How to properly slide down a digital rabbit hole (and not get lost)
Thank you Alice in Wonderland
I have a love-hate relationship with digital rabbit holes.
Those online forays that start with an innocent question and end up 30 minutes later with nothing to show for it except lost time. Or the sidetracks that you suddenly find yourself on while deep in topic research.
The love part is when I occasionally discover relevant new information, a book, an author or something I actually use.
That global information network at our fingertips can be miles deep
With due respect to Alice in Wonderland, the trick to navigating digital rabbit holes is keeping your attention on a short rein.
Search with an intention to learn something specific
Immediately reject everything else
Set a time limit (20 seconds each) on following links
Save interesting stuff to read later
It’s OK to poke your head down the rabbit hole, take a step or two around the edge and determine if it’s useful. I’ll give the article 15-20 seconds — a paragraph or two — to prove its worth (I’m ruthless) before I’m gone. If it might have value later, I’ll use a web clipper (more below) to save it.
Keep asking yourself this question: Does this matter to me?
Interesting…but useless.
Popular…but I don’t care.
Maybe useful…but later.
Make your online search time all about you, baby, and you won’t have a problem getting sucked down those digital rabbit holes.
Now, go wander outside!
3 Resources for You
Books, articles, tips, tools and advice to help you unplug. (Books may be aff links.)
Use a web clipper for future reference material. Both Evernote and Notion have browser-based web clippers that allow you to save webpages.
Use a read-later app. What if you’ve found something that might be useful but you’ll have to read it to be sure? Don’t read it right then, but save it to ReadWise, Pocket. or Instapaper. There are lots of these apps so you can likely find one that fits your routine. Schedule time on your calendar to scan or read these clips, then delete or save somewhere like Evernote, Notion or Google Drive if useful for future reference.
Keep asking yourself: Does this matter to me? Remember, given the web cookies that follow us everywhere on the web the crap you don’t want will likely pop up again so don’t spend time on what isn’t useful.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland
