Information Retrieval Tools & Systems
To help me stay on-task, I use three extension tools to help me capture links, in-the-moment, and save them for future perusal.
These links my contain information, insights or ideas relevant to the task-at-hand, they may be relevant to different projects, or they may have just piqued my curiosity. I want to make them retrievable in the future because digging into them now would encourage/support procrastination.
There are similar tools that support similar actions. These are the tools I'm using and how I'm using them. It works for me.
This extension let's me open links on-the-fly. A new tab is created. I've set the tab to open in the background so I don't get distracted by its content.
One Tab enables me to clear my browser tab bar by funneling designated tabs to a One Tab list. All One Tab lists show up within one One Tab tab.
I have One Tab set to funnel all tabs to the right of the one where I started searching and saving links. It's important to label the saved list of links or you won't remember what the links in the list are about days or weeks later!
In the early decades of the internet, we bookmarked urls to sites, etc. I can't remember the last time I bookmarked something. Today, I use Pinterest for such purposes.
In addition to the actual Pinterest browser button, images can be saved via image mouseovers or right click actions.
I have boards (both public and private) where I curate pins related to work and personal interests. When I begin exploring a topic (ex. collage) I create a board and begin pinning links I will want to refer to in the future. Many of my boards have sections that eliminate having to search through 100s of pins to find something. My boards are in alphabetical order. The key to retrieving Pinterest pins is to build a Board/Section taxonomy that makes sense to you.
My boards and sections are built to support my work and interests. If others find value (and they do!) that's great but they weren't built to attract others.
Being able to save pins on-the-fly in organized, retrievable ways is a huge timesaver and, on the front end, helps minimize distractions/procrastination!
If I'm (re)searching in Pinterest, I'll generally right click a pin to open it in a new tab, save the slew of opened pins to a One Tab list, then revisit the list at a later time, go to the pin's original source and create my own pin from there if its something I want to keep for future reference.