WHY does brainful not have tabs?
🧠 brainful📦 unpacked📚 faq
Related features: blockboxesblockspaces
All major productivity software tends to employ some kind of tab system. From browsers to office suites to note-takers, even the ones that preach atomic design. There is nothing inherently wrong about tabs, in fact we thought about adding them too. They are functional...and that's about it. They are an easy band-aid solution that fails to take a poke at the underlying systemic issues.
ANTI Context Closing
Tabs are inherently 'closing' in nature. Just like folder structures, they hide away information instead of making it always accessible, this makes it nearly impossible to cross reference information in real time, critical to productivity systems.
In brainful, we employ the philosophy that everything you need to do your work effectively should be accessible at all times. We therefore decided to opt for windows that we call blockboxes. These boxes are very flexible, can be moved, resized, and even minimised! But this is an intentional choice that makes context-closing a conscious decision, not the default.
ESCAPE Tab Hell
We all know that people tend to never close their tabs. We are hoarders of information by design, and tabs magnify this behaviour to an uncontrollable extent, only to never revisit them or forget why they were there in the first place. Context and meaning of information diminishes the more 'tabs' you add on a linear factory line method of storing information.
In brainful, whilst you can store the same amount of information, the way you add new blocks forces you create in context all of the time, through the use of blockspaces. You can send blocks to particular spaces, and each space is limited by design to encourage this behaviour.
REDUCE Cognitive Overload
Tabs increase anxiety, and add to mental overhead over time, the fear and complementary dread of opening them carves out perfect space for unproductive procrastinative endeavour.
The presence of many blockbox windows, whilst might feel intimidating to the onlooking observer, is contrary to popular belief, more natural and intuitive for our brains to wrap our heads around. There exists extensive evidence in spatial cognition research that supports the windows approach too. Our brains are evolutionarily wired for spatial navigation and location-based memory. When information has persistent spatial positions (like windows), we can build cognitive maps of where things are. Tabs destroy this spatial relationship by stacking everything in a hidden linear sequence.
In brainful, we try our best to replicate the real world in software. Our mental models should reflect those that we see around us, and through persistent windows in space, we mimic nature, and work with the brain rather than against it. This allows context-switching in brainful occur naturally, with reduced friction and faster setup because the brain's mental model is already primed through spatial awareness.
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