10 seconds into the article, it was established that it interested me. Though I didn’t feel like reading it right then, for it was a busy day (not unlike most days). I clicked on the Pocket icon tucking it away for later.

Back to browsing twitter. Half a dozen new links from Hacker News since morning - someone deployed something on RaspberryPi, another startup got funding for doing X with Blockchain, yet another flaw found in self-driving cars - the usual stuff.

Wait, what’s that last one - An Interactive Regex Tutorial. Now that I think about it, I have been meaning to hone my regex skills. Click. Ah! swanky UI. Will definitely use this - but later. Too busy right now. Share > Add Tweet to Bookmarks. I’ll come back to it later; at least that’s what I told myself.

Data, data everywhere, not a single drop of peace.

Yet another day in the life of the hoarder; scrounging for knowledge/wisdom/information among the drivel of the interwebs. As much as I’d like to blame technology for my fear of missing out, it was always there. Technology merely provided a channel for my depravities. As I stood leering at the broken beauty of the Internet, the flood-gates opened and out came gushing - everything I thought I wanted; filling my senses to the brim and then some, until I was subsumed by own perversions.

Everyday I found myself bombarded with links. All with the same allure, and similar destinies - either Save to Pocket or Add Bookmark; though most of my usual haunts offered their own versions of the coffers that grew deeper with every link I dropped - Add Tweet to Bookmarks on Twitter, Save post on Facebook, Save to Watch later on Youtube. Even Instagram has a little bookmark button next to each post - what you’re supposed to save it for, is beyond me.

On some good days when I could muster the will to open the pandora’s box, the sheer enormity of my precious hoard would throw me. Until a month ago, I had accrued 9K links on Pocket alone. Rest of the accounts were peanuts compared to it. This was the anxiety inducing behemoth that must be dealt with, in order to make a dent.

“As that I can see no way out but through”
                                                   – Robert Frost

And so I dipped my toes into the golden cesspool. The goal was to bring the number down. I decided to delete as much as possible. My algorithm for curation was simple:

  1. Pick the first link in the queue, and read its title.

  2. Based on the title decide:

    • Is it something I could’ve used in the last 6 months?

      OR

    • Is it something I’m extremely likely to use in the next 6 months?

  3. Delete the link If step 2 yields False.

  4. Exit if reached the end of queue, else go to step 1.

This took me a few days, but at the end, I was left with 2K links. Seemed a lot more manageable, compared to its original form. Since then I’ve managed to read tens of links in the queue. Though regrettably I added more than I read, and currently the count has reached 2.9K.

Meh, baby steps.

More importantly I needed a system in place to keep the agents of anarchy at bay. A means to not only distill the knowledge, but also organize it in a secure, searchable & manageable format. A digital Eden where the inherent entropy of the universe can be channeled, without destroying itself. This was a long search in itself, though I did manage to find such a system. More on that in another post soon.