I learned this many years ago

There are certain lessons you get early in life.  We should probably learn from them.  It simplifies things for you, and prevents mistakes from happening.
An early example for me was tuning up my car.  As a young adult, I thought it was my male responsibility to learn some things about auto mechanics, including how to perform a simple tune-up – change the spark plugs, set the timing, put in a new fuel filter.  This truly was not a difficult task, and one I was able to accomplish.
But given my non-mechanical mind and less than precision-like ability to followed detailed instructions, the entire project took a significant period of time, interspersed with new curse words from me and my buddy who helped me through the process, as we backtracked and recalibrated various things along the way because they weren’t done effectively the first time.
“Why isn’t the car firing right up?”
“Musta not put that spark plug in tight enough.”
“Better check it.”
We had numerous dialogues like that, but finally got it right.  It took an entire afternoon, something which probably could have been done in two hours by a feeble-minded simpleton.  This taught me something:  My time is more valuable writing than it is working on the car.
Learning from that experience did not teach me to halt multi-tasking, another front where I’m less than stellar.  Oddly enough, I did have an early learning experience that taught me not to do multiple things at once, but it took awhile to actually understand it.
It started with the video game Asteroids.  As a pinball aficionado through college and my early 20’s, the evolution to arcade games on a screen only seemed natural, and my friends from that era joined in tackling them when we went out to socialize.  We dominated pinball, frequently racking up huge bonuses.
Moving onto foosball, we quickly mastered the techniques and became the team to beat when we went out.  Then along came two early video games:  Pong and Space Invaders.
They were not multi-layered.  As a consequence, I was able to maintain my skill level and destroy the aliens or volley the ping pong ball for an eternity.  Neither required coordinated hand and mental movement, leveraging the gadgetry in several different ways instantaneously to better your result.
Like the world back then, it seemed more linear.  Then along came Asteroids.  You had a spaceship that spun and fired, and you could power it.  The goal was to destroy the incoming asteroids as they came at you, increasingly faster as you moved to higher levels of the game.  I was abysmal.  I could not master the intricacies of working the additional controls in the short time period provided.
Could I have gotten better?  Sure.  Did I care?  Not really.  That started my non-involvement in video games.  Because I couldn’t manipulate the levers quickly and effectively, I came to understand this was not a strength, and playing would be better left to the younger experts of the gaming generation.
My failure to coordinate my right and left hands to work in synchronicity with my brain on complex, rapid fire response action games was further illuminated when the computer game Doom came out.  Several of my work friends during this period got addicted to killing the monsters.  Their enthusiasm generated curiosity on my part, and once again I attempted to unlearn my multiple control panel manipulation weakness.
Was I terrible?  No.  Was I well below the skill of my friends?  Absolutely.  I had fun shooting away, but having to maneuver the character while reloading or powering up was often my personal doom.  I could have practiced more, but it wasn’t that important.
I still can’t multi-task very well.  Those who do it often probably get good at it.  I can sit on a conference call and during the dull moments return email.  It seems anyone should be able to do this, but even then, when I look at responses to the emails later, my transmissions were below par. 
There have been multiple articles written about multi-tasking leading to a rapid diminution in results.  We begin to do all the tasks well below average.
I learned this many years ago.  Now I need to apply it to my life.  Remember what went wrong, then change behavior.  It is simple in theory.  If I can stop checking emails while writing this, maybe I can finally get to the point.