Close It

This is a screenshot of my current browser tabs. There are four more browsers windows where the tabs look exactly like this. Whenever I’m working on something, or really doing anything on my computer, I have a tendency to create a new tab any time a thought comes up about whatever. I do this so that I either don’t forget to come back to that idea later on, or so that I can address it immediately and come back to what I was working on before at a later time. Then sometimes, another thought will come up, prompting the opening of another new tab, and another and another and another. And we end up with what you see above (which is honestly pretty tame compared to the other windows).

Because of this, more often then not, nothing actually gets done. I spend a lot of time thinking and prioritizing the all things that I wanna work on, which rapidly drains me of mental energy and motivation. If nothing gets done, the tabs stay up, tomorrow comes, and tabs get added, ad infinitum.

Sometimes I feel like the best course of action is just to close everything at the end of the day and start fresh, introducing a sort of natural selection of ideas and tasks. Tabs that are actually important or pressing will be recreated, while the more flighty, ephemeral ones will be postponed until the thought arises again. I have trouble with this though, because I don’t want to lose those ideas, which creates resistance against closing the windows (some of which I haven’t looked at in days). I need to learn to let go and simplify my process.