I do this as well. Right now, I have 41 open, which is about normal. At work, I have another 50 or so open.
I primarily use tabs as a "live bookmark", both positive ("remind me to look at this later"), and negative ("I don't want to deal with this now, but should later"). I usually browse non-linearly, where I go through an entire page opening interesting links in new tabs before moving on. Thus, I end up with tons of tabs that, by default, stay open. I usually do a quick clean up every few days.
A sample:
1) JavaScript cheat sheet. I've been needing to brush up.
2) A recipe that I want to try soon.
3) Ask HN page on best Git GUI for Windows. We're switching to Git at work, and most developers use Windows, so I need to find something that will make the transition easier.
4) "How to Read Mathematics". I'd normally add this to Pocket and read on my Kindle, but I also want to send it to old professors.
5) A couple tabs for a pair of prescription sunglasses I'm considering buying,
6) My side project's Trello page.
7) Several pages with design ideas for my side project (both JS and CSS)
8) Long Ask Reddit threads I wanted to die off before I read them.
9) A couple blog posts I've been wanting to read, but not long enough to add to Pocket.
10) Links that I've opened after seeing HN's homepage.
etc.
1. Episode guide for Babylon 5, which I'm currently watching my way through on days that I'm not watching Euro 2012 matches.
2. Strategy guide for a game I play.
3. Scott Chacon's "Pro Git" book, which I've been meaning to read.
4. A reddit/r/metal thread recommending doom metal bands, since I've liked a few doom metal songs on that subreddit and are meaning to get into the genre more.
5, 6. More reddit/r/metal threads for similar reference.
7. A blog post on Pry, the Ruby REPL/debugger
8. A web caching tutorial, which I found on Hacker News
9. A blog post about "Real World Clojure", which I found on Hacker News
10. A listing of 2 minute tutorials about R, which I found on Hacker News
3, 4: A page about "GTD for hackers", which I found on HN awhile back
drowning in that list.
Maybe I should be happy about Firefox (granted: Beta) being extremely buggy for me when restoring sessions. Just today it killed my equally big list of things I meant to look at again and never did.
There's a saying among people with messy desks: "clean desk, empty mind". Personally I don't mind having so many tabs, but once it affects performance I go and clean them up. Many of the tabs I listed are now gone, and while a few new ones are open, I think I have fewer in aggregate.
Who's the comedian? I have about 300 tabs open, tell me if kippt will help. Personally, I'm curious if there are comedians similar to, or indeed a whole lot more unexpected than, Mitch Hedberg.
