How to be less Scatty

Meditation

Apparently scattiness is not, in fact, a personality trait. Scattiness is the first sign of a cluttered mind. If your mind jumps from thought to thought, so will your actions. This is the reason why you leave without your keys even though at some point you went to put them in your bag. It could even be why you pop to the shop for eggs, go to make your omelette and realise you returned with cherries, mushrooms, and ah! No eggs. As I’m sure we all know by now, the best way to focus your mind and clear out unnecessary noise is by meditation. I’ll be the first to say that I am resistant towards an hour-long meditation at 6am but according to some experts, that’s a bit of an overkill anyways. One study found that meditating for just thirteen minutes daily enhanced attention and memory after 8 weeks. Sixty might be a push, but I will spare thirteen minutes every morning for Headspace if it can cure me of my scatterbrain.

Time-Batching

Rather than doing little bits here and there, you should batch your time so that when you’re doing one thing, you’re focussed on it and do it with all of your energy. For example, do you ever put on a wash, only to forget you’ve put on the wash? After a long day of sitting in the machine, all of your clean clothes require another round of washing because they’ve gathered a peculiar wet-dog scent. You then proceed to procrastinate the ironing. “I’ll iron that shirt when I need to wear it.” A few days later, you go to complete your outfit with said shirt and low and behold, you don’t have time to iron it. No, the wrinkles don’t fall out on their own. Using the Ivy Lee method, prioritise the six things you need to do for the following day and then batch your time to spend a few hours doing each one, properly.