It's really nice to be able to stay focused on a single task for hours. It's less nice when there are other, equally pressing tasks to pursue. I need to find a way to balance my preference to work on a single thing with my tendency to grab bits n' pieces of information from as many sources as I can find. The usual result is that, upon taking a break from whatever I've been focusing on, I tend to go looking for other information about the task (i.e. I go googling for new methods) rather than shifting focus to something else entirely. It feels inflexible.

Back when I was in a different lab and a different building, I'd try to solve this problem by climbing stairs. My building had more than ten floors so this was some fairly decent exercise. Perhaps a short walk would serve the same purpose.

On an unrelated note: Walruses.

The photo is courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wikitionary suggests the plural form may be "walrus".