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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2116 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for August 16, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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What are your guys' favorite solutions to tab/reading overload? I come across a lot of things I would like to read, and every few weeks my mind gets frazzled about processing my backlog. Currently I add articles to Pocket, and I wrote a script to sync those to Anki notes, which in theory I should be reviewing instead of going into my browser. But the Anki notes now have a backlog too.

Put things on the safari read list instead of keeping them open as tabs. If I didn’t read something after a month, delete it since obviously I am not actually that interested. If I find an article genuinely interesting and worthy to remember later, save in pocket and/or send it to my girlfriend so we can discuss it later.

Also helps to read less and skim more, and be very strict with what’s worthy of your time.

My solution is more tabs, evidently, since my Chrome app shows :D instead of the number of tabs.

I add things to my bookmarks if I want to reference them later, or pop them in a draft writing doc in Obsidian.

What I've done is open everything as tabs. Normally I don't close them until I finish reading them completely. But I tend to not start or stop halfway through on things that just aren't that interesting. So what I do is, when the tab count starts to seem a little high or crowded, I go delete tabs that I haven't gotten around to reading in a while. No saving or backing up anywhere.

It does feel a bit uncomfortable to have to be like, yeah I'm probably never actually going to read that, let's delete it. But better to get it over with at once than shuffle those articles around a bunch of other lists that I'll probably also never actually catch up with for months longer and have to deal with more copies later. I reason that if it's actually that important, I'll come across it again later. Otherwise, they never come up in my mind again after that initial discomfort.

Flush tabs regularly. The visual and mental burden isn't fun.

If they're productive readings, try some form of Zettelkasten. Skim through an article you find interesting and make a note on it with appropriate tags and backlinks. You can then revisit it at an appropriate time when you're exploring the subject, and it frees you of the mental burden of "unread" or "things to do".

I just stack them up to infinity, then when the've reached critical mass I cut the whole thing loose and start afresh.

Not reading it. I try to keep my open tabs to the bare minimum.

Text-to-speech while doing something mindless.

That helps a bit, but ultimately it's a problem of too much content, too little time.

Named bookmarks and a reading list.

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