Treating Inattention - ADHD-Friendly Mindfulness, Meditation, And Environment Setting

Multi-tasking is the new norm in corporate jobs. Social media companies spend millions to make their apps as addictive as possible. Advertisements try to capture your wavering attention span with personalized messages made from your sensitive data.

Everyone is trying to steal your attention, so protecting it is more important than ever.

People with ADHD already struggle with inattention, distractability, and issues with focus management. Our fast-paced modern world only exacerbates those symptoms.

To help you with that, this article will offer a step-by-step action plan of two immediately implementable strategies to improve your attention span.

Trying to Pay Attention for Longer Isn't The Solution

Here is what mainstream productivity gurus have to say about attention training:

The brain is like a muscle. The more you train it, the better it becomes. If you are used to paying attention only for 5 minutes, you must try to stay laser-focused for 10 minutes. Once that's normal and effortless, you repeat the process over and over again. You should be able to pay attention for extensive periods after a few weeks or months of consistent practice.

This approach isn't necessarily wrong. It's also not harmful. However, it is not the most effective for people with ADHD because the shortness of your attention span isn't the biggest issue.

Let's gut-check this real quick - would you mind getting distracted every 10 minutes if it meant pacing around the room twice before returning to work after a minute? Most likely not, because it is a minor inconvenience.

So, you shouldn’t worry so much about getting distracted and needing a quick break after 15 minutes. The real problem is zoning out, losing sight of what you should be doing entirely, and not returning to work for more than an hour.

If you have ADHD, you will inevitably lose focus without realizing it because your attention fluctuates, but it only ever becomes an issue if you don't return to work quickly.

The difference can seem subtle and trivial, but it matters massively in how you approach attention training.

If your ADHD brain is heavily inclined toward distraction, always trying to stop yourself from zoning out is like going against its natural design. This is very mentally taxing and exhausting. Ironically, the headaches you put yourself through to remain focused in one place create additional stress that only magnifies the pressure to find a distraction.

Trying to glue your brain's attention to a single object for an extended period of time makes you miserable and hopeless because it is not very effective. You will get some results, but the obsession with how long you last without a break is an uphill battle that's much more likely to leave you discouraged and frustrated rather than motivated and laser-focused.

Giving up is not an option. So, what should you do instead?

Training yourself to return to your task after getting distracted is a much more productive approach.

You accept your tendency to zone out without shame or struggle, freeing up mental energy for the actual work. Over time, you put effort into learning your triggers, like notifications on the phone sending you on a social media binge, outside noises, physical restlessness, and others. The more aware you become of the point where you lose focus, the better you become at returning your attention where it matters despite the short setback.

Mindfulness & Meditation

For the longest time, I felt repulsed by the idea of meditating. It may have been healthy, but I didn't want to do it.

A part of me was very aggravated by all the aggressive advertising and exaggerated claims made by companies commercializing mindfulness. Quotes from the Dalai Lama claiming world peace could be achieved if every kid was taught meditation didn't convince me either. Surely, no single exercise can magically "fix" your attention span.

Since mindfulness felt like an overrated industry full of hyperboles that were only selling smoke, I avoided it altogether.

Ironically, in my frustration with the exaggerated benefits, I had gone in the opposite direction. I significantly undermined how helpful meditation can be if done consistently. After years of avoiding meditation, one day, I became desperate enough to try it.

It wasn't a miracle, but it was certainly very useful. Meditation didn't fix my all-over-the-place attention, but it did make it noticeably better. So, don’t repeat my mistake. It doesn't matter if you are a total beginner and have never tried mindfulness or an anti-establishment rebel who wants to vomit at the sight of a Jon Kabat-Zinn quote.

You should give it a shot.

What Is Meditation and Mindfulness

Meditation is a Buddhist practice that can improve self-awareness, reduce stress, enhance your mood, and boost your attention (1)

The culture, traditions, and history behind it encompass thousands of years, hundreds of books, and countless variations in the practice. This is too complex and impossible to fit into an article, so we will simplify and talk about a more beginner-friendly version of meditation called mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the Westernized version of meditation, stripped of its cultural, spiritual, and moral elements. The practice was created for the sake of making it more accessible. Even if simplified, mindfulness exercises can help you pay attention to your emotions, thoughts, mental experiences, and the corresponding physical sensations and physiological responses arising from them.

