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Why You Should Use the Two-Tab Rule to Stay Focused

By Charlie Gilkey on April 26, 2010 41 Comments

Use the Two-Tab Rule if you'd like to stay focused while you're working on web pages.

How many tabbed windows do you have open right now? Can you remember what all those tabbed windows are about?

In the early days of browsers, a perennial and annoying problem was being able to have only one window open at a time. Now, all major browsers give you the capability of opening windows in tabs; although we’ve fixed the usability annoyance, we’ve replaced it with an inability to focus while we’re viewing and working with webpages.

This is especially problematic when we jump on the Internet to do some quick research, only to find that we’ve spent the last 35 minutes viewing websites with only 2 minutes of that time doing the actual research and the remaining 33 minutes aimlessly jumping from tab to tab. The reality is that it’s very unlikely that you know what’s in the tab that’s four tabs after this page, hence the aimless wandering. (If you have more than three tabs open, try to remember what that fourth tab is without looking. Be honest.)

If you’re wanting to focus and remain on-task, try to limit yourself to two tabs — this is the Two-Tab Rule. You get one active tab and one reference or “next up” tab.

Why the Two-Tab Rule Works

Your “active” tab might be a Google Doc, WordPress panel, or another tab that you’re actively filling with text. It’s not unusual to need to have a reference page (a separate tab with information you’re referring to for information). This is perfectly fine because you can still maintain focus on your active tab. With more than two tabs, you’re having to split your focus between the purpose and content of each tab while also trying to remember the location of your thought or activity in your active tab.

Tracking things in this way isn’t just a matter of adding one additional thing to your mental queue — in fact, it adds at least four things to the queue for each additional reference page. Your mind is tracking the 1) content, 2) purpose, and 3) location of information and 4) its relationship to every other page. When you stick to the Two-Tab Rule, your mind doesn’t have to process that fourth item because there are only two pages at play.

This rule is piggybacking off the idea that most of us can easily remember 5-8 chunks of information without taxing our cognitive capacity. The Two-Tab Rule keeps the chunks of data that you’re trying to manage in that comfortable range, and yes, that third tab pushes you out of that range. Your mind will drop something — it’ll either be the thought you were working on in your active tab or the information from the excess reference pages. A sure sign that it’s the latter is your having to switch through multiple tabs to find the information you’re looking for.

It’s important that your reference tab is focused only on information that’s relevant to what you’re working on, and be especially careful about having that tab be one that contains dynamic information such as email and social media. The dynamic information creates yet another thing to actively track, since you’ll be processing the changes, and it’s yet another thing that can distract you from your work.

The Two-Tab Rule Helps You Create

The Two-Tab Rule is especially critical when you’re doing a task that falls into the Create category in the Create-Connect-Consume framework,because it lets you focus on high-level creative tasks instead of blending those tasks with consuming. On the other hand, if your goal was to have some unstructured Internet reading time, then the Two-Tab Rule may not apply — it’s imposing training wheels on you that may get in the way of your ride.

In that context, your mind isn’t trying to track all of the data mentioned above because each tab is its own stand-alone chunk of data, and at most, you’re tracking the relationship between each tab. You’ll probably get a lot more out of each page if you only have 2 or 3 tabs open at a time, though, as quality consumption is better than larger quantities of consumption.

The next time you’re trying to focus when you have a browser open, try the Two-Tab Rule. Be mindful of the difference in your capabilities when you use it and when you don’t. Don’t let technological capabilities diminish your capabilities.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on and experiences with the Two-Tab Rule. Please give it a try and let me know how it works for you — it’s worked really well for my clients.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Armen Shirvanian says

    April 26, 2010 at 11:04 am

    Hi Charlie.

    This is a solid one that I will use. I know that when my tab number goes to something like 8, I become stuck, and then I might well not have any tabs open at all. I am not sure why I didn’t think of this before.

    That point about not letting technological capabilities diminish our capabilities is very important. I am going to tweet that line.

    Incisive material.

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:46 am

      Thanks for tweeting that line, Armen – I saw it pop up yesterday. And I know what you mean about tab overwhelm – mine happens at 5 or six and then I just don’t know what’s going on, either.

      Reply
  2. Erica Holthausen says

    April 26, 2010 at 12:01 pm

    Such a great reminder. I tend to open way too many tabs and then I get overwhelmed by the amount of information I am trying to manage! When I’m on top of it, I review the tabs one at a time and either subscribe to the blog, grab the information I need, share it on Twitter or Facebook or add it to my bookmarks — depending on what action is needed. The “Two-Tab Rule” will help when I’m focused on a particular topic.

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:47 am

      It’s crazy how easy it is to be overrun by tabs, but it seems like you have a pretty good set of habits when you’re not swimming in tabs – I hope the Two-Tab Rule helps with that.

