Technological changes such as the rise of collaboration tools make it easier to multi-task: you can have a chat window, a word-processing document, a Web browser, and other applications all open at the same time on your computer, and switch easily between them.

FORBES: Tackling The Multi-tasking Work Environment

The idea of a single "Car Czar" to oversee the rebuilding of the auto industry is now out the window, replaced by a task force led by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, two of the most over-extended men in the history of American government.

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Nor were they likely to in the near future, given the task ahead, and the sight from our window of the thousands of pilgrims milling around the white marble of the Grand Mosque.

CNN: Preparing to cover The Hajj

Another tactic: Build time for mind wandering into daily routines, breaking away from tasks requiring concentration to take a walk or run, look out a window or do some relaxing, routine physical task.

WSJ: Tactics to Spark Creativity

We are not waiting for either some 30- or 60-day window to elapse before somebody serving on the task force and working closely with the team and the President gets into the communities and talks directly to workers that would be impacted by any event, either going forward or that has already resulted in cutbacks or unemployment.

WHITEHOUSE: White House Press Briefing

Summer is filled with distractions and trying to keep your focus on big initiatives while everyone else is off frolicking or when you can smell the newly-mown grass outside your living room window as you drill yourself on logic games is a formidable task.

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And so, seated at my Jerusalem window last year, ready to at last look back and write, I was familiar with the task at hand, the need to gather information and to then look for patterns in it.

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