jinga,

You should not try to maintain attention on multiple things. Multitasking is not a virtuous skill. It is stressful to the brain and can lead to depression.

Please do not try to multitask. One task at a time. Make notes if you need to leave one task and do another so you can review your notes when you return to the first task.

If you need to focus, Stop to think. That means stop or turn off the other distractions. It takes a lot of brain processing power or bandwidth to ignore distractions. The injured brain does not have that bandwidth.

One of the most critical things to learn about living with a brain injury is this simple concept. Our brains cannot just ignore distracting stimuli. We need to turn them off or change environments.

Yesterday, I needed to swap the display screen on my iPhone. It requires delicate work with small parts and screws. When I became frustrated trying to finish a delicate step, I had to turn the TV off and let my brain refocus. With the distraction free focus, I had no problem finishing the tasks.

The valuable part to understanding this is also simple. The quality of work that can be accomplished when distractions are turned off is much better, even if you do not have a compromised brain.