      Reply
  3. Mike says

    April 26, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    I laughed while I read this. I do this all the time! What happens to me is, that I’ll be checking out a cool article, and it’ll have a link to something else interesting. I’ll pop that open in a new tab and just leave it for “later”. Naturally this adds up really fast. I need a better system for saving things to read for later. I have an issue with feeling like I might be missing out on some critical thing or piece of data that might change my world!
    I’ll give the two tab thing a shot and see how it goes. I might suffer from withdrawals for a while though 🙂

    Mike

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:49 am

      lol. I don’t think you might suffer from withdrawals – I think you will. Remember that the tab thing is a habit just like anything else, and changing habits can be challenging.

      Have you tried Instapaper or Delicious? They might help you save things you want to read, but, honestly, it only creates another source of overwhelm when you recognized that you saved more than you’ll be able to read.

      Reply
  4. Megan says

    April 26, 2010 at 7:14 pm

    I had 7 open when I started reading! Part of why is because my internet is sluggish and I read other things while different pages slowly load. But then I inevitably forget some, wildly throwing off the analytics for sites everywhere. Thanks for the tips!

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:51 am

      You make a great point, Megan! Tabs were largely developed before broadband went mainstream, and they were great for that, but we let them get the best of us. Perhaps you can find that right amount of tabs that balances load speed and what you can remember?

      Reply
  5. Naomi Dunford says

    April 26, 2010 at 7:58 pm

    I would just like it to be noted that when I received this email, I had the website from YurtCo, a yurt manufacturer, up on my browser.

    When I’m in my yurt, you will not have to worry about how many tabs I have open.

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:53 am

      Back to yurt shopping, Meem? Did you give up on being a cashier at the liquor store?

      Just make sure that you get the yurt with the extension for baths. Living in a yurt is doable; living in a yurt without your bath is just unthinkable!

      Reply
  6. Lisa says

    April 26, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    Oh jeez, I think you wrote this for me. At this moment I have 10 tabs open in Firefox and 3 open in Chrome. And that’s a slow day in browser-land. My problem is that if something isn’t in front of me I forget about it – and when I find something I want to refer back to, I can’t just bookmark it because it will get lost in a sea of bookmarks. So I leave the tab open.

    I’m a tab junkie. *0y*

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:57 am

      I did write this for you, Lisa. ;p

      I take it that Delicious didn’t do it for you? Before that service, I couldn’t bookmark anything either, but the whole tagging thing – and the fact that it saves what day you bookmarked a page – changed the game for me.

      The Two-Tab Rule is now such a habit for me that I get nervous when I get more than 4 or 5 tabs open, but I’m a recovered tab junkie myself.

      Reply
      • Lisa says

        April 28, 2010 at 12:26 pm

        No, I used to use delicious years ago but never really got into a flow with it. I suppose it’s worth giving it another shot.

        Reply
  7. mynde says

    April 26, 2010 at 10:38 pm

    Hi, my name is mynde and I’m a taboholic. But thanks to Charlie, I am on my way to earning to two-tab chip. woo hoo!

    Seriously, no dis-sing on the AA stuff. If it works, use it.

    I tried this tonight. Waaaay more freedom keeping the tab numbers down. So I’ll be saying Yes to that again.

    Thanks Charlie!

    mm

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 7:59 am

      Hi Mynde! ;p

      Glad to hear that you tried it and liked it. Now to remember that it’s there when you need it. (That’s always the hard part, no?)

      Reply
  8. Lucy says

    April 27, 2010 at 6:36 am

    My name is Lucy and I am addicted to tabs. I usually have two browsers open, too, with multiple tabs in each. (Oh, the shame).

    But just yesterday I discovered a FireFox plugin that lets me group tabs by task, and then ‘hibernate’ the groups, so I only need to have the 1-2 tabs open that I need at a time – and I haven’t ‘lost’ the others. Hurrah!

    So this is a very timely post for me. Now I just need to find a similar plugin for Chrome and work through the tabs I’ve hidden in Firefox. I just know there’s useful information in there somewhere. (See, I can’t quite lose the squirrel tendency…)

    Reply
    • Charlie says

      April 27, 2010 at 8:03 am

      Hi Lucy! (Okay, saying high to everyone in an AA-way is just too fun.)

      It looks like you’re part way to a solution, but I’m concerned about your approach to finding information. Do you know what you need an answer to before you start searching? Information is only useful when it has a context, and, unfortunately, if you’re just looking for useful information, you’ll be able to do that all day without finding relevant information to what you’re working on. Cath Duncan and I had a great conversation about this when we talked about effective reading strategies – if you haven’t listened to it, you might find it useful. (Forgive me if I’m way off.)

