I experience ‘Interest Overload’. I want to learn everything but there is only a finite amount of time left for this around work and general life. Frankly, it’s a wonderful problem to have, but I still need a system to help me navigate this, so that my leisure time is spent with things that really resonate with me. I developed my Resonance Filter to help here.

If you’ve ever kept a tab open for weeks, intending to read it but never quite getting round to it, or if you’ve taken a screenshot of something to return to later, but then haven’t, then you might benefit from this system too.

I want to be able to save anything that interests me for further thinking, without immediately overwhelming my note-taking app with pdfs or links I’ll simply never read. Believe me, I’ve learned from past mistakes there.

• Any link I want to revisit is sent to Raindrop, a bookmark manager

• I regularly review Raindrop, diving into things that interest me on that day and simply ignoring anything that doesn’t.

• Whatever interests me that day goes into Capacities, my note-taking app. I have one rule: I must add something of my own, be it a note, a tag, or a connection to something else. This means it’s easier to find and connected to what I already have notes on.

I capture into Raindrop daily, and review it whenever I can, but I aim for every weekend given it’s one of my favourite practices.

A resonance filter is therefore both a mindset and a method. The mindset is that anything could matter but not everything will, and the method is that I funnel things into Raindrop rather than straight into a note-taking app. The benefit is that I can save interesting things without clogging up my browser, or worse, just shifting the clutter straight into my notes.

Let’s look at each step in turn.

Resonance

I think resonance comes from paying attention to life. My friend Réka says resonance is a muscle, and I think that’s a perfect metaphor. The more you use it, the more you find it.

I find things that resonate in all the places you’d expect:

• Social media

• Articles (Substack, Medium, Newspapers, Newsletters)

• Arena, Sublime

• Conversations with people

• Random observations when out and about

• Books

• Film, TV and documentaries

I just really try to pay attention. Anything could be interesting or connected to something I already know about. Finding connections is my favourite thing.

When I see something interesting, I simply save a link to it to Raindrop. I used to screenshot it for later, but never go back to it. Now I just get the link and save it to Raindrop.

Raindrop

Raindrop is a bookmark manager. It’s like the save button on instagram posts but for any link, from anywhere. Its web, phone and desktop apps make it so easy to save links from wherever you are. The default save location is the ‘Unsorted’ folder, this is the basis of my Resonance Filter.

The Unsorted folder gets bloated over time but that is entirely the point. Raindrop takes all those interests out of my brain (or browser tabs) and collects it into one place I can refer back to. This is why it’s useful and what makes it such a wonderful place to dive into and explore.

For this system to work long-term though, I found I needed to keep two things in mind:

• There can be no pressure to look in the Unsorted Folder — it’s for fun, it’s not a chore

• There is no Inbox 0 standard to maintain — this is research as a leisure activity, it’s not a day job. Productivity isn’t the measure, joy or interest is.

Most of the time I come across something interesting, I’m not ready to dive into it right away, meaning collection is often a passive activity. Conversely, doing something with it after, is active thinking and needs the right mindset. Some bookmarks stay in the unsorted folder for months. I think that just proves the system works!

The Raindrop Review, my favourite ritual

At the weekends, I sit down and review my Unsorted folder and ask myself the following questions when looking at a bookmark:

So let’s go step by step…

Not interested!

If I’m no longer interested in a bookmark, I move it to a folder I created in Raindrop called ‘Archive’. Eventually all links are archived, not deleted. This means I can search them at any point, I do this a lot, even as far back as 2021!

Interested but not now

But if I am interested in a bookmark, it’s time to decide if I want to dive into it now or not. For example, I want to dive into this post…

It’s a really cool intersection of many of my interests, but right now I’m spending more time reading fiction and taking notes on that. So I’ll leave this post until I’m ready to really dig in and think about it. It’s been in my Unsorted Folder for a month, patiently waiting for its turn. I don’t know when I’ll go back for it, but I know exactly where to go when it’s time.

Interested now!

However, things related to my current interests can be worked on right away, meaning it’s time for Capacities, my note-taking app of choice. But I have a very strict rule: nothing is allowed into Capacities unless I have further comments to add, or at the very least a tag or a link to add. I have to take at least one of those actions in Capacities, otherwise there is no point in moving it out of Raindrop.

For articles and PDFs, sources enter Capacities via Readwise Reader to make sure it really deserves a place in Capacities. Let’s look at this workflow with Reader further.

Articles, PDFs & Readwise Reader (aff link)

Articles and PDFs have always prompted rabbit holes for me, so by actually spending time with the articles, I’m increasing the surface area of potential fun. This is where Readwise Reader comes in, for highlighting. Whilst you can save content straight to Reader, I always go to Raindrop first. I found maintaining two inboxes (Unsorted folder and Reader’s inbox) to be completely unnecessary.

So for me, Reader is simply a reading tool, and an utterly delightful one at that. It’s such a calming place to be. For me, the peak reading experience is a physical book, but Reader is the best digital equivalent, and worth every penny in my opinion.

Highlighting is a thinking tool. What important parts of the text construct an author’s argument? What is interesting or new? What new sources are referenced? What new words have I learned? All of that is highlighted.

If I don’t highlight anything, the piece probably isn’t what I thought it was. I delete it and move on. I know I can always return to the original in Raindrop.

Once I’ve done my highlighting, I copy the highlights into Capacities. Again, I must add further comments, tags or links. Why was it interesting? Where do I want to see these highlights again? I link to those places, and add those comments. This means there are no source notes in Capacities that are just highlights, my reading is integrated with my existing notes or tags.

For large articles and PDFs, I summarise the highlights rather than keeping a giant list of them in Capacities. For example I’ve been reading a book about economics and I certainly don’t want the many, many highlights I needed to make to even understand it. I used the highlights as the basis for my summary, and then kept the summary only. My archive of highlighted sources is in Reader, Capacities holds whatever notes I made from those highlights, connected to other notes in my space.

By sending things that interest me to Capacities, they can be part of my normal note-taking practices. They often spark new rabbit holes or interests and I dive into as many as I can in that research session, but anything leftover goes to — yes you guessed it — Raindrop’s Unsorted folder. I lose no interests, but face no overwhelm from browser tabs or from a full downloads folder!

Conclusion

My Resonance Filter works for two core reasons.

• It’s so easy to maintain- Raindrop is omnipresent, and I use the default folder for easy access

• It’s intentional by design- this really helps me slow down and savour what I’m learning and how I’m learning.

I’ve been doing some form of this practice for 4 years now. Naturally, it evolves with the times and with each app update but each evolution rests on the foundational understanding that anything could be interesting, but not everything needs to show up in my notes app. Capacities is my private, calming place for research. It’s a space I wish to protect, not flood, and Raindrop and Reader are the floodgates.