We live in a fractured, hyper kinetic world in which it is too easy to become distracted, and we all too often get nothing done.
Most of us face this difficulty when trying to accomplish many things at once. But what about the people who seemingly do it with ease?
I see two possibilities:
1 - They are geniuses in their ability to focus on lots of different things all at once, and so they make it look easy, whereas for mere mortals it is not.
2 - They are, most of them, no more geniuses than you or I, but they have been learning things one or a few at a time, and over the course of years, they have learned to drive their productivity as easily as you might drive your car or cook dinner while putting on your gym clothes.
If they are geniuses, there's no hope. But If they're like you and me, and simply use better methods, maybe we can model them into our own lives.
One of the best methods was championed centuries ago by Ben Franklin. Read more about it in his autobiography - http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/148/pg148.html .
Here's the important passage for this context.
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang'd them with that view, as they stand above.
(Sidebar: Even back in the 1700s, Ben Franklin faced distraction!)
Franklin was interested in moral virtues. My interest is more general. My question for you: what things do you want to accomplish (moral, business, education, etc.) List all of them and then pick one on which you will focus.
But which one?
Franklin strategically picked, as his first one, a trait that would enable him to work more easily with the others. That's good advice. If there is one that supports others, pick that one.
The remaining question is simple: Will you do it?