All those experiences of body and mind are deeply interconnected. For example, while finishing a work assignment, you may suddenly remember an upcoming birthday party (thought), which makes you anxious (emotion) because you are insecure about your gift, and this makes you physically restless (body response).

A mindfulness practice simply means focusing on your breathing or any other sensation while acknowledging your thoughts and emotions before going back to your focus point. Universal to every mindfulness practice are the following principles:

Awareness - When meditating, you will be using your senses to pay attention to how your body is feeling and your internal world. Focusing on multiple internal sensations is usually the warm-up before you narrow down and pick a single sensation as your focus point.
Grounding in the present - The past seeks to draw you in with rumination, and the future wishes you to overthink every scenario. Meditation encourages awareness of what you experience in the present so you can ground yourself in the moment.
Single focus - The essence of every meditation is to pick an anchor (focus point) and return toward it, no matter the frequency, length, and intensity of the distractions. This can be your breath, heartbeat, pent-up restlessness in the body, and anything else you can easily reconnect with.
Lack of judgment - Distraction is an inherent part of the ADHD experience, especially in a world fighting for your attention in every corner. It's understandable to feel disappointed, ashamed, and guilty for losing focus, but don’t judge yourself over that. The point is to allow your thoughts and feelings to exist (acknowledge them) without allowing them to take you away from your focus point for long.
Acceptance - The more intense an emotion, thought, or sensation, the more likely it is to distract you. When meditating, you accept the world as it is, including everything you feel and think about. Your focus should be on a single sensation, but it’s okay if you accidentally start to think about something else and get distracted. Accept the distraction, let it exist without judgment, and move back to your focus point.

The Benefit of Mindfulness and Meditation

Meditating and doing mindfulness exercises help you create distance from all sensations, emotions, and thoughts. You experience them, but don't let them define you. It helps you to see them as tools of the mind, short-lived and fleeting in nature. Just because you created them doesn't mean they must become a part of you.

When practiced consistently, those exercises make you more resilient to the allure of distractions. Your brain still sees emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations as attractive but doesn't feel the need to respond immediately. Once you improve your impulse control and sensitivity to distractions, it becomes easier to realize when you lost track of your task and more quickly return to your focus point.

Meditation and mindfulness have been extensively studied and are currently among the few exercises with attention benefits backed by reputable scientific studies. They show noticeable improvements in alertness and attention and a reduction in stress and anxiety that helps to concentrate better (2,3,4)

If you are skeptical, I won't torture you by forcing you to do meditation every day for the rest of your life.

However, you need to promise me the following.

You will give it a shot for at least six months. If you can do a meditation exercise for 30 minutes 4 times a week and see no worthwhile benefits after a month of consistency, feel free to give up. You will improve your attention span, impulse control, and alertness, or you will have an excellent excuse to send me a passive-aggressive message or email.

It sounds like a win-win situation, right?

A Simple Meditation Technique To Try

Here is a very short version of a meditation practice to try if you are in a rush.

Choose an anchor to focus on and return towards, like your breathing.

Find a quiet environment, somewhere comfortable to sit in.

Close your eyes and open them for a bit only if restless.

Observe passing thoughts and feelings but let them go.

Put all your attention entirely on the chosen anchor.

Get lost, snap back to your breath, and return.

Repeat until the time runs out.

Here is the more extended version that most of you should read instead.

Sit down in a comfortable position (couch, chair, floor, mats, pillows, etc.). Close your eyes, and pick a single bodily sensation to be your anchor - the point where your attention will focus and return.

I focus on my breathing because it is the easiest to find. You can also try tuning to your heartbeat and pulse, the uprightness of your posture, the pressure you feel from sitting, some mantras and phrases, and others. Pick breathing as your anchor if you wanna play it safe. Come up with something else if you are feeling adventurous.

Start by setting a timer and turning your attention toward the anchor. If you are an absolute beginner, you can aim for 5 to 10 minutes. If you have previous experience, then you can try between 12 and 20 minutes.

You will inevitably get distracted. Don't worry about it. Nothing wrong with that. If it is thoughts, emotions, and feelings, observe them non-judgementally with curiosity, and let them pass away before returning to the anchor. You can entertain them without allowing yourself to get consumed.

