A piece of textured white paper with rough edges taped onto a soft peach background.

Jim Neilsen uses a Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation as a jumping-off point to discuss something important:

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

To me, all of those people with super-intricate systems, whether for academic work, pleasure, or something inbetween are faintly ridiculous. The point isn’t to replicate a machine and remember everything you’ve ever read.

Neilsen writes:

It’s a good reminder to be mindful of my content diet — you are what you eat read, even if you don’t always remember it.

For me, I bookmark a bunch of stuff that I never get to reading properly. Some of it ends up here on Thought Shrapnel in a way that I can process and search through at a later date. The added bonus is that you, dear reader, also get to see it too.

Source: Jim Neilsen’s Blog

Image: Olga Thelavart