Dr. Wayne Pernell describes how saving papers and articles for later reading becomes a procrastination trap. He uses the "frog in boiling water" metaphor: the growing pile slowly paralyzes him, and months later he realizes most weren't worth reading at all.
Chapters
And so clutter became a thing. Like, you know, that's not clutter. If I'm going to get to it, it's not, it's not horrible if I'm going to find, if I'm going to sort through it, because that pile is really important. I need it. And the truth is, the things in that pile may or may not be important. They may or may not be useful. They may or may not be worth hanging on to. For me, that was my frog. That was like, that's, that was my boiling water. I will say I was the frog. And my boiling water was, I'll just put this paper here or I'll put this journal article here and I will read it. I'll get back to it. I'll come back to it. And, and the truth was I would come back to it six months later and go, why did I save this.