Catching up

When listening to a podcast recently, a remark by one of the hosts struck me. He persisted with books he wasn't enjoying because, he said, some part of his brain was convinced that then he'd get to tick that entry off on some infinite cosmic checklist. As a world-class cosmic checklister for most of my life, something I hope to do this year—not even one of my #goals, just a little thing that I hope will be useful—is to shake that completionist urge. There is no cosmic checklist. There's just a superabundance of stuff. This year will be one of returning to the library, closing tabs, deleting episodes. I'm not going to listen to that episode of Thinking Allowed: just delete it. I'm not going to finish that longread (there's no such thing as an essay any more, imo, it's all just #longreads), just close the tab. However much I wanted to read Walden at the time, I don't now, so just return it. If I want to read it later it will still be there—if it's important enough that I remember.

I'm not even going to think about my Instapaper.