just concentrate on doing the work, the producing of something directly rather than the system for producing it? Creating systems can be fun and satisfying, but I have been thinking it is best to acknowledge that it is mostly just entertainment for me.
No judgement here! I may be misunderstanding your point or what you need that is unique to your life. Your post triggered thoughts that were pertinent to me, but may not be for you!
Hookmark looks really interesting, I’m going to have to play with it. It doesn’t seem to let you define different user-defined kinds of hooks, so it’s not the same kind of structure I was thinking of. But definately worth a look for curiosity’s sake.
Regarding yesterday’s post, I had a thought in the shower and spent 2 hours writing notes. So not a lot of time lost. After I failed to explain the benefits to my wife her confusion gave me some new insights. External linking is really a counterpoint to internal linking. If I want to connect 7 different kinds of documents together, one way to do it is to create a document that describes the over-arching concept that ties them together and link from the document to all 7 items.
Using a global system for links is similar to all the “Everything box” apps. Linking/tagging database “productivity” apps. I feel like those apps feed on their customers’ paranoia and FOMO.
I’ve had a very long-lived interest in associative databases. At this point it’s just harmless entertainment. My main technical time-sink hobby has moved on to other things.
The first thing anyone can do is using this link chrome://bookmarks/ and bookmarking it again as your shortcut on your bookmark bar or hit CTRL + SHIFT + O >>> This is the bookmark manager!
So you can cut and paste to move your existing bookmarks and create new folders as you need to organise. You can do a 10 min. maintenance as a jump start.
Also use CTRL + SHIFT + B to display your bookmark bar and organise it.
Then learn CTRL + D, this is the shortcut for bookmarking an URL, I am using it rarely but useful in some cases. You can also drag and drop an URL to your Bookmark manager.
When you learn these basics, this will help you to start organising.
To find something you need, use bookmark manager’s search. To make your search actually work, while saving your bookmarks always give them a clear name.
For instance you found an instagram post and wanted to bookmark it. When you try, the name of the bookmark will be something like “(9) Instagram” so edit it while saving, give a proper searchable name.
Also be aware of tracking URL UTM tails, delete them before bookmarking so you will be able to track which pages you have visited.
Coincidentally - was looking at Hookmark over the weekend.
I’m not sure I need another tool, and I’m trying specifically NOT to use anything “new” in 2026 and just settle into my groove.
The problem is…I’ve had these networked, linked documents before. But I never actually follow or use the links. If I have an idea for something to write about, yes I’ll do some research in my notes, but I tend to look outside my bucket of existing thoughts for new references and so on.
IE: writing a post about the physical vs the digital world, there were a few tidbits in my notes, but searching around Google turned up Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel À Rebours which I’d never heard of and am now stuck into.
My worry is that becoming too dependent on the information we’ve already hoarded excludes new ideas.
Yeah, I hear you. There’s a time for organizing and rewording what you’ve already got, and a time for looking for new inspiration.
My idea this weekend was about internal and external links being counterparts. I could have an external tool that connects things related to my leopard-book:
draft chapters in my book
letter to my reviewers
foot notes for the book
links to articles that I want to incorporate
For example, I could create a tag called ”book” and tag all those pages, urls, etc. Or if I am working on more than one book I could create tags like “leopard-book” and “rainbow-book”. In my conceptualization, those would “External” links.
Or I could create a “book landing page” where I collect all the resources, links, thoughts related to my book. It doesn’t mean that every chapter is linked from the landing page. Hopefully the landing page links to a TOC page with links to the chapters. The landing page would be the top of your organizational abstraction tree.
My insight (metaphor) was that you can distinguish your organizational systems into “internal style” systems and “external style” systems. When I use external style organization, I personally spend too much time fiddling with my organizational system. For example, I want to add the “leopard-book” tag to my editor’s contact into in my address book app. But the app doesn’t support tags. I spend time figuring out how to cope. If I have a “landing page” for my book, (with internal links) I will run into a situation where I can’t link to an address book entry. But now, since I’m working in a doc, I can just write the name of the editor along with (See address book). There is a very intuitive way to deal with it.
Now at the end of this post, I guess I’m advocating for using “tracking documents” or “working documents” as organizational tools instead of external organizers. This is a very Obsidian approach, so it might not make any sense for someone who’s not storing their life in Obsidian. It might very well make sense also to someone who stores their life in emacs.
Thanks for the advice. Longtime IT guy, but never really paid attention to bookmarks as a mechanism to organize part of my life.
Apple and Mac environment, so I’m translating most of the google references and I’ve discovered many things enabling improved organizing. A little hung up on “tab groups”.
But, just to be clear, you tend to bookmark any and everywhere you go (that you think you’ll want back some time - not restaurants or shopping if you are looking for something in particular..well maybe…).
I will continue to work on refining and appreciate all your help.
Kurt
It’s an interesting app, more for organizing and navigating quickly around your computer rather than going down the rabbit hole of creating a bunch of notes or links. Doesn’t add to your digital clutter. Lightweight and stays out of the way. I’ve had it for a while and honestly don’t use it a ton, but I do like it and has come in handy when I have used it.
@kdnavrat Sorry for not circling back to this. Yes. I have a “bookmark reminder” list. Along with a textual “reminder list”. If you don’t curated them regularly they really have no purpose. So it’s important to have other places to move things as you process them.
An incredibly useful tool I’ve discovered lately is the Readwise MCP…being able to pull bookmarks and process them using Claude Code natural language is huge. And then I can classify and sort and hold using Obsidian without having stuff I don’t need clogging everything up.
her confusion gave me some new insights. External linking is really a counterpoint to internal linking. If I want to connect 7 different kinds of documents together, one way to do it is to create a document that describes the over-arching concept that ties them together and link from the document to all 7 items.