I call it a “context problem.”

It’s different than multitasking. I’m pretty good at multitasking. But I have to stay in context.

Example: I bet Sean could design stuff do a little web surfing at the same time. I bet he could paint and draw and deal email and twitter at the same time.

But trying to draw and do engineering, forget it.

A large part of what I’ve been working on is smashing context barriers. I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I have a lot I need to get done, and not much time to do it. I spend somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 my time scoping about problems, planning, tasking; the remaining time is the doing.

I believe this has increased my productivity tremendously. But it’s a lot of work.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog post ..WordPress and Thesis- Free as in beer- or Free as in speech =-.

But I’m curious if perhaps, with deliberate practice, you could get better at switching between the two. I’m thinking it’s possible, if this is a software issue, not a hardware one. However applying a lot of effort to this might not be worth while as you probably get more done on the weekend anyway.

Also I’m going to bet that the reason your work suffers the next day isn’t because you can’t access your left brain–it’s that you can’t access your brain at all due to lack of sleep! I know I’ve had some amazingly creative late nights which have bankrupted the morning after.