I\u2019ve mentioned before that I have ADHD. I seem to be managing at least a dozen completely different priorities at any time. Also, I can\u2019t seem to say \u201cNo!\u201d to adding new projects. I get bored with the current one, and the new ones are always more exciting.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re probably thinking, \u201cCool story, about your brain, bro.\u201d That\u2019s okay, I\u2019m guessing there are a few of you out there who are the same way. Our society moves faster and faster every day. I\u2019d like to blame it all on smartphones and TikTok, but I think it\u2019s deeper than that. I find that as soon as I learn something about AI, it\u2019s obsolete by the start of the next week.<\/p>\n
Today, I thought I\u2019d switch from personal finance to productivity. I don\u2019t think it is a big departure; the two are intertwined. Much of my work is done on a computer, so that\u2019s going to be my specific focus. To give it a little more of a financial focus, I\u2019ll explain how it might save me hundreds on my next computer.<\/p>\n
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The Most Important Digital Tool: Your Web Browser<\/h2>\n
My web browser accounts for about 98% of my computer\u2019s app usage. Some people use mail programs and office suites, but I use Google\u2019s tools: Gmail, Docs, Sheets, etc. They are all browser-based.<\/p>\n
I manage several different projects at any given time. Each of these has its own space, with its own workflows:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Lazy Man and Money<\/b> \u2013 This has its own browser window with Gmail, writing app*, social media apps, WordPress, and approximately 600 browser tabs of stories that I intend to read and write about someday<\/em>. I\u2019m not exaggerating. It is literally hundreds and hundreds of tabs.<\/li>\n
- Personal<\/b> \u2013 This is a generic window that handles most of my personal life. It has its own Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Google Messages for Web, Google Voice, and\u2026 another few hundred tabs of non-financial articles that don\u2019t fit into the Lazy Man and Money profile.<\/li>\n
- My Dog Boarding Business<\/b> \u2013 This has the same Google suite of apps, but also my mailing list website, my Grasshopper (virtual phone) account, and the website\/WordPress dashboard<\/li>\n
- My Local Small Business Group<\/b> \u2013 I develop a lot of projects for that group. I created an event system, a job board, and some apps that track how much business we refer to each other. I run all the technology, so it\u2019s not just those, but the website, mailing list, and a bunch of other stuff.<\/li>\n
- Kid Wealth<\/a><\/b> \u2013 I have all the blogging links of Lazy Man and Money, but for my Kid Wealth website. I don\u2019t go into this space much anymore, because it wasn\u2019t worth slowing down my computer since few people visit the website.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
It\u2019s hard to log in to multiple G Suite accounts and apps at the same time. It can get confusing quickly. To keep all these spaces isolated, I created separate Firefox Profiles for each. I realize I\u2019m one of the few people using Firefox, but Google Chrome has profiles too. The rest of this article will use my experience with Firefox, but please stick with me. Once you get the concepts, you should be able to apply them to the browser of your choice.<\/p>\n
This works well for organization, but when I had more than 2 profiles open, my computer would freeze. I have a very powerful laptop with 64GB of memory, but it was no match for all this. Of course, having nearly a thousand browser tabs was a key problem.<\/p>\n
Limiting the Number of Browser Tabs<\/h3>\n
It may sound easy to just say close them, but that causes me a ton of mental stress. I\u2019m a digital hoarder, and I know it.<\/p>\n
One solution I found was the OneTab browser extension. It opens all open tabs and lists them in a single browser tab. This is a good solution, because I can feel like I haven\u2019t lost the \u201cvery important\u201d information that I will (never) need. I would run this every couple of months to refresh my system. It works, but things get progressively slower until I declare bankruptcy and run this.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, I found a complementary solution called unloading tabs. I could select all tabs and choose \u201cunload tabs\u201d from a context menu. This would essentially do the same thing as OneTab, but it wouldn\u2019t delete the tabs \u2013 just the memory it uses. In the last month, I found the Auto Tab Discard extension. This automatically unloads tabs that you haven\u2019t used after about 10 minutes. It works beautifully, and having a thousand browser tabs no longer slows down my computer.<\/p>\n
Limiting the Number of Firefox Profiles<\/h3>\n
Having all those profiles was great for organization, but it means that I\u2019m not running one Firefox, but five separate Firefoxes. If one Firefox process takes 7GB of memory (which is typical), then five of them take 35 GB. That\u2019s not efficient. I still run some non-browser apps, so my computer can once again slow down.<\/p>\n
While learning about Auto Tab Discard, I also learned about Firefox Multi-Account Containers. These work almost exactly like profiles, allowing me to segregate different areas of my life. The difference is that these use a single Firefox process, so adding a new workspace doesn\u2019t use another 7GB of memory. The only downside is that I can\u2019t have different extensions for each workspace. That\u2019s a bonus for me, though, because I no longer have to think about whether I have all the right extensions in all my profiles.<\/p>\n
It took a little work to make Multi-Account Containers work like profiles. Specifically, if I\u2019m in my Lazy Man and Money container and open a new tab, I want that tab to be in the same container. Firefox assumes no container much of the time. It took me about an hour to figure it out, but once I installed the Multi-Account Containers and Sticky Window Containers extensions, it worked perfectly.<\/p>\n
Dealing With All Those Tabs<\/h3>\n
This is still a work in progress. My plan is to dump them into Google\u2019s NotebookLM<\/a>. That\u2019s an AI that can digest a lot of material and do some cool things with it. I\u2019ve only used it briefly, but the podcast and mindmaps are useful. Ideally, I could find some way to roughly sort them into various areas such as health, technology, finance, etc. That would help me identify targeted areas to use.<\/p>\n
If any readers are doing anything like this, please leave a comment or contact me<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n
- Personal<\/b> \u2013 This is a generic window that handles most of my personal life. It has its own Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Google Messages for Web, Google Voice, and\u2026 another few hundred tabs of non-financial articles that don\u2019t fit into the Lazy Man and Money profile.<\/li>\n