Fully sympathise. People are giving general advice, and there’s good evidence that it works for most people. I have adhd, and even I know that multi-tasking is distracting and that if I can focus entirely on something I will perform better. But I also know from decades of daily experience that if I try and completely focus on something when my brain is not compliant, then I will do much much worse.
I will learn a lot more by listening to an audiobook while I do chores for an hour, even if sometimes the chores distract me from the content, compared with trying to read a book. Because if I sit and try and read, I will manage one minute, get up and get a drink, reread the same page, want some music to cover up some distracting noise, then rememeber that I’m avoiding distractions so turn the music off… And so on, until after ten minutes I’m only in page 2 and I give up in frustration, drained and demotivated.
As an ever more aged adult, I think the one piece advice I’d give my younger self is “trust yourself”. I’ve wasted so much time trying to follow advice and rules that just never worked for me, and eventually I realise that my instincts were right and I should have just improved my own strategies instead of trying to become something I’m not. That’s not to say you know everything already. Listen to people, try their ideas out, experiment and all that, but don’t feel pressure to do what works for “most people” if it doesn’t work for you.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Rule 2 of adulting: Stop trying to multitask. Multitasking is a myth and impossible for humans to actually successfully do. The more things you try to do at once, the less effective and capable you are at each individual task. Literally not a single human alive is actually good at multitasking. I understand you have issues, but whether you like it or not, you’re reducing your effective capacity to “get shit done” by choosing to try to do this impossible thing called multitasking.
hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7075496/
…clevelandclinic.org/science-clear-multitasking-d…
npr.org/…/think-youre-multitasking-think-again
…mit.edu/…/multitasking-why-your-brain-cant-do-it…
neuroleadership.com/…/the-myth-of-multitasking