The point isn't to bottle everything inside you and not feel and think of anything.

Rather, it is to allow your mind to run its course, acknowledging each sensation but gently pushing it away.

How To Program Meditation Into Your Routine

If you are a total beginner, start with three to five minutes, and gradually increase how much you last each session based on how you are feeling.

Make sure to set up an alarm so you have a clear end goal for the mindfulness session. Furthermore, because the long-term goal is to increase the length of the exercise, it's normal to have days where you can meditate for a shorter period because you are just not feeling it.

Here is an example of a progression timetable you can follow:

1. Week 1 - 3 minutes each day.

2. Week 2 - 6 minutes each day.

3. Week 3 - 10 minutes each day.

4. Week 4 - 13 minutes each day.

5. Week 5 - 16 minutes each day.

6. Week 6 - 20 minutes each day.

Making Meditation and Mindfulness Work with ADHD

If you have ADHD, meditation and mindfulness can be a struggle due to your brain differences. The exercises may seem dull, and making them part of an everyday routine might be a struggle. Sometimes, you will forget about the exercises entirely after skipping a few days, even if there was some momentum and success in the beginning.

Let's address the most common issues one by one.

1. Problem I - You Feel Physically Restless When Meditating

Physical restlessness can range between mild and unbearable.

If you just want to move around, scratch an itch, readjust your position, open your eyes, or anything else, there are two options.

First, if it's not urgent, you can acknowledge the sensation and desire and simply return to your anchor without doing anything about it. This can seem impossible because we are so used to responding to those urges, but I promise you that you can change your relationship with restlessness. By acknowledging the tremble in your feet, the twitch in your fingers, and the itching on your neck, you begin to embrace restlessness instead of trying to run away from it.

Sometimes, the physical restlessness you feel is too intense, so it is okay to give in. There's no right or wrong approach as long as your focus eventually returns to the anchor, like your breathing or heart rate.

If you find meditation unbearable because you can't sit still, you can try at a different time of the day because you may have too much energy right now.

I used to have issues with hyperactivity and restlessness, but the problem disappeared ever since I started meditating after having my workout for the day. It makes sense that physical restlessness would be significantly reduced if you just spent an hour doing various intense exercises.

2. Problem II - Meditation Feels Utterly Boring and Void of Stimulation

The simplest way to resolve that is to experiment until you find a style compatible with your needs.

I struggled to sit still and focus on my breathing, even for 10 minutes in the past. However, it became much easier since I tried to meditate with my eyes open for half the time because I was more visually stimulated. When I didn't know what I was doing, I also tried to breathe and add plus one after each exhale, and that gave me a mission to make the number as high as possible without losing track.

It isn't very helpful to say the solution depends on you, but it really does. You need to figure it out yourself.

What is specifically bothering you?

If it's too many thoughts, you can try using mantras because soft talking can reduce the overwhelming amount of thoughts in your brain. Meditation mantras are repetitive words, phrases, or sounds that you repeatedly say to keep your mind focused during a meditative practice. You can say them very silently or repeat them loudly. Om (Aum), So hum, and Shanti are some of the used meditation mantras.

You can also freestyle your own unique sound and phrase. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In its most basic form, you take a deep breath, slightly open your mouth, and start making the first sounds that come to mind (don’t be too loud, or you’d upset the neighbors) before gradually closing your mouth in a few seconds.

After that, you only have to keep repeating the mantra and focus not only on the execution, but also on the effect the mantra has on your body, like the physical vibrations it produces.

If counting alone is not enough and you feel like you are without a direction, you can try a mindfulness app since they have countless drills and routines. Guided meditation is especially helpful for beginners because the guidance creates a safe structure that you can easily follow and get into the rhythm of meditation.

If no other form of stimulation works, you can pick up an object, like a smooth stone, wooden beads, silky cloth, or any other texture that is engaging enough for your senses. If you are more stimulated by touching an object, it becomes easier to get your focus on an anchor point and keep it there because you are less restless.

Finally, if meditation still feels boring no matter what, you may be stuck in the warm-up phase. I know the program I offered above looks very well structured and offers smooth progression, but it may not work for certain people. This is because, for the first few minutes, your mind is still getting used to the different state of consciousness that meditation requires.

