I've found that - as basically all of my day-to-day work is now done inside a browser - there are a few ways in which most browsers are less than-optimal for getting work done.

The Issue with Tabs

Tabs are now the default way of organising what - in a pre-browser world would have been considered "apps". But it doesn't seem we've put a ton of thought into how that organization happens. Some of the problems I've encountered:

Distraction: I glimpse a tab, it triggers dopamine hit (particularly chat/social tabs), and I switch over to it for "just a minute", and end up losing time, and forgetting the task I was in the middle of. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have apps ready to use, but out of your field of view. This is how most Operating Systems handle apps.

Ephemerality: Tabs are made to be opened and closed, and "thrown away" when finished with. Because of this, we're stuck between the two extremes of having dozens (or for some people hundreds) of tabs, or wiping them all out and starting fresh. Pinned tabs kind of solve this, but not really.

Wayfinding/Predictability: Unless you're very disciplined, tabs for specific apps don't retain any kind of "permanent place" inside your browser. This means navigating through multiple

The two Kinds of Browser Work

Another realization I had is that the work I do can generally be broken down into 2 categories:

Type 1: Planning/Organizing/Collaborating:

This is the high level work that enables the other work. It's things like: writing plans, breaking work down into smaller tasks, setting milestones, sharing updates with collaborators, scheduling, and deciding what to work on next.

For this kind of work, there are only 4 or 5 tools I use regularly - those currently being: Roam, Airtable, Asana, Google Calendar. Over time I'd love to get that down to as close to one as possible, but that's for another day.

Type 2: Task Work

This is any work that creates value. It can range from writing code (building a new feature) to. Research, while often technically part of Planning & Organization, is more often than not time-consuming enough that if tends to happen in this category.

What about using a second browser?

After realizing that there are two neatly-defined groups of work that are suited and unsuited to, the thought struck me - What if I used one browser for Task work, and another for for Planning & Organizing

On the face of it, this sounds a bit... weird. Why would you use two browsers when they're both - technically - doing the exact same thing? But it works.

Requirement List

• Needed to be an entirely separate browser (new windows within chrome don't work because 1. You always end up tabbing into the distraction-heavy windows as you're looking around, 2. Because there's something in the psychology of having separate apps that has a lower cognitive burden that I don't have the full language/mental models to yet articulate).

• Needs to support Chrome extensions and stay in sync with the extensions I

• Needs to be moddable

• Tabs can be disabled

• Keyboard-shortcut-friendly

What This Looks like

• Wavebox as my planning browser

• Chrome as my task browser

Learnings

• Focus (at least mine) is remarkably fickle.

• Dopamine & Favicons are a powerful cocktail. Any app that has an updating favicon to alert you to should not be placed inside the secondary browser.

• Keep tabs where they are.