TGIM: Close the Tabs

Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!
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​tl;dr If you’ve written a research paper, shopped online for the holidays, or utilized your internet browser as a to-do list, you have experienced the anguish of tab overload. Your computer and you become equally overwhelmed and start malfunctioning. You know the only solution is to close the tabs, but it is hard to part ways. Similarly, our brains get pulled in a million different directions, and until you close the loops, you will continue to be distracted and impacted by your “mental tabs.”
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Our computers are wonderful pieces of technology. They allow us to write a blog, run a business, watch an entertaining movie, file our taxes, research any topic we can imagine, and buy anything with a few strokes of the keyboard. However, if you try to do all of those tasks at once, the tabs slowly accumulate, and your computer starts to slow down. A powerful, lightning-fast machine turns into a sluggish, whirring monstrosity.
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Has your brain ever felt like a sluggish, whirring monstrosity before?
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Maybe you didn’t use those exact adjectives, but we’ve all been there. The height of this affliction was during Covid. Everyone had this mental anguish created by a multitude of open tabs and not being able to do anything about them. Not only were we socially limited, but the entire world had to adjust the way it operated, and, as a result, tabs remained open for months.
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The mental anguish that ensued was palpable everywhere. And while we’ve come a long way since 2020, we still deal with that feeling created by having too many mental tabs open at once.
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Like our computers, we slow down. We have a million things on our minds, and they’re all distracting us as long as they remain open. That email you haven’t replied to from three days ago, the side hustle you’ve kept on the back burner untouched in weeks, and the job that you keep saying you’re going to quit, but keep showing up to every day, they all add a drop in the bucket. But the bucket collects so many leaks from so many sources, it begins to overflow.
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The nature of our world, which is more connected than ever, is that we have more distractions than ever. But the mental chatter that consumes every waking moment has contributed to this feeling of anguish because it feels like we have a million things to do and can never catch up on them all.
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So what is there to do about all of these open tabs?
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First, as with all ailments, let go of the things we can’t control. We cannot close everyone else’s mental tabs; we have to focus on our own. If you find yourself complaining, there are only two options: do something about it or move on. Short and sweet.
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Second is to organize your tabs. Now this is where things can get a little hairy. You may feel the need to defend your precious tabs (I get it, I have 17 open right now). But there is a better way to go about this. We have to prioritize. Keep a list of the things that don’t need to be addressed immediately. Don’t go crazy; to-do lists can also be a source of procrastination. But have a list for what needs to get done in the short term (maybe 24 hours) and what just needs to get done in general. You might even have a short, middle, and long-term list.
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This helps your brain close the mental tab when you know it’s written down somewhere, and that you’ll come back to it. By prioritizing tasks by timeframe, you can address the important items first and keep those back-burner items on the back burner. Your brain will have an easier time focusing on the work at hand because it has your full attention (instead of 1/17th).
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Third, turn off your dang notifications! I’d really love to get a t-shirt made for this one because I think everyone’s quality of life would improve drastically if we just turned off more notifications. Our attention is already being pulled in a million directions every day. This is severely exacerbated by the 100s or 1000s of notifications on our phones. Every time you sit down to earnestly work on a tab, you see the most recent news headline, the stock market trend, a message on TikTok, and an email from your favorite clothing brand with a black friday sale. Of course, you can’t get anything done!
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Besides the most “important” notifications (phone calls and texts; anything that could be urgent), turn them all off. And it’s hard, I get it. The apps ask you every time you open them to send notifications, but you’ve got to say no. Go into your settings and shut them off. They are sabotaging any chance you have of closing those tabs.
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Lastly, work on these three categories each day: something organizational, something physical, and something creative. I borrowed this from TGIM: A Remedy for Malaise (https://walshwellness.kit.com/posts/tgim-a-remedy-for-malaise). Mental anguish can usually be relieved with an organizational, physical, or creative action. For example, fold the clean laundry that’s been sitting there for three days. Move your body because you feel bloated. Or learn something new because you’re feeling mentally stagnant. These will begin to remove those cobwebs cluttering your brain. Then you’ve created momentum that you can use to work on closing those mental tabs.
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We are fortunate to live in a society where we can stay in touch with old friends, see the beauty of countries we’ve never heard of, and learn from the greatest minds around the world. However, great power, great responsibility. We are responsible for directing our own attention. We don’t even realize how many mental tabs we have running at once, but a good sign that too many are open is the mental anguish that leaves us feeling like nothing is getting done and there’s so much to do. If that’s you, figure out what tabs you can address now, which you can designate for later, and which you can close out for good.
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Taking action helps create momentum and relief. The momentum will make you feel better, which will help you close more tabs, and the upward spiral will continue. So close those tabs.
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If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM.
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​This week, my podcast recommendation is new from Science Vs. “AI: Is it Ruining the Environment?”
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With that, let me know what mental tabs you’re closing. No better time to do it than before the holiday season is in full swing!
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Until next time,
Shannon