However, I’m not a fan of multitasking, it’s been proved that it doesn’t work!

This other article (at
http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html) says something, in a lofty way, that might seem obvious … “interrelated cognitive processes establish priorities among tasks and allocate the mind’s resources to them. For each aspect of human performance — perceiving, thinking and acting — people have specific mental resources whose effective use requires supervision through ‘executive mental control’.
…. executive control involves two distinct, complementary stages: goal shifting (“I want to do this now instead of that”) and rule activation (“I’m turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this”). Both stages help people unconsciously switch between tasks.” Since, according to that article, the rule shifting takes about half a second, the problem I have is with the goal shifting, which, with me, can take hours, days, even weeks! I think my problem is that old battle between ‘wanting’ to do something and ’should-ing’ or ‘needing’ to do a higher priority task. I need to be able to lay down what I want to do and actually do what I deem to be my priority. Maybe, in order to switch gears, I need to find a way to look at my priorities as something that I ‘want’ to do. I think I’ll try writing down a few reasons why I ‘want’ to do my ‘need-to-do’ tasks, and maybe that will help me to shift my focus to the task at hand. In addition to that, maybe my ‘executive mental control’ supervisor just needs to plan and take a real rejuvenating vacation! :)