I recently read Leo Babauta’s list of 7 rules that keep his life simple. While the idea of eating the same thing every day is utterly abhorrent to my internal Julia Child, Babauta’s notion of clearing his Instapaper queue every week struck a chord.

I’ve had Instapaper since its inception in early 2008. The ability to save articles into a tidy list was an utter revelation when I first signed up for the service. As a person quite fond of the to-read/watch/do list (my Netflix queue and Goodreads account are testament to this fact), Instapaper was a godsend. Finally, when I ran across interesting articles on the web, it was a simple click of the “Read Later” button and I was good to go. One neat and tidy list all, with clean copy and all queued up for my edification.

Then the problems started. I’d add and add, and rarely read through the articles on the list. There was simply too much. I switched to Pocket a year ago to try and mitigate the problem, as I preferred the app — hoping I’d read more on the go — but to no avail. Unfortunately, the import didn’t mark my archived articles as “archived” and so my list was now even longer than before.

I’ve had spurts where I’ll try and read through the oldest articles, but with so many long-form pieces from 5-year-old NY Times Magazine issues, it can be daunting. I’ve come to realize I have the digital form of the Economist problem. There are so many interesting articles, but I can never get through them fast enough and so they languish on my digital coffee table: my Pocket list.

But Babauta’s article spurred something in me. I needed to get the list under control. I went in and sorted from oldest to newest, hoping for some easy pickings of articles no-longer relevant to my current life. Let’s be honest: a review of the 2008 Lincoln MKZ probably wasn’t going to do much for me now — click, archive, done.

But a funny thing happened. As I started going through the articles, I began to realize that my list was a digital timeline of sorts — a personal history of how my interests and situations had morphed since 2008. In 2008, the election was upon us and I was still living in Washington DC, reflected in the articles from the Washingtonian, and the coverage from the Times, Post, and a variety of other sources examining the minutiae of the Obama-Clinton matchup. I saw articles discussing how the ability for developers to create apps for the iPhone was going to revolutionize Apple’s fortunes and hurt Microsoft (nice prediction). Stories of GM’s demise and the world of hurt it was going through showed an uncertainty about our shared economic future. (Little did I know that 6 years later, I’d be working on the GM account). Scrolling down, I saw articles about sustainability and green business, a reflection of when I was studying for my masters dissertation. Articles from the Times of London — now inaccessible to me — crept out from my time living in the UK.

My list suddenly felt like a digital time capsule, showing me the things I thought were important, the stories I wanted to devote time to, and the sources where I found my information. This wasn’t just ways to fill up my brain, it was a record of the way I looked at the world. Perhaps if I were a different person, I could click “archive all” and call it a day, but I didn’t want to simply wipe all this away. There are hundreds of articles left to read, but they tell a story of a time and a place beyond the words on a page. As I start to cull down the list (being a bit more aggressive now than in the past), with every click of the “archive” button, it’s nice to think about how I’ve grown, the way the world has changed, and wonder about what my current choices will say when I’m going through my Pocket list in another 6 years.