5 ms·

Relax, be kind to yourself. The finance analogy isn’t right, because debt is something you have to pay and these things, or at least most of them, don’t requir

Relax, be kind to yourself. The finance analogy isn’t right, because debt is something you have to pay and these things, or at least most of them, don’t require you to do anything. If you have too many emails to get through, yes, unsubscribe ruthlessly. If your storage costs too much, yes, delete ruthlessly. Now, accept that you will never make use of everything you’ve found. That doesn’t matter. That’s also true of libraries and the world in general. So don’t worry about getting through them. You cannot. Just remove anything that causes problems (incoming streams, expensive storage), and then enjoy your curated things at whatever pace you feel like. You can’t finish it, ever. But that doesn’t mean it is a problem you need to solve. It means it’s a selection to taste from.

fovc 4y ago
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. I'd say just get a filing/search system and be happy to have a large antilibrary
- partomniscient 4y ago
  The important distinction being that there's a tried and trusted method for sorting information in a printed book library. Not so much for a 'virtual anti-library' inconsistently spread out all over the internet in a multitude of different incompatible formats (e.g. forums, youtube subscriptions, twitter), as well as various 'local' ones like email and the 'todo' list. The value of a library also is largely dependent on being able to find things (or definitively 'not find things') in it quickly and easily.
elamje 4y ago
The guide below got me from 2,000 unreads to inbox zero in less than 30 minutes. The key is to archive pretty much everything older than a month or two since it likely wasn’t getting done anyways. You can still search archives if you do remember something later. Like the other poster said - take it easy. I have thousands of bookmarks too, and I know one of these days I’ll write a script to get it all exported, but until then, I’m going to continue appending. https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more-efficiently https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmai...
daniel_iversen 4y ago
Yes. This. Relax and be kind to yourself. Know how to never miss the important emails and todos, but treat everything else as a "stream". I don't ever get to inbox zero because what's the point? How will that help me? Bookmark and save everything you like, as long as you can find the important stuff. I.e. in your reminders/Asana/Trello/todo app, have a "someday maybe" list of stuff you might get to one day but it's not going to be a disaster if you miss it.. same with bookmarks - save it and in the future you can search for it if you need it. Don't let the tools run you.

fovc 4y ago

> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. I'd say just get a filing/search system and be happy to have a large antilibrary

partomniscient 4y ago
The important distinction being that there's a tried and trusted method for sorting information in a printed book library. Not so much for a 'virtual anti-library' inconsistently spread out all over the internet in a multitude of different incompatible formats (e.g. forums, youtube subscriptions, twitter), as well as various 'local' ones like email and the 'todo' list. The value of a library also is largely dependent on being able to find things (or definitively 'not find things') in it quickly and easily.

elamje 4y ago

The guide below got me from 2,000 unreads to inbox zero in less than 30 minutes. The key is to archive pretty much everything older than a month or two since it likely wasn’t getting done anyways. You can still search archives if you do remember something later. Like the other poster said - take it easy. I have thousands of bookmarks too, and I know one of these days I’ll write a script to get it all exported, but until then, I’m going to continue appending. https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more-efficiently https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmai...

daniel_iversen 4y ago

Yes. This. Relax and be kind to yourself. Know how to never miss the important emails and todos, but treat everything else as a "stream". I don't ever get to inbox zero because what's the point? How will that help me? Bookmark and save everything you like, as long as you can find the important stuff. I.e. in your reminders/Asana/Trello/todo app, have a "someday maybe" list of stuff you might get to one day but it's not going to be a disaster if you miss it.. same with bookmarks - save it and in the future you can search for it if you need it. Don't let the tools run you.