      Reply
      • Lucy says

        May 4, 2010 at 6:02 am

        You’re right: it’s all too easy to leap from site to site, finding fascinating insights and squirrelling them away for later – as if there’s ever going to be an information famine on the internet!

        Reply
  9. Sherrill Leverich-Fries says

    April 27, 2010 at 10:30 am

    Sheesh, Charlie – are you reading my mind? I often end up with 10-12 open, which means that the tab only has room to say “Pro”. Pro what? For all I can remember, it’s about becoming a professional fisherman, even though I have no interest in fishing, but like Mike said, I ended up there because of a cool link about dream careers or something somewhere.

    I had instinctively, for mental self-preservation, begun to close tabs to reduce the overwhelm and frustration of not being able to easily “know” which tab was which. Very enlightening to learn about the 4 pieces of info that each tab means for my brain.

    A big challenge for me is that my primary strength is Connector, I am a Renaissance soul and interested in a ton of different things, so I will often find connections in information such that other people wonder what planet I’m from. I am also a resource junkie, and I LOVE being able to provide cool things to my community and clients, so it is SO easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole of tab-after-tab-after-tab….

    Lucy, if you see this, I’m curious what the FireFox plug-in is. An organizing junkie as well, I try to work around the chaos by having a couple of browser windows open with multiple tabs, with each window hopefully somewhat grouped by subject area.

    Reply
    • Lucy says

      May 4, 2010 at 5:58 am

      Hi Sherrill

      The plugin is TabGroups Manager. (here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10254)

      I’m working on filing the tabs so that I’m only keeping 2-3 open at a time!

      Reply
      • Sherrill Leverich-Fries says

        May 5, 2010 at 7:36 pm

        Thanks, Lucy – I’ll check it out!

        Reply
  10. Srinivas Rao says

    April 27, 2010 at 11:36 am

    Charlie,

    This seems like pretty solid advice that would probably speed up everything I’m doing online when it comes to reading blog posts and articles and comments. I’ll test it out throughout the next few days and write up a report on my how much efficiency has increased and link it back to this :). Thanks fo the tip. Going to shut down tabs.

    Reply
  11. bd says

    April 28, 2010 at 11:18 am

    hm … no, this is not for me.

    tabs go from left to right, with the generic problem I am trying to solve to answers I find. these will reference other pages I check out, more to the right.

    if a problem get’s solved I close tabs until I hit a tab that I still need.

    also wenn reading rss feeds, sounds interesting? open a tab in the background. done with the feed? close it. read the next tab.

    I guess it comes down to “how long a tab stays open” …

    Reply
  12. Jacob says

    April 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    In the interest of efficiency, I’m closing the tab that contains this article.

    Reply
  13. Mag says

    May 2, 2010 at 8:05 am

    Great article. I have 33 tabs open in Firefox right now. I’ve put off deciding what to do with the information. As if I can’t find it again. Thanks for the perspective.

    P.S. I have hundreds of articles stored in Instapaper Pro and I’ve read about 2% of them.

    Conclusion: Information is ready when I am. I really don’t need to store anything, ever.

    Reply
  14. AquaticAttackTiger says

    May 20, 2010 at 12:52 am

    Anyone know any way to enforce this tab rule in Opera?

    Reply
  15. Communications Forum says

    February 6, 2011 at 2:47 pm

    Great advice. My wife always has like 20 windows open.

    Reply
  16. michelledkeyes says

    October 9, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    I usually only use multiple tabs when I’m surfing the net randomly. When I have a goal in mind I tend to automatically limit it. Sometimes things branch off and those get opened in a new window and skimmed. Usually when I’m following threads of ideas or blogs is the most common time or if I’m reading People.com, for example, I’ll click on each link that I think looks interesting and then move from one tab to the next, closing each tab as I finish it. I get through the content faster that way. But if I’m trying to focus, rather than absorb new information, then I definitely try to narrow it down so I can be more focused.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. uberVU - social comments says:
    April 26, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by CharlieGilkey: Just published: “Use The Two-Tab Rule To Stay Focused” http://bit.ly/axvBBR Give this one a shot this week….

    Reply
  2. Tweets that mention Use The Two-Tab Rule To Stay Focused -- Topsy.com says:
    April 28, 2010 at 6:22 am

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by SisterDiane, SisterDiane, Charlie Gilkey, mynde mayfield, Kyle Durand and others. Kyle Durand said: RT @CharlieGilkey: "Use The Two-Tab Rule To Stay Focused" http://bit.ly/axvBBR Give this one a shot this week. […]

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    April 28, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    […] in Use the two-tab rule to stay focused – ein Beitrag für alle Tab-Messies darüber, wie unser Gehirn arbeitet, und warum viele […]

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