I go through my bookmarks once a week. Generally after a week and in the context of a whole list of shiny things, this particular shiny thing doesn't seem quite so shiny. I find that I delete between 50% and 100% of this week's bookmarks without doing more than reading the titles.
If they don't fall in that bucket, they either go into:
1. a project or todo that is captured elsewhere, and it gets attached.
2. One of my text files in a "not now" folder, very roughly separated by major themes (they have titles like "Technical details" for programming/CS stuff, "Sciencey stuff", "Process/organization", "Parenting", and files for large future projects that I am slowly accumulating towards like "One volume world history" and "Alexandrine program for software").
3. My read/review folder if I actually still want to read it. That folder I review weekly as well. If it's not something I still really want to read, I dump it into a subfolder called "archive" which is a guilt free trash can.
> Is it some sort of standard "digital hoarding" situation?
It's habits developed in scarcity failing when applied in glut. You probably don't need professional help. You just need to accept that you are going to trace a tiny path through the world of human knowledge. Once you accept that you're not going to archive the world in your mind, you find that you need different criteria. Look at your roles in life and goals and ask what information will serve to advance them. I am a father. I wouldn't seek out parenting books without that, as I don't find the information enriching, but there is information I need for that role. I hold a job programming computers. Details of my employer's internal tooling isn't something I would seek out without reason, but to do my job I need it. I am a human being that needs to take care of myself, and part of that is having positive, enriching things in my world, and certain information feeds that, but there is no obligation to assimilate the world in that. The information is allowed in to fit my needs, I am not contorted to fit its needs.
At this point, if you have a big time commitment coming up, I would dump all this stuff you have in a folder called "archive" and accept that you're not going to look at it for a while. You can review it weekly by looking at the folder "archive" (not its contents) and saying, "not this week" which will give you freedom for another week.
In six months you may look at it and go, "Yeah, never." and delete it. By that point most of what you would actually need in there you would have found again anyway.
Likewise, this is a good time to cut off twitter and all the feeds that are adding to this stack. That bookmark review I mentioned before is only for three to ten items a week, generally, which I find slightly too high.
If they don't fall in that bucket, they either go into:
1. a project or todo that is captured elsewhere, and it gets attached. 2. One of my text files in a "not now" folder, very roughly separated by major themes (they have titles like "Technical details" for programming/CS stuff, "Sciencey stuff", "Process/organization", "Parenting", and files for large future projects that I am slowly accumulating towards like "One volume world history" and "Alexandrine program for software").
3. My read/review folder if I actually still want to read it. That folder I review weekly as well. If it's not something I still really want to read, I dump it into a subfolder called "archive" which is a guilt free trash can.
> Is it some sort of standard "digital hoarding" situation?
It's habits developed in scarcity failing when applied in glut. You probably don't need professional help. You just need to accept that you are going to trace a tiny path through the world of human knowledge. Once you accept that you're not going to archive the world in your mind, you find that you need different criteria. Look at your roles in life and goals and ask what information will serve to advance them. I am a father. I wouldn't seek out parenting books without that, as I don't find the information enriching, but there is information I need for that role. I hold a job programming computers. Details of my employer's internal tooling isn't something I would seek out without reason, but to do my job I need it. I am a human being that needs to take care of myself, and part of that is having positive, enriching things in my world, and certain information feeds that, but there is no obligation to assimilate the world in that. The information is allowed in to fit my needs, I am not contorted to fit its needs.
At this point, if you have a big time commitment coming up, I would dump all this stuff you have in a folder called "archive" and accept that you're not going to look at it for a while. You can review it weekly by looking at the folder "archive" (not its contents) and saying, "not this week" which will give you freedom for another week.
In six months you may look at it and go, "Yeah, never." and delete it. By that point most of what you would actually need in there you would have found again anyway.
Likewise, this is a good time to cut off twitter and all the feeds that are adding to this stack. That bookmark review I mentioned before is only for three to ten items a week, generally, which I find slightly too high.