“How many pre-loaded tabs do you have set on your browser?”

No, this wasn’t a new-media pickup line. Instead, it was a question of interest that Joe Thornley posed to me not long after we shook hands and sat down for a beverage at a fine Back Bay establishment last night (Laura Fitton from Great Presentations Mean Business joined us well).

My answer? Five. When I fire up Firefox each day, here are the tabs that open:

  1. Monster Career Advice. Hey, it’s my day job. Nuff said.
  2. Google Reader. Keeping up with my RSS feeds is an integral part of my day, and my recent switch to Google Reader has made this task infinitely more manageable.
  3. Gmail. E-mail client. Calendar manager. Chat client. Address book. Document repository. I’d be lost without it.
  4. Twitter. My virtual water cooler; place to leave sometimes-meaningful, sometimes-meaningless short posts; and source of dozens of cool links and ideas each day from my online network.
  5. Ta-da Lists. My running checklist of ongoing projects and next actions. I’m no master of the Getting Things Done system, but this site keeps me more or less on track.

These are the five sites most essential to my daily workflow. What are yours?

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