I’m in Bali at the moment, on a working-remotely trip, and I’m spending a lot of my time at a coworking space.

What do I mean by a coworking space? It’s a building with a public café as well as members-only spaces. The members-only spaces come in a variety of flavors, from “you can talk as much as you want here” to “be really quiet please”. There are focus rooms for taking calls, some meetings rooms, and even a video recording studio. It’s a great space!

The main area looks like this:

Although I usually find myself in the so-called “concentration room”, seated at a desk on a comfortable chair and working on a big screen.

In the photo, it’s fairly quiet, but on weekdays, there must be over a hundred people working here. Many of them are entrepreneurs, although many of them also have regular 9–5 jobs, except that they’re working remotely.

As I walk through the space, I see a lot of people’s computer monitors. I can’t help but take a quick look at someone’s screen sometimes. And one thing I see all the time is many, many browser windows and tabs. Some people even have multiple screens, each with several Chrome or Safari or whatever windows with many tabs.

My first reaction when I see this: this person should try the Arc browser. If you’ve got lots and lots of browser tabs open all the time, Arc will be right up your alley. I recorded a video about Arc last year, but the browser has improved a lot since. (No affiliation or commission, btw—just a great product.)

My second reaction: this person probably also has a lot of open loops in their mind.

Because that’s what browser tabs usually are: things that you still need to take care of. Replying to an email. Booking a flight. Options for your morning yoga routine. A piece of furniture you wanted to buy. A potentially-interesting long-form article your friend sent you that you “really should read”—and so on.

Wouldn’t it help to have a system to organize it all?

It’s not that you’re somehow failing if you have more than one browser tab open. But if we’re talking 80 tabs, surely some things are slipping through the cracks. Or maybe you’re just not filtering right. You don’t actually have to read that long article, you know. It probably really is interesting, but is it worth an hour of your very limited time on this Earth?

It’s also possible that you have dozen mental browser tabs open. Lots of open loops in your mind, except not represented on screen. Similar problem, same solution. Improve your filter and set up a system for capturing and organizing.

If your browser tab situation is particularly bad, feel free to reply with a screenshot. Let’s laugh about it together. Or don’t send it and just laugh about it to yourself. And then start with a clean slate.