By Andrew Georgy
Listen, we’ve all been there before. You’re watching a great video or reading a brilliant article and decide to bookmark it for later, only for eons to pass before you even look at it again (that is, if you even remember you bookmarked something important). The truth is, our bookmarks, saved search histories, songs, etc., are almost completely useless because we never return to further inspect them; we’d rather keep them in stock just in case we need them.
For example, I was watching a video recently about the best headphones. Feeling bored from all the searches, I decided to bookmark the video for later and take a break. A few weeks later, when I’d already bought my new headphones, I stumbled across the video again in my saved playlists, rotting there with no purpose.
So why do we even use bookmarks? Unless it’s a page you frequently visit, like Wikipedia or YouTube, do they even have a use?
I tried going a full week without bookmarks to see what would happen.
Sunday
I visited a bunch of useful websites and looked through TED Talks to see which ones seemed interesting for me to watch. Since I couldn’t save any of them, I’d have to test my memory for the next few days. I also couldn’t use bookmarks for shortcuts, whether it was games or tabs.
Monday
The hassle definitely began when I tried getting some work done. Rather than pressing the bookmarks I had saved for future work, I had to visit the websites and look for the information all over again. On the bright side, I found myself finishing full articles and reading everything to make sure I wouldn’t have to go through the painstaking process of browsing.
Tuesday-Thursday
Frustration. That’s really the only word I can use when I have to pull up a gaming app every single time I want to play just one game, or log back into a gazillion different websites because I didn’t have the bookmark to bypass it.
Friday
It was the end of the work week, so it wasn’t as strenuous as the past couple of days. But it was still very annoying since I couldn’t remember half the TED Talk videos that I’d browsed through or any of the niche websites that I found on Monday.
Saturday
I came to realize that I probably didn’t really need all those TED Talks and websites I’d hoped to remember. Most of them were pretty useless or contradicted each other. The really enjoyable tools (such as Canva) replaced most of my bookmarks (Google Slides, Adobe, etc.).
Sunday
I’d almost gotten fully accustomed to the no-bookmarks challenge. I found myself enjoying more videos rather than just putting everything in save later and the lack of bookmarks actually helped me organize more work into a couple of websites instead of scattering them the way I used to.
Conclusion
You don’t really need those hundreds of bookmarks waiting near your extensions tab. If you saved it and didn’t go back to use it, it probably wouldn’t have been useful. Sure, it’s useful to keep a few on hand just to save some time or if you really need it for a big project; otherwise, you’re better off not clicking the star. Besides, having that many clogged in one area is troublesome; at least remove the infrequent ones.
