A personal knowledge workspace · 2016–2026
10 Things I Learnt
From 10 Years
of Saves
459 channels. A personal Slack workspace. A decade of data. What the numbers actually say.
459 channels Feb 2016 – Apr 2026 Slack API Mike Litman
mikelitman.me/saves
What is Mike's Links?
A personal Slack workspace used as a scrapbook.
Not for teams. Not for notifications.
Just channels, organised by topic, where I save things I want to remember. I set it up in February 2016. I recently ran a Python script across the full decade to see what it all meant. What came back was an autobiography I didn't know I was writing.
459
total channels
10
years of data
3,326
#1 channel all-time
The shape of a decade · top 50 channels · saves by year
The arc.
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26 →
2022 is the cliff. 2023 is the turning point. 2024–26 is a different person.
2026 bar = Jan–Apr only, on pace to exceed 2025
01
Finding 01
2022
Was a dead year. Every channel. Simultaneously.
#ai
7
#jobs
23
#strat
14
#food
5
prev
#ai had 41 in 2021. #jobs had 204.
I don't have a clean explanation. The data just shows a year where I stopped paying attention to nearly everything.
02
Finding 02 · #ai-artificial-intelligence
7
2022
→
581
2023
An 83× jump. In one year.
ChatGPT launched December 2022. You can talk about inflection points in the abstract. This is what one looks like in personal data.
2018
10
2019
76
2020
41
2021
41
2022
7
2023
581
2024
896
2025
691
2026
660
03
Finding 03 · All-time #1 channel
#cultural-interface
3,326
saves. All-time. Number one.
0
saves 2016–2022
Didn't exist.
406
2023 · created
Immediately dominant.
982
2024
1,253
2025 · peak year
More than any other channel, ever.
The thing that defines the workspace now didn't exist three years ago.
04
Finding 04 · Career anxiety in data form
#jobs
Active every year from 2016. Never silent. Not once.
2016
12
2017
39
2018
40
2019
59
2020
63
2021
204
2022
23
2023
83
2024
435
2025
197
2026
118
2024 is the biggest single-year figure of any channel in the entire workspace. This channel tells the truth about where my head was, every year.
05
Finding 05 · The pivot
#strategy
Peaked 2020. Never came back.
2018
23
2019
111
2020
172
2021
134
2022
14
2023
17
2024
21
2025
61
I stopped collecting strategy frameworks when I started building products. The decline in #strategy is the rise of everything else.
Findings 06 + 07 · Two channels, two stories
#food
Lockdown artefact.
2018
17
2019
68
2020
199
2021
69
2022
5
One year, one reason. A clean natural experiment.
#tools
Eight years of decline.
2016
16
2017
63
2018
82
2020
44
2024
9
When I was in agency world I collected tools. Then I started building them.
08
Finding 08 · The one constant
#events
10/10
Active every single year. No gaps. No breaks.
From 2 saves in 2016 to a peak of 68 in 2023. Across every phase of my career, agency, Web3, AI, founder, this thread never broke. It's the one thing that didn't change.
2016: 2 2017: 8 2020: 12 2021: 26 2022: 57 2023: 68 ↑ 2025: 64
09
Finding 09 · Nine years of the same question
#portfolio-page
How do I present myself? Active since 2017. Never drops to zero.
2017
8
2018
19
2019
57
2020
48
2021
92
2022
31
2023
35
2024
46
2025
40
2026
20
The question of how to present yourself professionally never goes away. It just changes shape.
10
Finding 10 · The mental model shift
2026 channels are all projects, not interests.
#withmoshi-aivoice #buggysmart #claude-code #pattern-media #firstorder-aivoice #thequeueindex #modernretro #culture-terminal #taste-engine
Zero "interest area" channels created in 2026. Every new channel is named after something being built. The mental model has shifted entirely, from curation to production.
ff
The honest outlier · #ff
#ff
1,951 saves.
#3 channel. All-time.
Nobody building a "personal knowledge infrastructure" wants to admit that the third biggest channel — ahead of #jobs, ahead of #strategy — is football. But here it is.
2020
76
2021
77
2022
72
2023
401
2024
712
2025
562
2024/25 was Nottingham Forest's best Premier League season in decades. They were right there, fighting for a Champions League spot. I couldn't stop reading about it. 1,274 saves across that single season. The data felt every game.
All-time top 10 · total saves · 2016–2026
The full ranking.
