Creating a commonplace book with DevonThink?

I use DT as a “maybe-read-it-later” service.

I used to employ a variety of other services for this, though they all suffered the same problem: me! However, I’ve since recognized that I’m not going to change. My appetite for new headlines will always exceed my capacity to read the ones I’ve already found. So, I’ve come to rely on DT to address that issue directly. I save everything interesting, use a deliberate and systematic tagging system to give it some context, and then I let these finds inform later work through search or browsing those tags.

It may be that I’ll never directly use many of my finds. Still, I’m neither a librarian: I don’t want to make tough, ambiguous decisions about whether something meets an arbitrary threshold for keeping every time I find something to save. Nor am I a janitor: I don’t want to make tough, ambiguous decisions about whether something meets an arbitrary threshold for not getting trashed in some sort of regular clean-up.

This is the most stable and frictionless setup I’ve had. A couple of key mechanisms make it possible:

  1. I don’t sort things myself. I have an automation that automatically places new items into a year → semester group hierarchy, based on date added.

  2. I use a “closed” tagging system. I tag every item using an automation that allows me to choose tags from a few lists. This makes tagging quick and effortless, and prevents tag overgrowth.

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