Ian Philpot

I imagine that if I lived fifty years ago, I’d be the sort of person who would read the newspaper every morning  before work. But in today’s world, I get most of my news from online articles—some that can be found in newspapers and some that cannot.

My issue has been recalling where I read a specific article or details about a topic. I can google the article, but I only remember certain details, not where the article was published or what the title was.

So, starting January 1, I decided I would catalog every online article I read.

First, I made a Readability account. Readability allows people to save online articles to be read later. It has a Firefox extension, a Chrome extension, and an iOS app, which allows me to add an article no matter where I read it.

Next, I went to IFTTT and created this recipe:

IFTTT Recipe: Readability favorites to Google Spreadsheet

And with that, all of the articles I read and tag as a favorite in Readability will be added to a spreadsheet. I now have a catalog for all of the articles I read.

Now I’m finding any reason to read more articles so I can add them to the list. It’s not a bad problem to have.