How to organise bookmarks so you use them
Organise bookmarks in four passes, then keep maintenance near zero. Cut anything you cannot give a one-line reason for, which will be most of them. Group what survives by subject rather than by intent, because Read later is not a subject. Let anything that belongs in two groups sit in both. Then publish the two or three groups that are actually good, because a collection with a destination stays organised and a collection without one does not.
The steps
- 01
Cut first
Delete anything you saved for a reason you can no longer remember. Most of a bookmark pile is dead weight, and sorting dead weight is the slowest way to do nothing.
- 02
Group by subject, never by intent
Fold everything into subjects you would say out loud. Folders named after intentions, To Read or Someday, fill up and are never opened.
- 03
Allow two homes
Stop forcing one item into one folder. A thing that genuinely belongs in two places should sit in both, or you will hesitate every time you save.
- 04
Give the good ones somewhere to go
Pull the handful worth keeping into a list you would show someone. A collection with an audience gets maintained; an archive does not.
- 05
Keep maintenance near zero
Do nothing on a schedule. Tidy the one subject you are already working in, when you are already in it.
Pass one: cut
Open the pile and keep only what you can justify in a single line. Not a summary, a reason. This one changed how I think about pricing. This one is the best explanation of the algorithm I have found.
Expect to keep somewhere between five and fifteen per cent. That is not failure, that is the normal hit rate for anything you saved impulsively.
Pass two: group by subject, never by intent
Read later, To do and Important are intents, and intents expire. Six months on, everything is Read later, so the group means nothing.
Subjects survive. Typography, Pricing, Cold email, Sea creatures. You can tell from the name whether a thing belongs, which is the entire job of a group name.
- If a group has one item, it is not a group yet. Leave the item ungrouped.
- If a group has more than about thirty items, it is two groups.
- If you cannot name a group in under four words, you have not found the subject.
Pass three: allow two homes
An essay about pricing psychology belongs in Pricing and in Behavioural economics. Forcing it into one is how you lose it, because you will look in the other one.
Any tool that makes you pick a single folder is making you do work that will be wrong half the time. Tags, or membership in several lists, fix this.
Pass four: give the good ones somewhere to go
Pick the two or three groups you would actually show someone and publish them. Send one to a specific person.
This is the step that keeps the system alive. A group that other people can see acquires standards, and standards are what stop a collection from silting up again. Nothing else you do will maintain itself.
Maintenance, which should be almost nothing
- Save with context, so nothing arrives bare and needing work later.
- Review a published list when you add to it, not on a schedule.
- Delete on sight. A link you scroll past twice without opening is a link you do not want.
Questions people ask
- What is the best way to organise bookmarks?
- By subject, with items allowed in more than one group, and with the best groups published so they have a reason to stay good. Organising by intent, such as Read later or Important, fails within months because the intent stops being true.
- Folders or tags for bookmarks?
- Tags, or any model that lets one item live in several places. Folders force a single choice at save time that is wrong for anything belonging to two subjects, which is most things worth keeping.
- How often should I clean up my bookmarks?
- Almost never, if saves arrive with their context attached and you delete on sight. Scheduled cleanups fail because they are a chore with no reward. Publishing works because it has one.
- How many bookmarks is too many?
- The number where you stop opening the app. For most people that is a few hundred. The count matters less than whether any group in it is finished enough to show someone.