The Tyranny of the New Tab

I used to live in a permanent state of tab debt. Twenty, thirty, sometimes more. Each one represented a thread I promised myself I'd return to.

Most of them died quietly.

The cost of context switching

Every time I opened a new tab to "just check something," I was making a bet that my future self would have the context and the will to close the loop. Future me was usually optimistic but unreliable.

The browser became a museum of good intentions rather than a workspace.

What actually helped

Not better tab managers. Not another extension. Instead:

• A single, always-open scratch file (currently a note in the same app I write everything else in).
• Ruthless use of "send to self" for anything that can wait an hour.
• Treating the address bar like a todo list: if I can't remember why I opened it, it gets closed.
• One browser window per major context. No more "research" tabs mixed with the actual work.

The goal isn't zero tabs. It's that every open tab should feel like a deliberate continuation of a thought, not an escape from one.

Starting the day empty

The most productive days often start with almost nothing open. Not because I'm disciplined, but because the night before I closed everything that didn't earn its place.

An empty tab bar is a quiet kind of power. It means the next thing I open will be chosen, not inherited.