Delete without remorse

Make the time you spend on your interests meaningful without the pressure to rush through a huge pile of nothing.

You have eight new books stacked on the desk for months at this point. Your YouTube watch later sits at 412 videos. And let’s not forget about that buried Notion page with dozens of links to read later.

Every save or purchase felt earned, because you found something good, your curiosity lit up, and you grabbed it before it slipped away.

Curiosity judges one thing at a time. It looks at the video and says this is worth it. And it’s right in isolation but it never reminds you about the four hundred other worth-it things already saved. The list grows because the part of you filling it ignores the stack.

The problem with deleting videos from the playlist or even giving away the unread books feels like throwing away a piece of who you are. To an extent, that stack is part of your identity as a book reader, or an interesting person who likes a variety of topics.

But somewhere the collecting got renamed as learning. The (digital) stack measures what you acquired, not what you know, and you’ve been treating it like what you know.

Delete without remorse. Cut the list down to what you want to consume and let the rest go. If there was something you actually wanted but deleted you will find it again — browser history, find a copy of the book online, or it simply shows up on your social media feed again. The rest is gone for good and you won’t miss it.

The shelf of books you actually read is small. The number of hours per week to watch videos is shrinking fast. Make the time you spend on your interests meaningful without the pressure to rush through a huge pile of nothing.