Proper organization of your browser windows can help you maximize your multi-tasking Goodness.

At any given time at work or during an intense session of tooling around the Internet, I have about 20 different web browser windows open (or in my case, tabs, slightly organized - as you’ll soon see). I’ve got a couple email accounts, a few work-related resources I often refer to, a window or two of whatever I’m working on, and then stuff “I need to get to.”

How does one organize all this?

To start off, I break stuff into categories. Each Window (instance of Firefox I can click on from my Windows Task Bar on the bottom of my screen) is a category, so I have:

1. One for personal stuff - email, RSS Reader, etc
2. From here I break each window into a “task” so it looks like this:

     A. Task One - let’s say this one is for blogging. In that case, I usually have the blog page furthest to the left, then articles I’m reading for research line up to the right.

     B. Task Two - my other task might be preparing for an interview I’ve got coming up. Furthest to the left is the best bio I can find on my subject, then from there I’m adding tabs for specific projects the person is involved in. In a heavy interview you could even do one window for each topic on the person, if you’re really looking to dig deep into their projects.

     C. Task Three - whatever. Dark is the day requiring three concurrent task windows.

I usually have 3 windows of Firefox, each with several tabs in it. Next logical question you are hopefully asking:

How do I organize the tabs?

Good Q!

The tabs furthest to the left are the most “permanent” tabs. So, in my personal tab, email is furthest to the left. Bloglines usually follows that, since I occasionally use pleasure reading to re-energize myself during the day. In my blogging tab, I have the blog home page furthest to the left. Then, I have my most important to least important reference resources, descending in importance to the right.

Further to the right a tab is = less important it is.

This tells me which articles/blogs I should be most astute at referencing in my own blog posts.

It also tells me which tabs I can, without too much worry, blindly and quickly close if I feel myself breaking down from having too many total Firefox tabs to choose from.

There, I just saved you 30 minutes of tab searching per 8 hour power session.

But, In a perfect world you of course check your email only 2-3 times a day, focus extremely intently on only your most important tasks during peak performance hours, and never, ever play Desktop Tower Defense until Play Time.