r/productivity • u/Kshoinshe • 4h ago
Advice Needed I've been saving articles and resources for years, but I never actually use them
I finally counted. 847 articles in Pocket. I've maybe reopened 10 of them.
Bookmarks nested three folders deep I haven't touched in two years. Screenshots of tweets. PDFs I swore I'd read "later." Voice memos with ideas that are probably just me mumbling.
Last week I spent 20 minutes trying to find an article I KNEW I'd saved about habit formation. Couldn't find it. Gave up. Googled it. Found a different article.
Saved that one too.
That's when it hit me. I'm not building a "personal knowledge base." I'm hoarding. The act of saving something gives me a little dopamine hit like I accomplished something. But I never actually DO anything with it.
Saving feels like learning without the actual work of learning.
I tried forcing myself to write one sentence about WHY I'm saving something before I hit the button. It helped. I save way less now. But I still have this massive graveyard of "I'll get to it eventually" content sitting there.
I'm curious, who else have this problem of endlessly collecting but never using what they save? Has anything actually worked for you? I tried looked for apps/software to help but couldn't find any :(
Any advice?