How I finally made my bookmarks and PDFs useful

Back in university, I had a folder on my laptop packed with PDFs.
Books, essays, scanned papers - you name it.

Last week, I stumbled on that folder again.
Hundreds of files.

And I honestly couldn’t tell you why I saved half of them.

Probably fear.

Fear that I’d never find them again.
Fear that maybe, one day, I’d need a paragraph or two.

But the bitter truth is, I almost never opened them. Not even once.

That was before all the tools we have now.
But the behavior hasn’t changed.

We still hoard content.
Only now, it’s in “Read Later” apps, endless bookmarks, or open tabs.

And it’s not just PDFs.

• Bookmarking a webpage means nothing if you don’t know why you saved it.

• Downloading a YouTube video means nothing if you don’t know what insight you wanted from it.

• Saving a report means nothing if you don’t remember which part matters.

The real challenge isn’t collecting. It’s remembering why something mattered in the first place.

How I finally made saving digital content useful

Before saving anything, make sure you ask yourself these three questions:

1) Why am I saving this?
Without a reason, it’s just digital clutter.

At work, I ask myself the same thing when I read a report.
Instead of saving the whole PDF, I highlight the part that’s actually useful so I can come back to it fast and act on it.

2) What part actually matters?
Highlight the insight, the paragraph, the key idea, otherwise it’s noise.

For example, if I want to share a landing page with a designer, sending the whole site means nothing.

I save the exact section that matters, so they see exactly what I’m talking about.

3) How will Future Me know where to find it?
If you can’t find it later, saving it was pointless.

I always add context: my own comments, why it matters, what I want them to notice.
This way, anyone I share it with immediately understands why it’s important, and I don’t waste time explaining later.

Context matters more than saving

Back in university, I saved PDFs without answering these questions.
Today, I know that context matters more than quantity.

Because without context, every bookmark, PDF, or saved video is just another file in the digital graveyard.

And that, my friends, is digital FOMO in action.

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Gordana
Community Manager @ Collabwriting