The key to multitasking, as far as I can tell, is thinking about how long each task will take, and planning everything before you start. writes YFM.

Which probably works very well when you follow a protocol, or a cooking recipe. Or when you know or decide you are going to spend about an hour reading the literature you need to browse through, or rephrasing a section of your paper, or making figures, or writing code, or mapping out the ideas you want to test.

But not, alas, when you have no idea how long each task will take, because their duration heavily depends, in a way you have no means of predicting, on, well, a random number, and that the best you can do is check your screen periodically to see whether or not your run is complete, and make sure it is not going horribly wrong. (And these particular runs tend to go horribly wrong more often than is good for my mental health.)

So here I am, staring at my screen at a time where I should be relaxing and getting ready to snuggle in my bed, crossing my fingers and hoping, hoping against all my intuition, for it to be done with in a satisfying fashion this time.

I hate computers.