# How long will your X bookmarks take to clear? · ZeroMark

> A free calculator: enter how many X bookmarks you have and your daily time, and see how long reading them takes versus deciding from a summary.

Canonical: https://www.zeromark.io/x-bookmark-calculator

Calculator

## How long would your X bookmarks take to clear?

Put in how many you have and how much time you would give them a day. The answer comes two ways: reading every save in full, and deciding on each from a short summary.

**Reading every one:** 33 hours, or 100 days (about 3.3 months) at 20 minutes a day.

**Deciding from a summary:** 2.8 hours, or 9 days at 20 minutes a day.

### What the two numbers mean

The first number is the backlog as most people imagine clearing it: open each post, read it, follow the link, decide. At two minutes a save, a thousand bookmarks is more than thirty hours, which is why the pile only grows. Nobody finds thirty spare hours for posts they saved in passing.

The second number is the backlog when something has already read each save for you and handed you two lines: what it says and why you might have kept it. Most saves do not need reading at all. You need to know whether you still want them. That decision takes seconds, and the few saves that deserve a full read become obvious once the rest are out of the way.

### The assumptions, stated

- **Two minutes to read one in full** is a guess for a typical post plus a quick look at what it links to. A thread or a long article takes far longer; a joke takes less. Change it to your own pace.

- **Ten seconds to decide from a summary** is a guess for reading two lines and pressing one key: keep, let go or snooze. Change that too.

- **The daily budget** is the time you would really give this, not the time you wish you had. Twenty minutes is a coffee and a commute.

Nothing on this page is measured from anyone's library, and nothing you type leaves your browser.

### How to bring the second number down further

- **Decide, do not read.** The question for each save is whether you still want it, not what it says in full.

- **Let most of them go.** A save you have not missed in a year is usually one you will not miss at all.

- **Snooze what is not for now.** It comes back when it is useful instead of sitting at the top of the pile.

- **Batch it.** One sitting with a keyboard beats a save here and there, the way inbox zero works for email.

The guides on [organizing your X bookmarks](https://www.zeromark.io/blog/how-to-organize-x-bookmarks), [searching them](https://www.zeromark.io/blog/search-x-bookmarks) and [clearing a bookmark backlog](https://www.zeromark.io/blog/clear-your-bookmark-backlog) go further.

### Where ZeroMark fits

ZeroMark is built for the second number. It reads every X bookmark you saved, writes the two lines for each, and gives you one key per decision, so years of saves clear in an afternoon. What you keep becomes a memory you can ask questions of.
[Start free →](https://www.zeromark.io/trial)