If you’re like me, you always feel a bit of guilt about your bad habit of having too many open browser tabs. A well-organized, productive person would be more disciplined. My bad browser habits are obviously a sign of my chaotic, cluttered mind.
Or are they?
James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits, is definitely very productive and organized. And he too has a “bad brower tab habit”:
*“I bet I’ll read at least 30% of the tabs I have open over any two-week period. If I don’t get around to reading a particular tab, then it must mean it’s not really that important to me — but at least I gave it a chance!”
Maybe that’s a good attitude towards browser tabs. They’re not a to do list. Just because you keep a tab open doesn’t mean you’re now required to actually revisit it. You don’t “fail” if you don’t get back to that tab.
It’s simply a way to handle the massive amounts of information we’re confronted with every day, it’s an additional filter that allows us to later sift through anthing we found intersting, and decide: Is this something that’s worth my time and attention?
And if not, get rid of it.
Pro tip: James Clear uses a Chrome extension called OneTab, which makes it easy to save all your open tabs in a list to review later. It’s free, and you can get OneTab here. (I’ve used this extention myself too and really like it for the simplicity.)