Read Later Apps

I’ve tried all the read later apps, and I don’t read the words later. I’ve simply taken the problem of too many browser tabs and time shifted its solution into the future. A future where I’ll have less context to decide what I’m hoping to get from the article, and how I’ll decide to stick with it or cut bait and move on.

I’m spending tomorrow’s energy on today’s problem, and it’s unkind to my future self. So instead of having a mind that’s free to wander, I waste my energy re-familiarizing myself with an inventory of potential knowledge I’ll never synthesize.

So here’s my new strategy.

1. Send the link into my Things list
2. Write a sentence about why it seems worth my time and what I hope to get from reading it
3. Set a due date correlated with the estimated effort

Even the minimal friction of writing can reveal I don’t actually care about the potential payoff of allotting future attention. And if I don’t read it by the due date, I’ll mark it canceled. No hard feelings, just a fresh acknowledgment of my limits.

Things is becoming the single tool where I’m confronting my finite relationship with time, capacity, and focus. It’s easier to acknowledge limits when they’re gathered in one place. If my future self wouldn’t benefit from a sentence of context, the task to be done isn’t worth capturing.