50 Tabs Open: The Mental Overload Crisis of Our Generation

A Therapist’s Session with a 24-Year-Old Engineer Reveals What Ails an Entire Generation

The Session Begins

He walked into my office—a 24-year-old software engineering graduate—with dark circles under his eyes that told the story of prolonged insomnia. Not the insomnia of overwork, but the insomnia of mental scatter. He sat down and summarized the tragedy of an entire generation in a single sentence:

“I feel like I have 50 tabs open in my brain at the same time… and the system is frozen.”

I told him: “And the fan is running loud, but the screen is black and you can’t shut down properly, right?”

He looked surprised. “Did you work as an engineer before?”

“No,” I said, “but I’ve seen many engineers come through. And most of them don’t suffer from laziness—they suffer from an overload of possibilities.”

He wants to learn German and artificial intelligence. He wants to play guitar, travel to Bali, found a startup, and become an influencer. And he wants all of this now. The result? He spends his day in bed scrolling through short videos (Reels) of people doing these things, while he merely practices “watching.”

The RAM Is Full

I asked him: “When the RAM in your laptop fills up, what happens?”

“The system slows down. Programs crash.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Humans have two types of memory and effort:

Execution Energy: The energy you consume to actually do something
Decision Energy: The energy you consume choosing what to do

Your problem is that you’re burning 90% of your psychological RAM on decision fatigue:

Should I study or play?
Should I start this project or that one?
Should I reply to this message now or later?

Every open choice is a tab draining power in the background, even if you’re not actively looking at it.”

The Task Manager Exercise

I pulled out a large white sheet of paper and divided it into three columns, like Windows Task Manager:

Running Apps: What you’re actually doing now
Background Processes: Postponed things, worries, unmade decisions
CPU Usage: Your assessment of the anxiety each item causes

He began writing. The first column (what he’s actually doing) was almost empty. The second column (background processes) was terrifyingly crowded: travel ideas, pleasing his parents, fear of the future, comparing himself to friends, learning graphic design, searching for a life partner…

All of these “programs” were open and unclosed, consuming his energy, leaving nothing for real work.

“For the system to run fast again,” I told him, “we need to force ‘End Task’ on some of these processes. Not postpone them—cancel them.”

He looked at me with fear. “Cancel? You mean give up on my dreams?”

The Paradox of Infinite Choice

“Standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down causes vertigo,” I explained, “not only from fear of falling, but from the terror of knowing you have the freedom to throw yourself off. Absolute freedom of choice is a curse.”

“In our current culture, they sell you the illusion of FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out. But the solution lies in the opposite concept that’s now gaining traction: JOMO—Joy Of Missing Out.”

“Let me tell you about something I read. In Japan, there’s an art called Zen Gardens. The beauty doesn’t come from what they plant, but from the emptiness they leave. Beauty comes from the void, from the empty space.”

“Your life is too maximalist—overcrowded with ideas. To choose path A, you must have the courage to kill paths B, C, and D. Every choice is an act of sacrifice. You can’t choose because you don’t want to sacrifice any possibility. You want to be everything, so you end up being nothing.”

The Dopamine Trap

“Imagine your brain is a child,” I continued, “and you have two plates in front of him:

A plate with broccoli—beneficial but requires chewing and digestion (this is work and study)
A plate with melted chocolate—ready to swallow (this is social media and Reels)

Your brain has become addicted to cheap dopamine. You’ve become an addict of instant rewards. Real work—deep work—takes time to give you pleasure. Social media gives you a false sense of accomplishment. When you watch a video about time management, your brain releases dopamine as if you’ve actually organized your time. But you’re still sitting in the same place!”

The Greyscale Experiment

I asked him to take out his phone immediately. “Go to settings and switch your screen to greyscale—black and white.”

He looked at the screen with disgust. “It looks so depressing.”

“Exactly. I want to strip your phone of its visual appeal. I want you to see it as a tool, not a toy. For 48 hours, your phone stays black and white, and you’re forbidden from opening any app with infinite scrolling. I want you to confront boredom.”

“Boredom isn’t your enemy—boredom is where creativity begins. When your brain can’t find cheap dopamine, it will be forced to seek expensive dopamine: work and achievement.”

Buridan’s Ass: The Paralysis of Choice

To drive home the danger of indecision, I told him an old philosophical story called “Buridan’s Ass.” A French philosopher named Jean Buridan posed a thought experiment about a donkey that was both extremely hungry and extremely thirsty. They placed it at exactly equal distances between a pile of hay and a bucket of water.

