A Clean Slate
There are times when I crave a clean slate, an opportunity to clear out all the cruft of the past and start over. I do this in small ways each year. Perhaps I get a new phone or computer and don't restore from a backup, or I try a new organizational method that naturally starts with archiving all the old things to make room for the new, or physically clearing my workspace to clean it and start from a place of renewed focus. A clean slate has a lot of use when you feel cluttered.
Bookmarks
I recently realized that I have been using a technology that most people apparently don't use anymore: bookmarks. I am not saying that people don't bookmark things anymore, but at least not in the way I do, which is based on a history wherein bookmarks were the only option for saving something for later on the web. I have had a set of bookmarks that I have collected and curated over the years for a variety of reasons, but maybe that form of collecting information is no longer necessary because of search, purpose-built apps, and conversational artificial intelligence.
Yesterday, I exported that list of bookmarks to a file and started over; I currently have zero bookmarks in my browser of choice. Sometimes, we need a jarring change in order to see where we have gone a direction that needs adjustment and this will be a jarring change for me. Interestingly though, I have already noted something that is of value to me: in the absence of bookmarks, Safari surfaces other information—such as frequently visited sites—and that information may prove valuable in realizing my habits (both the healthy and unhealthy ones).
This clean slate is brought to you by Nash, who discussed bookmarks with me and it was like we were speaking different languages. Here is a key excerpt from the conversation:
I only use bookmarks for the important apps that I have to visit daily/weekly. Anything else, I wouldn’t put inside of bookmarks. I used to. I also used to fill up other apps with similar things. Over time though, it becomes hoarding. I’ve settled on a few ways that make the internet and my own life mesh very well, without becoming a collector of every hyperlink I come across.
This was predicated from a long discussion that started with a simple question (in my mind): "So if you want to save information on a webpage to reference in the future, what do you do?" Here are examples I gave to Nash to clarify why I am saving a webpage in the first place:
- App documentation and support
- Status pages for an important service
- Language learning resources
- Activities for kids
- Information about a product I'm researching
- How-to documents for building something
- Workout information and routines
- Recipes I like
- Articles I want to read later
- Information or pages I want to reference or link to here
The key for Nash is that he has clarified his use cases for saving information and the apps that enable conversion from a link to a useful piece of information; he will likely write about this in his newsletter now, so I won't steal his thunder. However, my solutions may not look just like his—they shouldn't—so instead of reiterating his guidance, I will leave you with the driving question (and a link to a 2018 post on a tangential topic in the See Also section) that will assist me in my journey from here:
Instead of bookmarking a link, what is my intent with the information?
From there, I can see a pathway to a whole set of workflows to make the information actionable, instead of forever collected until the link becomes a 404.