APU Cyber & AI

How to Become a Digital Hoarder

Hoarding image courtesy of the University of Michigan Health System
Hoarding image courtesy of the University of Michigan Health System

So we’ve all probably seen those shows documenting people with extremely obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) who end up hoarding everything possible, until it consumes their lives and everyone around them. Most of us are lucky not to suffer from this serious disorder.  However, how many times have you found yourself saving a magazine or newspaper because you tell yourself “sure, I’ll read this later, so I will hang onto it until then”? Come on, you know you’re out there.

[tech savvy learners are going online for their IT certificates]

However, with all the digitization of media, hoarding magazines and newspapers might be on the decline among the average (non-OCD) person. And unless you bookmark everything you come across, saving links is the only way to become a digital hoarder.  And links can be erased, or they can expire.

So, if you desire to become an organized digital hoarder, I have the tool for you!

It’s called “Instapaper” and you can get it here: http://www.instapaper.com.

It’s a plug-in for the Google Chrome web browser that let’s you mark articles and pages to “save for later”. This syncs the article so you can view it offline anytime (as well as some other nifty features like stripping out all the nav so it prints well, or enabling it to view properly on a mobile device).  This little widget keeps track of everything you are saving for later so you don’t have to worry about organizing bookmarks and articles before you know if they are worth saving.

This is great for someone like myself because I receive dozens of newsletters each day… I skim them quickly and click the articles that I want to read… then mark them to read later… and finally, when I have some peace and quite (almost never), I can read through the articles and keep only the ones worth saving.

Does this make me a digital hoarder? Neh. I can always hit delete.

Up Next: Start digitally hoarding your coursework research on your iPad

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