I just saw a coworker with something like 30 tabs open in Chrome. I also know someone who regularly hits the 500-tab limit on their phone, though I suspect that’s more about being messy than anything else.
When I’m researching something, I might have 10-50 tabs open for a while, but once I’m done, I close them all. If I need them again, browser history is there.
Why do people keep so many tabs open? Is there a workflow or habit I’m missing? Do they just never clean up, or is there a real benefit to tab hoarding? I’m genuinely curious. Why do people do that?
Overuse means you have trouble finding tabs because you have so many open. I don’t think your analogy works very well here. No one would defend having 2000 books open as helpful to a researcher.
But I have seen some offices with enormous stacks of books and papers reaching all the way to the ceiling. I don’t know how that system works, but these people claim they can somehow find everything in there.