Loss of focus

I am working on something, deep in the process. Suddenly, I hit a wall and I need to look up an answer via online documentation, Stack Overflow, etc. I switch apps to my browser, and there it is, all the tabs I had open before. "Oh yeah, that was a neat article I should finish reading that. Oh, this link looks interesting.."

Five minutes later I totally forgot why I left my code editor, and go back to it. "Oh right, I need to look up X." I switch apps to my browser. Sometimes the cycle repeats.

Does this happen to anyone else? I just realized the breakdown is at that moment when you see all your old tabs. What I need is a hotkey to open a new browser window and just use that. I could also close all tabs before leaving the browser, but sometimes I need to go back and reference something.

Either way, it is infuriating.