Monday, September 14, 2009

The benefits and perils of Google Chrome browser (in context of multitasking and productivity)

Without doubt, Chrome has made me more productive - its UI responds nearly-immediately to my actions, making my own speed - and not the software's - the primary barrier/deciding-factor to how fast I can work (which is a good thing). I freely and quickly group and rearrange tabs, and overall, the UI is very responsive.

This was the good part. The bad part is that I've started multitasking much more now. I open many more tabs in Chrome (and Opera), compared to when I'm in other browsers. I can even hypothesize that Chrome/Opera users open more tabs (on average) than Firefox users, who open more tabs than IE users. And all these open tabs give a kind-of restlessness to the mind - they give the feeling of many pending tasks, reducing my mind's concentration.

An example of my typical Chrome window

Guess I'll have to adopt some self-controlling policies to prevent myself from drowning in these tabs.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Moving to Johannesburg (SA), shortly

I'm moving to Johannesburg, South Africa, within a couple of days. So many things need to be done still... Visa, packing, other formalities, learning cooking (!), etc.

Let's see how things pan out.