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I visit HackerNews and immediately see a few posts I find interesting and open them in background tabs. I'm scared to just read one and then go back to the home
by dxuh 3y ago
I visit HackerNews and immediately see a few posts I find interesting and open them in background tabs. I'm scared to just read one and then go back to the home page, because it might have disappeared or changed the title or something like that. Then I read one or two of the open tabs, get distracted and do something else. That nets +3-+5 tabs. Repeat the same on reddit and YouTube. The fear of hitting the back button is much worse on those sites.
The other kind of tab-explosion is when I am doing something specific, like researching some topic and open tabs end up being stuff that I deemed worth reading or that remains a to-read. And often enough I don't come back to them and they just sit around. As soon as even more tabs have piled up to make them disappear across the tab bar, they are almost lost in my open tabs forever.
Also I am not addicted to heroin, but I can understand that people can get there and can't get out. I keep a very clean apartment, but I understand that not everyone can. I go to the gym 5-6 times a week, but I understand that not everyone can. I consider it part of becoming an adult to understand that not everyone finds it easy to do things you yourself find easy to do.
- Ylpertnodi 3y agoI, for one, would love to know: what are your secrets, or tricks, or tips to be able to do such?
- yterdy 3y agoI'll emphasize a point you alluded to: tab hoarding is driven partly by the algorithmic instability of served content. If pages didn't refresh on the platform's whims, users could navigate back and forth to hub pages, like they used to. Now, it's unlikely that Youtube or Twitter's feed pages will be the same even two minutes apart, and they're designed to serve you content that you enjoy. The only way to ensure that you have access to that content is to immediately open every link that seems halfway interesting; otherwise, they're liable to disappear into the ether, never to be found again. That the modern web is designed to encourage addiction and OCD is not my fault.
- anjel 3y agoYou left out interruption of thought and process as a design goal. Long term it does wonders for ADD, even if you didn't have it in the first place.
- itissid 3y agoI actually find grouping tabs into one tab in the UI and then color coding helps ADD people who see all the work piled up. But in reality most tabs are either distractions or we dont return to them for a long time until other tasks are done. I think chrome has this. Grouping can manage the clutter at the least if not solve the problem of diverted attention.