The problem you are experiencing is likely a direct result of not being present. You are effectively absent, elsewhere in your thoughts as you mindlessly sabotage your thirty-seconds-from-now-self by leaving your pen beside the other thing you “just needed to check really quick”. Consider the times when you have gotten home but struggled to remember how.

Mindfulness is basically the opposite: as you are doing dishes, try to think only about doing the dishes; when you are going upstairs to get something, think about going up the stairs, not what you’re going to say to someone you expect to talk to later. This might seem inefficient, but in my experience, our perpetual ‘multitasking’ is false economy at best. First, we can only focus on one task at a time, so it means we’re constantly fucking up or forgetting parts of everything we do, all of the time.

Sometimes splitting our attention like this is acceptable, but it shouldn’t be our default pattern and it really shouldn’t be our only pattern. As someone who also spends a lot of time looking for things I just had thirty seconds ago, our efficiency baseline is probably not something we need to protect. :)

Meditation is like going to the gym, for mindfulness. If you can spend fifteen minutes with no objectives beyond attempting to notice what you are thinking about and how you are feeling (ideally without labelling or judging as good or bad), it will become a bit easier to stay in the moment throughout the day when you aren’t meditating. As with going to the gym, it’s easy for mediation to take on a life of its own, but this definitely isn’t necessary. Consider someone who works a very physical job - they may not need to spend a lot of time at the gym. Likewise, if you are able to practice mindfulness throughout the day and feel you do reasonably well with being present through even challenging situations, you may not need to prioritize dedicated meditation time as much.