Honestly, this system sounds dysfunctional and unproductive. I know HN rules discourage psychological analysis, so I'll stick with some useful generalities - Avoidance and procrastination generate anxiety. Anxiety has a way of distorting reality by magnifying the worst outcome (often even the improbable). And thus it creates a dysfunctional behaviour-emotion loop that feeds itself. To break out of it you have to face your anxiety and change your behaviour. Just begin by closing the oldest tabs. You'll find the world doesn't end (if you haven't read something in 5 years, do you really think it's important enough to read in 2022?). And start bookmarking (and tagging) web pages that you want to read later instead of keeping them open. If you want to see a list of bookmarks whenever you open your browser, use this extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bookmarks-sta... . Remember that you can export and backup bookmarks. That is way safer than keeping 100's or thousands of tabs open as a unexpected shutdown or crash could result in these tabs being lost and not recoverable.