The donkey stood there thinking: Should I eat first or drink first? Hunger gnawed at him, thirst tormented him. Because he couldn’t decide which was more urgent, and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving one to go to the other, what happened?

The donkey died right there of hunger and thirst, staring at both.

“Hesitation is more dangerous than the wrong choice,” I told him. “Making a wrong decision and moving forward is a million times better than standing still analyzing options. In programming, there’s a principle called ‘Fail Fast’—make mistakes quickly so you can learn quickly and fix them.”

The Islamic Wisdom: The Duty of the Moment

I introduced him to a brilliant concept: the duty of the moment (واجب الوقت). This means not living in the data of the past (regret), nor in simulations of the future (anxiety), but living in the now.

“Satan has two entry points to you,” I explained:

He frightens you about the future
He tantalizes you with wishful thinking

Both have one goal: to pull you out of the present moment.

There’s a profound hadith that addresses this: “Be keen on what benefits you, seek Allah’s help, and do not give up.”

Consider the prophetic sequence:

Be keen on what benefits you: Define your goal / Focus
Seek Allah’s help: Request divine support / Connection
Do not give up: Continuity

And the surprise comes in the rest of the hadith: “And if something befalls you, do not say ‘If only I had done such-and-such…’ for ‘if only’ opens the door to Satan’s work.”

“‘If only’ is the tab that stays open in the background draining your energy!”

The Action Plan: 10-Minute Rule

“Your problem is that you look at a project as a huge mountain. Your mind runs away because it’s scared of the enormity. The solution? Break the mountain into micro-services.

Anything you want to do, start it for just 10 minutes. Tell yourself: I’m not going to study for 4 hours… I’ll just open the laptop and read one line.

In physics, the hardest phase is moving an object from rest. Once it starts moving, friction decreases. Those 10 minutes are your initial thrust.”

Deep Work Protocol

“Set aside two hours in your day called Deep Work. During these two hours:

Your phone is in another room (not beside you or flipped over—completely out)
Close your bedroom door
Keep paper and pen beside you (any thought that comes to mind, write it down to free up your RAM, but don’t get up to do it)

You’re training your concentration muscle.”

From User to Admin

“Life isn’t an open-world game you can play forever. Life has a deadline. The achievement isn’t opening all the maps—the achievement is building a kingdom on a small piece of land and mastering it.

Stop being a User—someone who consumes content imposed by algorithms. Become the Admin of your life.

The Admin has delete permissions:

Delete useless apps from your life
Delete people who make you feel inadequate
Delete dreams that aren’t yours—dreams you borrowed from others

The One Well Principle

“The secret is in focus. The person who focuses on digging one well finds water. The person who digs ten wells one meter deep stays thirsty his whole life.

Choose one well and dig until you reach water.

And you, my friend—are you still reading to search for another magic solution? Or will you stand up now, close the tabs open in your mind, and start ‘digging’?

The decision is yours.

Editor’s Commentary

This therapeutic session reveals a defining affliction of the digital age: we are drowning not in a lack of opportunities, but in an overabundance of them. The metaphor of mental tabs consuming our psychological RAM is remarkably apt. Previous generations faced scarcity of information and limited paths; we face the opposite problem—infinite scrolling feeds of possibilities that paralyze rather than empower. The engineer’s plight reflects millions of young people worldwide who mistake consuming inspiration for taking action, who confuse opening browser tabs about productivity with being productive, and who suffer from what might be called “potential paralysis”—the inability to actualize any single path because they cannot bear to close off alternative futures.

What makes this therapeutic approach particularly powerful is its fusion of modern technological metaphors with ancient wisdom. The Islamic concept of “the duty of the moment” predates our digital age by fourteen centuries, yet addresses our contemporary crisis with stunning relevance. The prescription is counterintuitive: in an age that celebrates keeping options open, true freedom comes from the courage to close doors, to say no, to accept that mastery of one thing surpasses mediocrity in many. The greyscale phone experiment, the 10-minute rule, the deep work protocol—these are not merely productivity hacks but exercises in reclaiming mental sovereignty. For a generation sold the lie that they can have it all, the liberating truth is simpler: choose one well and dig deep. The water you seek isn’t found in having fifty tabs open, but in closing forty-nine of them and giving your full attention to what remains.