At one point my daughter was surprised by the number and randomness of tabs I had open in my browser.
She wasn't wrong. It was a lot. And… it was a mess.
I couldn't find most things I was looking for. It was too easy for me to misplace what I was trying to set aside for later.
Now, if you're a bookmarks person or a Pinterest or Pocket person where you're organizing links for later use....
For me, however (having used those tools), when it comes to organizing for anything on which I'm working right now... the best tool is open tabs.
If it's something for later then, yes, Pinterest. Then yes... Pocket. Then yes. Bookmarks. Although to be honest, Pocket's what I use for Later things.
But if it's what I'm working on Now... today... every day this week....
Then I use open tabs. Always.
It's just this thing I discovered about myself and my focus. I use it mostly for my professional work. Especially lately with the new series, Real Electric Adventures, about to go into production and wholesale changes in our production and post-production processes... the number of tabs I'm using exploded as there was a ton of new information to absorb, skills to learn, and tools to acquire.
I use Simple Tab Groups in Firefox. However, there are alternatives whether you're using Firefox (1) or Chrome (1)(2).
The basics of a tab organizer is that at any given time my browser's displaying all the tabs from a particular group of tabs that I define. I defined many such groups and can switch from one to another easily. I can also easily assign an old or a new tab to one of these groups and I can create a new group on the fly.
Most of my tabs are research oriented in some way but the first four tab groups are predominantly task oriented. For lack of effort and imagination on my part, they're called Primary, Secondary, Reading, and Blogs.
Primary's my email accounts and social media. Secondary's stuff that's a little less daily but important nevertheless like anything related to upcoming travel. Reading's the stuff that typically pops out of Flipboard, Feedly, Refind, and Google News. And Blogs is Tumblr, WordPress, Sway, Thesaurus, Unsplash, Google Images, Bing Images, Pixlr, Befunky, and so on.
For a while there was only one other tab group, Post-Production, which was pretty much anything job related. Once Real Electric Adventures went into pre-production, however, I added and kept adding new tab groups. Instead of "tab groups", though, think of them as research topics.
For example, everything about upgrading Omnisphere and adding expansion packs is tab grouped as "Omnisphere". Everything related to the loop libraries I considered is tab grouped as, you guessed it, "Loops".
Everything related to the latest version of Avid Media Composer on which I've never cut before is tab grouped as "Avid".
All the virtual instruments I trialed out for purchase are tab grouped as "VSTs".
It's really just that straightforward.
There's a tab group for composing centered around Noteflight, the online notation app. There's one for music theory 'cause I really wasn't paying any attention to my piano teacher when I was a kid. There's one for map motion design. There's several for each of the new VSTs I acquired. Tutorials, tips, and tricks all.
There's more, of course. Because some of the research dives deep, producing enough tabs that a particular group needs to split in two which, fortunately, it's pretty obvious where and how to split the group.
I've got a bazillion tabs open right now... reflecting the different tasks and research I engage each day. And the tab groups in which those tabs are organized allow me to shift focus swiftly and accurately.
Plus, whenever my daughter's over, I can display one of my tab groups that's pretty minimal.
Just so that she doesn't, you know, worry about me.
