Too Many Tabs

A web surfing adventure brought me to the Blogess. I love her. So often she’ll say something that resonates perfectly with me … and then take it to an extreme (which is so me but beyond my current ability level). On this latest visit to her site was a picture from A Pair of Pears that describes me perfectly.

I’m big on tabs on my computer – rather than saving a site as a bookmark, I simply leave the tab open. This is great for places I visit all the time, or as a one-off reminder.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I learned that there is a setting in Chrome that will automatically reopen all of the tabs from my previous session. Tabs are my friend. They mean I don’t have to remember things. The computer does that for me.

Mental tabs, however, are evil. They tax my resources. Sometimes I get caught in the mental cycle where I feel I have to do everything that is open all at once. As soon as I start one task, three others pop into mind that are at least as important. Next thing I know my mind is trying desperately to remember all of these things while still focusing on  he task at hand. We all know how well I do with keeping mental lists!

Kurt once tried to convince me of a truism in dance training: to speed up you have to slow down. While I still think that is crap when applied to the idea of turning faster, it definitely can be true in other aspects. By doing just one thing at a time and working it all the way through to completion, overall the to do list can be done faster. Did it surprise anyone when scientists discovered that multi-tasking is a big time waster?

It’s when the mental tab count gets too high that I get stressed and stop performing well. Slowing down is definitely the first step to controlling a run away freight train of a mind. When my brain misbehaves like this, I know what it wants – me to write a list. Although I refuse to reinforce negative behavior with the cats, I will humor myself.  I’m always amazed at how writing things down (and thereby taking the pressure off of my mind for remembering things) can allow me to concentrate again.

Although I am easily distracted by bright, shiny things, my goal is not to be doing many tasks at once – but if I’m not totally committed to what I’m doing, my focus will definitely wander off.

How do you shut down your excessive mental tabs? or How many tabs do you normally keep open on your internet browser?