I'm still rather scatter-brained, and I'm still a certified nutbucket, still formally diagnosed "schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type."   My thinking is usually disjointed, with overlapping and disparate lines of thought fighting over which gets to use the 'articulated thought function' next.  There is no such thing as a unified and permanent 'me' anywhere in me.  'I' refers to an ephemeral aggregate phenomenon.  I'm ever a temporarily salient flutter in the mental fluxions going on inside the bony box.   Sometimes more so than at other times.  

 

When I have significant competing . . . well, I call them 'local concentrations' . . . I create another 'local concentration' that just makes sure that the different developing lines of thought get jotted down in their proper columns on the page, as assigned by the overseeing 'concentration.'  For me, three columns is usually enough; it's a rare day lately when five columns are needed.  

 

The thoughts will come in the order they come, and they may be inter-related--but the pencil-holder, that supervising concentration takes dictation from the competitors and puts it in the right column, and sorts out collisions and mergers of thought.  It's a clerky mechanic, and not very poetic.

 

But the fruit of the method is a set of notes that can be used during less scattered moments.  It's not a jigsaw puzzle.  It's the pieces of separate jigsaw puzzles, sorted into their proper piles.  Each column now holds a line of thought, of some value.

 

A later 'concentration' can deal with it all, one pile at a time.