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A Strange Productivity Tool
March 22, 2006
I just realized today that I am sometimes quite productive when I'm blogging because of the strangest tool - one that definitely doesn't promote itself as a productivity tool.
I'm talking about tabbed browsing with Firefox. I use a fabulous extension, Tab Mix Plus, which gives a lot of options for tabbed browsing and is also a session saver as well.
My usual routine is to go through my feed collection in Bloglines, and open anything that looks interesting. I'll often get carried away, and check feed after feed after feed, ending up with about a gazillion tabs open in Firefox.
The thing I've noticed, though, is that once I get too many tabs open, things can grind to almost a halt on my PC. Not very lovely to work with.
Then there's the ever-present worry that maybe the session saver won't work and when I open up Firefox tomorrow, I'll just get my normal homepage and that's all.
(This one is a heartstopper - every single one of those tabs offers up glorious content to blog about, and losing them all makes me an unsightly looking mess.)
So what I generally do when I finally realize I've opened way too many tabs and things are slowing down, is start seriously blogging my way through the mess. And I don't do it in order to reach any posting goals, or to be a prolific and productive blogger.
No, I do it so I can get things back to a point where things are back up to speed (on my PC).
As a result, I've had many a night when I've blogged way more than I ever intended.
A very strange productivity tool indeed. But in the right hands (as in, if you have the same weird way of thinking that I have), it works wonderfully.
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Posted by BJ at 12:47 AM in On Blogging | Permalink
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Comments
I do the same thing! Great minds think alike. ;)
Posted by: chrispian | Mar 22, 2006 10:17:07 AM
It is a strange relief to know someone else does this too, Chris. And yes, absolutely - great minds! :)
Posted by: BJ | Mar 22, 2006 2:40:41 PM
LMAO... I was an opera user, now use avant and I LIVE BY MY TABS. Have you created all the nifty shortcut keys yet? i.e. I have a shortcut that if I type "ld domain.com" into my address bar, it automatically queries a linkdomain:domain.com search in Yahoo showing 100 results at a time. I have a ton of these. To use anyone else's computer is like going back to dial up once you have tons of shortcut keys and are used to tabs. ;-)
Posted by: Rae | Mar 23, 2006 8:43:37 PM
I just downloaded this the other day with a bunch of other new extensions so I could try and organize my computer.
I will however have to try and apply this to my blogging schedule ;)
Posted by: Chrissie | Mar 25, 2006 11:55:16 AM
Am I the only one who keeps getting a dead link when I click on the "Tab Mix Plus" link in the post above?
Gary Speer
Posted by: Gary Speer | Mar 25, 2006 4:08:37 PM
Thanks for the heads-up on that, Gary. It should be working now.
Posted by: BJ | Mar 25, 2006 5:34:39 PM
I use a Mac and FF with many tabs always open...the best thing I ever did was to find the hot keys to switch between tabs. For apple users it is Apple + # (#= whatever tab you want to open from left to right).
I don't know what we ever did before tabs :)
-Brandon Hopkins
Posted by: Business Cards | May 16, 2006 2:53:02 PM
