Read your questions, skimmed the comments and decided I'd share a technique for life management. A warning, it is a very, very long comment and I apologize sincerely. This matter is just a personally experienced one and I possess strong opinions regarding it.

You do not have to read it, and I cannot make you do so, but I highly suggest that you do. The information I provide may not be for everyone. I understand this. It may not be for you. That's okay. But as for my own and personal journey it has proven itself time to time to the point that I now longer look for a solution as it has proven it's effectiveness time and time again.

The biggest suggestion I can offer you is to consider what my father taught me at a very young age and continues to do so even now in my mid-twenties.

Be a man.

It's as simple as that. What does "Being a man" entail you ask? It means being TOUGH. It means to see a problem and instead of ignoring or denying you accept that you DO have a problem on hand.

That's the first step. The first step is to always take the first step in solving that problem. Let's look at an example, any volunteers? Oh wait, why not you? You browse all these comments that provide you with multiple methods that can "solve" or remedy your problem throughout the day and night, you go to Google to search up on a few of them that stand out. Dissatisfied you come back and browse more ways, then it’s back to Google....then before you know it you've went 20 links in to 20 different websites over the course of a few days. It is then you have a new problem. You get overwhelmed with the different ways to go about it and all the little details involved with each one. Now we have gone from the pot to the kettle.
There is a reason for this. It is because the core problem is not what we expose ourselves to, it is what we allow our minds to waste it's time processing whether directly exposed or as the result of a thought itself. You said you felt like you had a layer in your mind that knows what you need to do, and a separate layer that is absorbing everything around you and filing it away regardless of what you are doing. Therefore the most effective result of any method you try for fixing your issue should have the ultimate result of COMPILING both of those layers into ONE which allows you to truly absorb everything about whatever it is you are doing at that very moment.
What I have to do personally will sound a bit odd. I have had to become cold in nature. Allowing my mind to only process the things that I have decided need to be done for the day. I accept no other information. I mentally, and sometimes verbally, say NO to any outside influence that would deter me from what I set out to accomplish. Over time your mind will be honed to the point where you truly do feel a sense of control over the direction of your life.
(Disclaimer: I do however allow myself exceptions for the things that directly and sometimes indirectly affect any of the core components in life: Health, Family, Spirituality, and Financials. If a decision I say no to can either really affect one of those in a negative way, or if saying no to taking an unexpected opportunity could truly benefit one of those core components immediately or in the long run I take make that decision on the spot based upon that criteria and importance.)

Let's look at an example situation for how important it is to have a well-developed mental toughness and the ability to say NO.

You wake up, its 8am and you decide it’s time for you to have your breakfast. You read an article and digest it for a few minutes or even debate it for a few minutes with a companion. We're doing good so far it's been 15 minutes no upsets we are well on our way to getting what needs done today.

Now our mind reflects upon our agenda for the day which we liberally emptied onto paper last night. We look down this list of things we have to do and while we are sitting there suddenly a single word, let's say "word document" if we have to type a paper that day, on the list stands out to us in our mind and triggers a wonderment over something related to that. We think to ourselves "I wonder if Open Office software has greater advantages over Microsoft word?". After pondering about that relation we decide to research it a little. We fire up the laptop to do a little quick research to just satisfy curiosity. Well what do you know, Open Office really has established a rival status in the word processing enterprise. We should give that a spin. So you start the download, run through the install impatiently as you know you need to leave soon to attend to your list of things to do. That's okay Open Office is going to simplify some of the things I do so it's going to save me time in the long run.

After installing the software we fire it up to check it out. Oh pretty neat! We browse the tools, definitely got some handy tools for what I need done. We decide to create a document just for fun and testing. File -> New Document -> Clickety Clack Clickety Clack we've got a short little paragraph about how awesome Open Document is in a matter of minutes. Aha! That’s very nice...hey wait! Let’s make an agenda to prettify what I've wrote on paper. Everybody knows a professional looking agenda makes you want to accomplish these things more just as a large sparkling trophy will oust a smiley sticker any day of the week.
We realize we need to save some time, so we decide to outsource the document template to one prebuilt and just fill it on in. So back to the file menu it is, then we realize the selection of good agenda templates is much too limited. Ah, I know we will just Google up one real quick. So that we do. About 5 sites and 72 clicks later we have a template to suit our taste. We begin our transfer of the crumply paper agenda to a beautiful little digital one that will soon be on crisp white paper. We spell check in case anyone peaks, punctuate in case anyone cares, and tweak the fonts a bit for readability. We look at the time, it’s after 11am. We justify that with the fact that having this new and beautiful agenda will help us get things done. We print and admire our fine creation. While we sit that at the table admiring our warm from the printer agenda...a specific word on that paper stands out to us in our mind...and we ponder something related to it...

And down again the rabbit hole do we go, as we lack the self-control and fine-tuned ability of saying NO. We lack being tough enough to say, "You know what maybe open office can help we will have to find out tonight when we have what we set out to do done." Or even cutting the though off at the knees as soon as it appears in our mind and strongly saying "I cannot think about that right now." Letting that thought dissolve through sheer intent. Not accepting or allowing its presence any longer, getting up from that table and walking out that door at 8:30am instead of looking up at 11:30am and realizing that even though we have accomplished something new, and even somewhat related to the things we do on the daily basis we have never advanced any closer to having what needs to be done than when we started 3 hours ago.

Further down the road after this process repeats itself over and over through the years, and we go to clock in at our subpar job of help desk support we pause...and our mind for an instant reflects upon our situation of being nowhere near where we expected to be at such an older age. We process this thought further and remember all of the little moments we had a choice between an option that would have taken us farther then we are now and one that took us in circles but seemed a lot more interesting at that single moment in time, and we are faced with the reality that we chose the interesting circle more than we should have. A lot more.

(..Continued)