How is it awful? Too much info on your mind all the time?
Yes. It is a curse to your friends. Multi tasking is a real thing for some. Others can not tie shoe laces. I turned my "disorder" into money. I worked for Porsche for 16 years and that was big bucks starting in 1984. Mainlined just German cars for over 40 years. The cool thing is how tech's get paid. By the book ( set up by Feds to be even in all 50 states) . Lets say you need front brakes on a 911 Porsche any year. Book time is 2.0 hours labor. If your good/fast/tooled/smart you can do this in around 30-45 minutes and still get paid for 2.0 hours. there is the "flat rate that you hear about" I would average 70-80 flat rate hours a week and only work 40-45. Not unusual to make $500. a day in the 80s and it got better with time. Master level techs are rare for any brand name. I kinda wrote my own checks. When I retired the "disorder" kicked in. Running wide open without drugs will wear you down. Just today I took a job to do a complete rebuild of a VW van. air cooled. I do i now as a "paying hobby".
I have a friend who repairs ATVs, bikes, snowmobiles, watercraft, boats, small engines in general. He used to beat flat rate in the same way you describe when he worked for a large dealership. Instead of going by the book, he found innovative ways to get the job done much faster (ie instead of removing an engine to access a part that needed repair as the book recommends to just remove one motor Mount, loosen the other, pry the engine up to access whatever he needed to get set ... as a quick off-the-cuff example). In a 40hr workweek he could net 70-100 hours flat rate weekly. Works for himself now.
Interestingly, he also has this uncanny built in GPS in his head. He can ride trails once that he has never seen and know them like the back of his hand for years into the future. Amazing memory of the interconnected trail network in this state, I've never seen anyone like him. I'm talking thousands of miles of hundreds of interconnecting trails through the dense woods, across lakes and ponds, mountains. Day or night. Amazing spatial memory.
I understand your friend and what your saying. The most hours I made at work for actual clock time was 117. Sleeping 2-4 hours a night, I took a second job from 6pm to 1 am at a shop that I later bought into. It seems men are able to keep "maps" in their heads and that is why most taxi drivers are male. Most good "poker" players are men (Jennifer Tilly being very good)
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