1 #cultural-interface
3,326
2 #ai-artificial-intel…
3,003
3 #ff ← football
1,951
4 #jobs
1,273
5 #founderstuff
574
6 #strategy
571
7 #food
454
8 #tools
419
9 #portfolio-page
396
10 #health
342
#ff at #3. Ahead of #jobs. Ahead of #strategy. The most honest number in the dataset.
The archaeology · 459 channels
79%
Of channels dormant. Not visited in over 90 days.
459
channels ever created
The full workspace.
~97
active last 90 days
The living workspace.
362 channels where I saved something, then moved on. Each one is a moment. A version of me that cared about that thing, then stopped. That's not failure. That's archaeology.
The uncomfortable truth · source distribution
51%
Of every saved link comes from Twitter/X and LinkedIn.
These are the platforms I complain about. The ones I call low-signal, performative, and algorithmically broken. And yet — over half of everything worth saving in a decade came from there. I live where I say I don't want to live.
Your behaviour knows things your opinions don't.
How this was built · the method
A Python script.
The Slack API.
Ten years of history.
The query
50 channels
× 11 years
= 550 queries
The output
Every channel.
Every year.
Real counts.
Slack API Python conversations.history Unix timestamps 50-page cap per window
Each year window queried independently. Results written to JSON, rendered live in the dashboard. Nothing estimated. Every number came from the API.
The question
What does
your data
say?
You don't need 459 channels or a decade. A year of browser history, a month of Spotify plays, six months of liked tweets. The shape of your attention is already there. You just haven't looked.
Every save is a small vote for the person you're becoming. Run the numbers. See who won.
The rhythm · 90-day analysis · saves by day
Wednesday
is the day.
Not Monday. Not the weekend. Wednesday. I thought of myself as a weekend reader, an evening researcher. The data said otherwise.
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
I've been wrong about myself for years. The data knew before I did.
Channels as career · what was top in each era
The channels show the career before the CV does.
2016–2018
Agency &
consultant
#tools ↑ #strategy growing #social-trends #design
2019–2021
Strategist
peak
#strategy 172 ↑ #health 124 #food 199 (lockdown) #jobs 204
2022
The gap.
Everything collapsed. No dominant channel. A year between identities.
2023–2026
Founder
mode.
#cultural-interface 3,326 #ai 2,828 #claude-code 320 #jobs 635
The projection · Jan–Apr 2026 only
2026 is on pace
to be the
biggest year ever.
Four months in. Already tracking well ahead of 2024. #claude-code — a brand-new channel — already has 320 saves. #ai has 660. #cultural-interface has 685. The acceleration isn't slowing down.
2023
~3,200
2024
~5,800
2025
~6,300
2026
→ 2026
Striped bar = extrapolated from Jan–Apr pace. Total workspace across top 50 channels.
↑
The resurrection · a channel that came back
#substack
Died in 2022.
Hit its all-time peak in 2025.
2020
12
2021
78
2022
7
2023
57
2024
18
2025
107
2026
32
Not every channel that goes quiet is dead. Some are waiting for the world to catch up with the interest. #substack went from 78 saves to 7 — then came back stronger than it had ever been. The medium matured. So did the attention.
The deepest shift · observer → protagonist
The attention turned inward.
2016–2022 · about the world
#strategy · #tools · #social-trends
#food · #health · #design
#events · #jobs
Watching the industry.
Tracking what others make.
2023–2026 · about Mike's work
#cultural-interface · #ai
#claude-code · #withmoshi
#buggysmart · #firstorder
Building things.
Tracking what I make.
The channels didn't just change. The direction of attention changed. From outward to inward. From observer to protagonist.
The bigger story · 2016–2026
The same pattern runs through all ten findings.
2016 – 2022
Studied
and tracked.
#strategy · #tools · #social-trends
#design · #food · #health
Watching the industry.
2023 – 2026
Built
things.
#withmoshi · #buggysmart
#claude-code · #cultural-interface
Shipping. Making.
The workspace didn't just record what I was interested in. It recorded who I was becoming.
That's the thing about a decade of saves. It's not a bookmarking system. It's a mirror with a ten-year memory.
Get in touch
hello@mikelitman.me
15+ years in advertising. Now I build AI-native products and write about taste, culture, and what happens when strategists learn to ship.
Read the post Full dashboard Slack deck
mikelitman.me linkedin.com/in/michaellitman
mikelitman.me/saves
Mike Litman
10 Things I Learnt From 10 Years of Saves
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