Keeping tabs: Why you need to monitor it.

I have a few moments to spare and have been thinking about this since this morning so I thought I'd jot it down real quick and share.

What tabs do you have open most frequently?

I'm asking because it really says a lot about where your focus is at that very moment.

Does it align with your daily goals or is it just a mish-mash of different pages that interest you?

When you click that browser open, which tabs do you leave open longer than the others?

Maybe you're one of those rare breeds that can actually just leave one tab open at a time. I'm not.

I've been consciously keeping tabs on my tabs for about a month now and for the last week I've had these 3 open almost all of the time: one to make lists, one to take notes, and one to keep time.

More specifically:
Teuxdeux - the most simple to-do list ever. Anything you don't finish automatically rolls over to the next day. I take care of web-based tasks in the order that I can knock them out the fastest.

Evernote - I can't say enough good things about this. I just wrote an entire novella on it.

Eggtimer (yes it's an actual site name) - My default is 1 hour of writing. If I feel up to it I just add another hour or two. You'd be surprised how much more you write when you have a timer silently chasing your ass in the background.

Honorary mentions:
Spotify - it's technically not an open a tab, but a desktop application. Gotta keep that music flowing, helps me focus.

Hootsuite - When I take my breaks in between, I pop in here to chat. I can broadcast simultaneously to Facebook if I want to. When it's time to get back to writing I click it close or else it takes over everything.So be aware of how you spend your time, what's keeping your attention, and how that fits in your goals of the day, or goals for the week, or whatever.

P.S. I purposely did not put the hyperlink on the sites mentioned because then you would've clicked on it and not finished reading, a quick Google search is all it takes to track them down. =)

P.P.S. In case you were wondering what's up with the picture of a panda with a gun....nothing behind it really. I think it's funny. And it's a panda...with a gun! Come on. It's a wee bit funny.

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