I didn’t realize I had a system for this until I did.

My system: I only ever open one browser window (OK, two on my work computer where I use MS Edge profiles for different Microsoft accounts).

When I open a new tab, I scan the tabs already open and move it left or right so that the tabs remain ordered by decreasing priority. “Priority” means something like, how annoyed would I be if I closed this by accident?

  • High priority: Things that I keep open all day (email, GitHub issues).
  • Medium priority: Documentation or reference material for the current task.
  • Low priority: Random ephemera, landing pages from clicking a confirmation email, article I already read but just need to copy a quote from, etc.

Whenever I start to have more than 15 or 20 tabs, I get an instinctual, cramped feeling and start axing tabs from right to left until I arrive at one that I still want open. Usually, this leaves two or three tabs.

Sometimes I accidentally close things that I still needed, but I tell myself that the time wasted reopening them is offset by the time saved searching through dozens of tabs to find the right one.

Is this system any good?