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I’ve reached 2000 bookmarks and annotations in Hypothes.is. A large chunk of those 2000 bookmarks came this month, some 20% of them. Because, mostly I think, I’ve hit on the right mindset that makes bookmarking/annotating in hypothes.is a habit. Next to having a bit more energy and mental space in general than I had for a long time, that really helps too.

Exactly four years ago today I created my Hypothes.is account. I made my first annotation there only in April 2022, and started using it regularly in late August 2022.

Two thousand isn’t a whole lot of course. Annotation is not just bookmarking, and a single page can have many annotations. Still it is relatively more than the 3200 bookmarks I collected in Delicious over the span of eleven years, from summer 2004 to summer 2015, and the hundreds I saved to Evernote between 2016 and 2020. And it makes Hypothes.is the only new addition to my otherwise shrinking distributed online presence in the past years.

The graph of my annotations, a start in the fall of 2022, then a steady linear path for two years, followed by a little jump and a much flatter usage for a year, ending in a strong jump.

I noticed early this month that something seemed to be shifting in my annotations. Three elements are part of that shift, and they combine to make a more active habit

• I made it easier to bookmark and annotate, by reducing the friction to annotate from right inside my feedreader.
• I let go of the internal voice that any annotation should be a ‘proper and serious’ annotation, a result of thinking. Annotation is an every day activity, creating the breadcrumbs that may result in deeper thinking later on in my notes. All annotations flow automatically into my local notes, where I can work with them and re-use them.
• I start with a question or topic and wander where hyperlinks take me for 15 minutes or so. This is the type of browsing like it’s 1993, when that was the only way you could take in the world wide web (and actually for a short while: take in the entire web). It feels natural, and it feeds actual current interests, work-related, side interests and every day things. It makes annotation an every day activity for real.

The first two changes make it easier to start annotating. The last change makes the biggest difference, as it results in short bursts of new annotations in a steady rhythm.

Hypothes.is isn’t a widely used tool out on the open web. It is mostly used in educational settings, for classes and groups, and integrated into learning systems. It does have a few social features though, like the ability to not just follow (through RSS e.g.) but also respond to other people’s annotations. Like in the old days of Del.icio.us that is a way to find others interested in the same thing as you but from a different perspective and using different language to describe it. I have a small roll of Hypothes.is users. You can also check out who is annotating using similar tags to yours to find new people.

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