Are you guilty of always having too many tabs open? Misbah Gedal has suffered for years, but now he’s found a solution: curating bookmarks
Hello, my name’s Misbah and I’m a tabaholic.
Yes, I admit it. Even as I write this, my web browser is overrun with open tabs. It’s been like this for days. And it’ll stay like this until my laptop battery dies or my system decides to reboot and install an update.
Our browsing habits have changed a lot over the years, and with more and more content becoming available to consume online, it’s easy to understand my affliction. The tab bar of my web browser hosts a petri-dish of web content; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs and many more – each of them spawning new tabs at an uncontrollable rate. This not only interrupts my work flow, but leaves me with a mass of content that I’m not actively engaged with but also don’t want to lose.
With all this in mind, I decided to tackle my affliction head on and speak to my new friend Michael Buist about how he’s been using Wakelet to save and organize the content he finds online…
Bookmarking wizardry
Michael Buist, a teacher at Knox Gifted Academy in Arizona, has become my go-to guy when it comes to bookmarking and Wakelet. He believes that curating your bookmarks offers a powerful way to construct a story or message – and he’s been using Wakelet to do exactly that.
Michael does a lot of research in his spare time, but rather than consuming good content and then moving on, he uses the Wakelet browser extension to quickly save and organize it into meaningful collections. By doing this, he can quickly share the best content he finds with his network of teachers and colleagues. He’s also a big fan of the Wakelet browser extension tab saver – a new feature that allows you to automatically save all your open tabs into a new collection. Once this content is in a Wakelet collection, you can edit it, add your own notes and images, and present it in a beautiful and engaging way.
As Michael says, ‘People are always consuming great content online, but they don’t know what to do with it once they’re finished.’ The way he sees it, if you find good content online, you shouldn’t just abandon it – you should save, organize and share it with others.
I love his perspective on bookmarking and his eagerness to share the content he finds with his colleagues and friends. This is very different from sending someone a meme or funny video, it’s curating the information you care about and sharing it with the people you care about.
Getting organized
The Internet has blessed us with a plethora of content, but as the web grows, the information is holds tends to become smaller and narrower. Meaningful content is harder to find and often has a short lifespan. That’s why it’s so important to save it when we do find it. At Wakelet, we envision a web where useful and meaningful content isn’t buried at the bottom of news feeds and search engines. We believe that people like Michael can rescue this content and share it with their network, increasing its lifespan and allowing it to be enjoyed by people who might otherwise have missed out.
After speaking with Michael, I realized I could be doing a lot more with the content I consume. I’ve resolved to change my browsing habits and have created six key rules to follow.
Here are my new bookmarking mantras:
1.I will never have more than five tabs open at any one time
2. I will never allow the best content to be lost
3. I will organize the best content into collections
4. I will strive to make my collections beautiful
5. I will share the best content with my friends, family and colleagues
6. I will remember the Wakelet browser extension – it will help me stay organized
And there you have it. Curating your bookmarks is a powerful way to share the content that matters with the people who matter most. It adds meaning and context to information that would otherwise be lost.
So, go forth and curate! Take it from this reformed tabaholic, you’ll be surprised at how powerful all those tabs can become.
