I was catching up on saved articles and links this morning. Nice iPad, coffee, purring cat, children at my feet, etc.
There are always a few links to prune. I had several today.
As I deleted the fifth link, It hit me that I save too much that is arguing for or against trends and counter-trends. When I saved them, I probably thought I was challenging myself to be informed and gain perspective. Today, I didn’t see much opportunity in them.
Was I tired or wound up when I saved them? Did I improve my thinking about the zeitgeists over the past few days? Do I have an intractable character flaw?
I don’t mind cleaning up links I no longer want to read, but I want to understand why they were attractive in the first place. I want more variety in the links I delete. 
What do you struggle not to save and why?
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For me it’s probably politics. It seems like such a waste of time, but when I save the link I think I should be informed about this thing. But in the end I can’t bear to read it, so it goes in the trash (probably where it belongs).
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Blog posts. Substack posts. What leads me away from them with the passage of time is similar to this:
A combination of both I suppose.
Usually what draws me to a blog post is its relation to a book I may be reading or an idea I’ve been gnawing at. By the time I step away to read the book or think the thought and then return back to the saved post I feel like I’ve moved past whatever point (or more often than that, whatever emotion) that the author was trying to convey in their own writing.
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I’ve never worried about it. It’s not like it’s wasteful (e.g. buying food, not eating it and throwing it away)
Sometimes something catches my interest at the time, but by the time I make time to read it, it’s
moot. Shrug, I delete it and move on.
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I have a struggle that goes on between “real me” and “ideal me”.
I sit down and look for in depth RSS feeds like Longreads. I say to myself, instead of scrolling Reddit or forums (cough cough), I’m going to save more articles. More long form. More educational.
Then I’ll save some articles for “ideal me” to read later.
Five days later I’ll go into my read it later app and “real me” will be like “wha? Who saved this garbage in here. Yeah, I’m gonna sit down and read an article that’s tagged at 40 mins. I don’t care THAT much about the topic. What’s going on in my favorite subreddit?”
Sad. But true.
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I will often find & save articles that could interrupt my current work flow. So I save them for when I can devote my time to them. When I go back they may not have the same interest because I’m in a different mindset. So off to the trash 
they go. Some have stayed and piqued my curiosity about other topics. The goal is to not stop my workflow when I’m focused on a project.
Saving an article about “maybe later” can be a good practice. Going back and reviewing is an excellent behavior. Keep doing good work and be kind to yourself.
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