I find that it’s very much worth the time investment, and would recommend anyone struggling with focus/anxiety to try it themselves.
My personal hypothesis is that the inherent expectation of wanting/needing to feel some kind of effect every time I tried meditating ended up being the very blockade that prevented me from doing so. I kept falling into a negative recursive thought loop of, “I haven’t noticed anything yet. This isn’t working. There’s no point in trying to continue meditating” that cycled into a cascading growth of anxiety that prevented me from reaching a state of balance.
It took me many months to realize that I was trapping myself inside this loop, but once I became aware of it, I was able to almost immediately start seeing results. The biggest thing that helped me was coming to a realization that the thoughts in my head are, at the end of the day, just thoughts. They have no ability to harm or control me other than what I choose to allow them to. The thought loop I was putting myself into could only continue because I chose to let it.
When I meditate in the present day, you might think that I no longer deal with any of these issues. That’s actually completely not the case. In fact, I constantly still get it, especially at the beginning of my sessions, but now instead of stressing out, I just choose to let it go. By actively choosing to accept and let things go, the loop breaks right from the beginning.
This is probably one of the most important lessons i've learned in my life. Realizing this made a hugely drastic improvement to my emotions, my ability to control them and my ability to focus on things and pay attention. Learning to quiet that voice or just ignore it when I need to is a skill I think everyone should learn and would benefit from.
Instead of trying to magically concentrate perfectly, I focused on identifying when my focus would move to something else. I noticed meditation is a practice of becoming quicker at identifying when I would lose focus, giving me the choice to come back to focus.
After a couple of months of meditating I was able to go off of adhd medication. Then maybe a half a year later I noticed my concentration was above average and had been for a while.
Meditation does work well on ADHD, but you have to be willing to take a break from your day to day worries, giving a mini vacation away from mental work. It's quite enjoyable.
I get obsessive about things, so I tried to use those obsessions to shape a regular routine that helped everything else fall into place. I focused my obsession on exercise, specifically jiu-jitsu, because once I got to class, I didn't have to think or motivate myself, I was just there and focused on learning and fighting. Then it turned into a positive feedback loop, I'd get external validation from my teammates, I was improving, I was doing it in the morning, so I absolutely had to get out of bed, and of course after class, I had nowhere else to go but work. So that fixed my habitually late problem as well. Being 10 minutes late to class was fine as long as I was on time for work. Then I could ride that dopamine rush to have a productive morning.
Then life happened, my routines where interrupted, and I haven't been able to get it back.
Take five to fifteen minutes. Focus your attention on, and notice your breathing. You will immediately become distracted. Notice thoughts as they arise, and attempt to return your attention to your breathing. Repeat as necessary or desired.
The subjective experience of this loop changes the more practice you get. You haven't failed if you can't reach a steady-state. You're already in steady-state of yourselfness.
Attempts at meditation immediately becomes rumination, where I play through all the conversations I could possibly have in the coming day (and exploring the worst case scenarios), which leads to elevated stress, which makes the ADHD tendencies worse.
For example, try this: Sit down in a mildly uncomfortable position and close your eyes. Take slow deep breaths, focusing entirely on your breath. Count each breath. If your focus wanes at all from that task, stop counting and see how high you got. When I first start this exercise, it's pretty common for me to not even be able to hit 5. But after 6-7 days of this I can usually get up to the 45-60 range.
Polite or not, it really gets old.
It’s about training yourself to become better at 1) noticing you’re distracted and 2) bringing yourself back into focus. It’s pretty much muscle training except for your brain, specifically on improving executive functioning.
Very little of meditation actually follows the “pure zen enlightenment” that’s commonly associated with it. Of course sometimes I do get a few minutes of that close to the end of my meditating sessions, but it’s not my main priority when I meditate and the majority of the benefits really come from the portions where I’m getting distracted and working on improving my ability to get back to focus.