If you can improve something you've been working on all day very very mildly where it costs very little energy, it's fine. Switching to the next big thing costs a lot of energy due to context switching and having to learn a new mini-domain.
It takes time, especially for someone like myself with ADHD, to adapt to a new context.
What I mostly want to get accross is that it's unnecessary to view this behavior as procrastination (negative) and not just natural, energy-efficient and expected.
Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.This scene[1] from Malcolm in the Middle almost illustrates it perfectly except it's more Hal getting distracted on side quests that were spawned because he tried to change a light bulb...