Roughly a year ago, I decided to stop keeping a list of the books I wanted to read — my to-be-read (TBR) list. That decision brought with it a profound sense of relief. I felt lighter, as if I’d set down a burden I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I haven’t missed it. At all. And I never lack for something to read.

I suppose if you want to be precise, I do still have a TBR in the sense that I have a bunch of books at home on my book shelf that I have yet to read. That is a kind of TBR. And I also have a holds list at the library which is also a kind of TBR. But what I do not do is write down a book title and author whenever I come across one that seems interesting.

I’m not here trying to drag a TBR and tell you not to keep one. It just took me a long time — years — to realize that not only did I not need a TBR, but keeping one was just adding stress to my life that I didn’t need. I created a stub for this post around the time I dropped my TBR as a reminder to myself to write about how it went. After a pretty successful year of happy reading without a TBR I figured it was time to put fingers to keys.

I started keeping a TBR when I discovered Goodreads (sometime prior to 2011, but I don’t remember exactly when). I don’t think I’d even heard of the concept before Goodreads. My Goodreads quickly became so full of books that it was largely useless to me. It was hard to find anything in there except the things which I had added most recently — which was largely not helpful since those were likely still on my mind anyway. I think I stuck with it for as long as I did more for the book tracking (something else I’ve given up) than the TBR.

So a few years ago when I started keeping a bullet journal, I decided to move my TBR into the journal. Keeping a hand-written list introduced some friction that kept my list short enough to be useful. I limited myself to a two-page spread for the list; I had to review the list at least three times a year when I migrated notebooks; and I was motivated to be honest with myself about which books I wanted to read, since I had to copy them by hand every time I migrated to a new journal.

Even though this new TBR was short enough to find things on it, I was still not reading the books on it. I was still reading plenty, just not from my TBR. It began to feel like assigned reading — homework I’d given myself.

Much of the list was also non-fiction, and I think a lot of what I was putting on there were things I felt I ought to read because it fit my image of myself. These were books I would like to have read, rather than books I wanted to read. Which is not to say that I wasn’t interested in them, just that my interest in them often took second place to other books, especially at a time when I was (and still am) largely reading to relax. The world is a bit much right now, and reading is one balm I’ve been using for my mind.

So I decided to stop. It was clear I didn’t need a TBR — I was reading plenty and enjoying it — and it has been great. I just let books come to me and I never have a shortage of things to read. Sometimes people give me books as gifts, or I hear about books from friends and family. There are also quite a few books I’d like to re-read (something I feel I don’t do enough).

A few months later I also chucked Instapaper. Same story as Goodreads, really: Instapaper was somewhere I would chuck blog posts and news articles to forget about them. I was never going to read all that stuff, and the size of the archive was weighing on me. Most of the time, now, I just read an article right away or not at all. No more triaging my unread articles in Feedbin to get to Inbox Zero. I read it or I skip it. Bliss.

I know there are folks out there who have a different relationship to their TBR. Some people can treat their TBR like a library or a bookstore: it’s not a list of books they need to complete, it’s a place they can browse at their leisure to find something interesting to read. They treat it like a stream that flows past [them], and from which [they] pluck a few choice items. But I’m apparently not wired that way. If I have a list, I need to check everything off the list.

I guess I need to be careful about the things I turn into lists. Forgetting can be a feature, not a bug.