Quick Thoughts on Raindrop
Two weeks ago I started using Raindrop, a bookmark manager. I'd seen several people talk about it and other bookmark managers and given Raindrop in particular good reviews. My bookmarks in Firefox (imported from Chrome) are a little wild, with many of them completely unused. What better reason to start bookmarks from scratch?
As with any new software, it takes me a while to break old habits. I still find myself reaching for convenient bookmarks in my toolbar. It's easy, it's right there; whereas I either need to hit ctrl-. to invoke the Raindrop extension or switch over to my pinned Raindrop tab. That's not to say that Raindrop is inconvenient; it's just that I've used browser-based bookmarks for so long, and in particular the current system I employ. It's muscle memory.
However I very much enjoyed the process of setting up a new crop of bookmarks. I created new folders, picked which websites I wanted to save. Similar to resetting my Spotify "liked songs" list, it feels cathartic (and useful)1. Now that I have several bookmarks saved (and TAGGED!) it's a little easier to retrain that muscle memory to use Raindrop to access websites instead of the bookmarks toolbar.
To be honest, I think what I need to do is rip the bandaid and delete things in my toolbar; it's probably the only way to stop using it. Don't get me wrong, there are links I'm going to keep there - banking, email - things that I want quicker access to. But if I leave the bookmarks as-is, I'm going to keep going back to that toolbar.
For Raindrop itself - I love the search function. There have been a few times where I either wasn't sure I had something bookmarked, or knew it was bookmarked but couldn't find it. Start searching for key terms or by tag and it comes up quick. I don't think there's been an instance yet where I haven't been able to find that bookmark.
Some people use Raindrop for clipping things for writing but I don't think I will be using it that way. It's simply not the way I work (both clipping things, and where I theoretically clip things). We'll see how it goes, but having cross-platform easy access, browser-agnostic, is a nice thing. Plus - I don't need to navigate the bookmarks on mobile to find what I'm looking for. It's all nicely organized now.
Next up...finding all my recipes and importing THOSE bookmarks to Raindrop.
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