Introduction
Recently, I cancelled the paid plan on the Evernote account I'd been using for years. I didn't delete anything I plan to keep using it within the free tier. The reason I cancelled: for the past two or three years I'd barely been adding anything, and the only thing keeping me on the paid plan was a small set of notes I still added on a regular basis. I've since reorganized those and moved them to a different tool, so there was no longer a reason to pay.
The old data is still there and still accessible. Even though I won't be adding to it, everything I saved in the past is something I can go back and look at any time.
Note Count
While I was going through the cancellation, the total number of notes I'd saved caught my eye.
Tens of thousands of them — far more than I'd expected. I'd spent years writing daily logs and review notes, clipping web pages whenever something caught my interest, so in hindsight it makes sense. Still, seeing it laid out as a single number, I was a little surprised at how much I'd used it.
How Much Did I Actually Revisit?
After seeing that number, a thought occurred to me: how many of these did I actually go back and look at?
Thinking it over, I doubt most of those notes were ever opened a second time.
Not zero, of course. There are pages I've opened again and again, and I clearly remember moments where I was glad I'd saved something — summaries I'd written for myself after reading a book, bookmarks I ended up referring to. But those were a small fraction of the whole. The vast majority were saved once and never opened again.
I would have found it interesting to see an actual figure — how many notes had been opened more than once — but I doubt that statistic is available anywhere. Still, even going on feel alone, "almost none" is clear enough in my own mind that I'm comfortable saying it.
Why Was I Saving So Much?
Daily logs, book summaries, review notes — those are a separate matter. What I'm thinking about here is the bookmarks and web clips. Looking back, I don't think the reason I saved those was "to read later."
It was the feeling you get when something catches your eye — the feeling of not wanting to let it slip away. The sense that if I don't grab it now, I'll never run into it again. Once it's saved, I can relax. What I was really buying was that reassurance.
And saving something gives you the feeling of having dealt with it. Even though I hadn't read it, and hadn't used it. Collecting had become the point in itself.
What strikes me now is that the things I genuinely end up needing are usually findable if I go looking. I can't recall a single case where not saving something left me stuck.
The Courage Not to Save
Saving takes effort. Clipping it, organizing it later, checking back on it now and then. Each one is small, but multiplied across that many notes, it adds up.
Line that effort up against how often I actually went back to any of it, and honestly, it didn't balance out.
If there's something you've been accumulating, it might be worth taking a look at just the number sometime. It's more interesting than you'd expect.
And of course, I'll keep saving the things that matter, in whatever tool fits!
In my own case, though — when it comes to the things I save just for a vague sense of reassurance, maybe the courage not to save them matters too. That's what I've been thinking about lately.
Thanks for reading!
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