Same!! I cannot do things like “while x is boiling, chop the vegetables.” I have to get everything prepped before I cook because I’m not skilled enough yet to be able to multitask.
I think this is quite common. Don't let it stress you out. Context switching is something we all have to do from time to time. You can't decide to sit down and review all of the code you'll ever be sent to review in your life. It would be nice to block off a month and knock that task out with great temporal locality. But, much of the code you need to review won't be sent until a few years from now, so you just can't. You can't make an infinitely large batch.
Context switching makes sense when the cost of the switch is less than the time saved by doing the switch. For a beginner cook or someone whose knife skills aren't that great, maybe the cost of the switch is very high or the benefit is relatively low. Or maybe the window of idle time is not sufficient to accomplish the critical work. In this case, you just have to move the critical work earlier into the process and accept some down time.
That being said, one thing I have found is that if I'm really FOCUSING on cooking, sometimes the idle moments are larger and the context switching costs are less than I had though, and maybe I can mix some prep in with cooking. The problem comes in when you're constantly checking your phone or chatting or whatever in between the cooking steps. That can really slow you down.
Many many of the recipes out there are terrible for exactly this reason and you have to read and reread the recipe at least a few times before starting. Plus the whole recipe internet is kinda a SEO cesspool which doesn’t prioritize good recipes.
Evaluating and bubbling up good recipes is hard though. Everyone’s tastes differ and the telling thing is that comments sections are always littered with stuff like “I loved the recipe. I just removed half the sugar, replaced apples with lemon and cooked it for twice as long”
A big issue with things like “while x is boiling, chop the vegetables.” is that they depend on the number of people you're cooking for - I've had a bad experience with recipes where I do that when I do the same thing for twice as many people; because it takes twice as much chopping and suddenly the other stuff has been in the heat for far too long.
