Digital gardening is the work we do to make an organic mess less messy and more useful. It’s certainly not a new idea but I think it’s something that is becoming a major problem for may digital spelunkers. We’ve never had a greater variety of information inboxes and it has never been easier to capture new information into these boxes. The problem now is with recalling the information and making connections between it all.

~ Gabriel Weatherhead from, http://www.macdrifter.com/2021/06/on-digital-gardening-blogs-and-knowledge.html

Weatherhead goes on to list several specific problems, but not much in the way of solutions. And that’s perfectly fine; Having a clearly defined problem, (or two, or three,) demonstrates a lot of thinking and a lot of hard work has been done in search of a solution. We even have an adage for that: A problem well-defined is half-solved. He mentions in passing that a lot of his bookmarking, (saving, marking for later reading, staring, adding to lists, etc.,) is done as an aspiration. Becoming aware of this was a key turning point for me.

At some point, someone will carry the last of my worldly possessions… and deposit them in a dumpster. At some point, all of my digital files will be given a shrug and summarily deleted. I currently aspire to stop collecting things “for later” and instead use, read, compose, share, create and inspire now.

ɕ