[bmcleod]

Unless the thing I "should" be doing is immediately necessary or massively more important than the secondary thing I end up doing I'm generally pretty happy to follow my motivation around.

I normally seem to get back to the important thing when its deadline or reason for happening actually becomes so important that it really needs to be a focus.

It might be the issue isn't that you're focussing on the wrong thing, it's that you stop after having done the first thing. When the code based work starts closing in on me I start picking targets of what I will do before I'm allowed to sleep. I can do as many other things as I want, but that has to be done. I also seem to focus better on boring tasks when I'm tired. It mostly works.