I recently opened my “Read Later” app, and it felt like walking into an abandoned storage unit.
There were articles from 2019 about productivity hacks I never used. There were “must-read” essays on crypto that aged about as well as milk. There were YouTube videos I saved because I felt guilty for not watching them immediately.
It was a graveyard of good intentions.
For a long time, I convinced myself that saving these links was the same thing as learning. It wasn’t. It was Digital Hoarding. I was acting like a squirrel burying nuts for a winter that never came, except instead of nuts, it was PDF guides on “How to Master Your Morning Routine.”
If you’re anything like me—someone who loves systems, optimizes workflows, and wants to engineer a better life—you’ve probably fallen into this trap. We cherish data. We love the idea of knowledge. So we capture it. All of it.
But there is a massive difference between a warehouse and a greenhouse. One is for storage; the other is for growth.
It’s time we stop hoarding and start Digital Gardening.
The Problem: The Collector’s Fallacy
In the software world, we talk about “latency”—the delay between instruction and transfer. In our personal lives, there is a massive latency between collecting information and using it.
We suffer from the Collector’s Fallacy: the false belief that “having” the information is the same as “knowing” it.
When you click “save to Notion” or “bookmark,” you get a tiny dopamine hit. Your brain pats you on the back and says, “Good job! You’re smarter now.” But you aren’t. You just added another row to a database you’ll likely never query again.
This is a system failure.
If we view our lives as an operating system, digital hoarding is a memory leak. It consumes resources (your attention, your iCloud storage, your mental load) without returning any value. It creates noise. And when there is too much noise, you can’t hear the signal.
The Shift: Thinking Like a Gardener
So, what’s the alternative?
A Digital Garden is a different approach to personal knowledge management. It’s not about archives; it’s about activity.
- Hoarders focus on stock. They want the pile to get bigger.
- Gardeners focus on yield. They want the plants to connect, grow, and bear fruit.
When you treat your notes and ideas like a garden, you stop trying to “finish” or “organize” everything perfectly. Gardens aren’t organized alphabetically. They are organic. Some plants (ideas) are just seedlings. Some are fully grown trees. Some die, and you compost them to feed new ideas.
This shift changes your relationship with the internet. You stop being a passive consumer and start becoming an active cultivator.
Designing the System: How to Plant Seeds
You don’t need to be a coder to think like a systems architect here. You just need a workflow that prioritizes processing over capturing.
Here is a simple protocol I’ve been experimenting with to stop the hoarding:
1. The “Why This?” Filter
Before I save anything now, I force myself to answer a rhetorical question: “In what context will I use this?”
If the answer is “It looks cool,” I let it go. If the answer is “I’m working on a project about sleep tracking,” I save it.
We need to reintroduce friction. The “One-Click Save” is a bug, not a feature. It makes it too easy to be mindless.
2. Don’t Save Links; Save Thoughts
This is the golden rule of gardening. Never save a raw link.
If an article is worth saving, it’s worth summarizing. When I save something now, I force myself to write three sentences:
- What is the core argument?
- Why does this resonate with me?
- What other idea does this connect to?
If I’m too lazy to write those three sentences, the article wasn’t actually important. I delete it. This simple filter reduced my digital clutter by about 80% overnight.
3. Progressive Summarization (The Pruning)
In a garden, you have to prune. In your digital notes, you have to condense.
When I revisit a note, I highlight the best parts. The next time I visit, I bold the best highlights. Eventually, I write a summary of the bolded parts.
I’m designing the note for my future self. I’m making it easy for “Future Me” to scan the file and instantly grasp the value, rather than having to re-read the whole thing.
4. Connect, Don’t File
Files and folders are rigid. They are relics of the physical office—the filing cabinet.
Digital gardens run on links.
When you plant an idea (say, a note on “Circadian Rhythms”), don’t just drop it in a folder called “Health.” Link it to your note on “Productivity.” Link it to that article about “Blue Light Filters.”
This is where the magic happens. When you link ideas, you start to see patterns. You start to see how your interest in architecture connects to your interest in coding. That’s not just storage; that’s synthesis. That is where new ideas are born.
The Peace of “Good Enough”
Here is the most engineering-focused insight I can offer you: Perfect is the enemy of shipped.
Digital Hoarding comes from a fear of missing out (FOMO). We save everything because we are terrified we might need it someday and won’t be able to find it.
Digital Gardening embraces impermanence. It acknowledges that you can’t know everything. It’s okay for a note to be half-finished. It’s okay to delete a folder that no longer serves you.
When I started gardening instead of hoarding, a strange thing happened. I stopped feeling overwhelmed by the internet. I stopped feeling like I was drowning in a stream of content I couldn’t keep up with.
Instead, I built a small, quiet corner of the web that is mine. It’s messy, sure. There are typos. There are half-baked theories about coffee brewing and Python scripts. But it’s alive.
The Call to Action
Your life is a system. The inputs matter.
This week, I challenge you to try a little experiment. Go to your “Read Later” list, or your bookmarks, or that folder on your desktop called “Misc.”
Delete 50% of it without looking.
I’m serious. If you haven’t looked at it in six months, it’s dead weight. Compost it.
Then, pick just one thing that remains. Read it. Write three sentences about it. Connect it to something else you know.
Stop building a warehouse. Start growing a garden.