Meditation doesn’t have to be a chore. It can be very calming and even blissful, but for you to experience that personally and get motivated to feel it again, you need to go through this “transition phase,” which happens in the first few minutes. So, paradoxically, if 5 minutes of meditation feels worthless, it may be better to try a 30-minute session instead of giving up.

Now, jumping from 5 minutes to 30 minutes is a huge leap. So, I don’t expect you to do it flawlessly. It is fine to zone out often, stop meditating for a minute or two halfway through, and move around once or twice. Everything during the 30 minutes is acceptable as long as you keep coming back to your anchor over and over again for at least 30 minutes.

3. Problem III - You Struggle To Make Meditation a Habit and Often Forget and Lose All Your Progress

The two most challenging times when creating a routine are the beginning and periods where you fall off the routine altogether.

Starting and sticking to a meditation practice is much easier if you have a ritual surrounding it.

For example, doing it right after breakfast, after a workout, or after you shower in the evening. This way, you can stack multiple habits together, making it easier to remember, and automatically start doing it after you finish the first.

Since it will take time to get used to meditation, start to crave the calmness you get after a session, and reap the benefits, you will need to ensure accountability from the start. You can create accountability individually by buying a subscription to a meditation app. The sunk cost creates the need to make the most out of it so your money isn't wasted.

An even more secure way is to make an accountability pact with someone and check on each other once daily.

Even if you start, get momentum, and have weeks with a 90% success rate in staying on track, you will inevitably fall off the routine at some point or another. Life will inevitably happen - you travel abroad, get sick, the boss overwhelms you with work, guests come over, your friends need your help, you feel burned out and incapable of doing anything, etc.

In theory, you could accept the on-and-off periods, the natural flow of life, and how nothing can ever be perfect. But ADHD tends to correlate with stubborn perfectionism, so I bet just saying what is optimal will not be enough for you. So, here’s a more practical approach - implement the 5 to 1 forgiveness system.

The rule is simple - you get one day off every five days in a row.

You can use it whenever you want. Knowing you have room to skip meditation makes it less dreadful to force yourself to do it on days when it's not feasible. If you have skipped more than one day, return to meditation with a lower intensity. So, if your average is 20 minutes, try doing it for 10 minutes on the return day. You need to warm up before you can start making new records.

If you are particularly competitive, you can track your absolute largest spree somewhere, and if you have an interruption, you can look toward it as motivation. I've had more than one occasion where my primary motivation to do three weeks of uninterrupted meditation is solely to beat my previous record.

Still, you will have days when meditation doesn't work. But even when you are not meditating, you can still be mindful.

You don't have to sit like a holy Buddhist monk on your yoga mat to go through a meditative experience. The only condition for a mindful experience is to be fully immersed in the present and to allow yourself to return to the moment whenever thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations arise.

Following this premise, anything from walking, eating, reading books, playing sports, enjoying video games, and spending time with people can be a meditative experience. As long as you are solely focused on the activity, have enough self-awareness to notice getting distracted, and put in effort to return to your current activity, you are still being mindful.

Optimizing The Environment

Meditating can help tame the storm of your thoughts and emotions, but how much you can focus will equally depend on your environment.

Optimizing your environment is another way to improve your attention because you can take care of the most common temptations, distractions, and triggers while creating a working space with more positive associations.

Here are the strategies I have found most helpful when trying to improve my environment:

Keep your phone away - Getting distracted by your cat can keep you zoned out for 10 minutes, but getting sucked into your phone can zombify you for hours. Unless you expect an upcoming message from someone, your phone should be muted with the internet connection off. Keep it on the other side of your room, on top of a high shelf, or in your backpack. The less visible it is and the more effort it would take to retrieve it, the better.
Organize places by purpose - The brain makes associations between where you are and what you are doing. The more you repeat an action in the same place, the stronger those associations get over time. Working in bed or in a room where you usually relax is much harder than choosing to work in a cafe, library, park, co-working space, or any other convenient location. Separating your room into different spots is also an option if that's not financially feasible.
Optimize your devices - If you can afford it, and your university or work gives you the option, have a separate device and/or laptop for your personal life and professional or educational duties. It's easier to stay on task if your brain recognizes a device for a singular purpose. If that's not an option, install apps or plugins to block apps or create a time delay between the click and the opening of a site or a page so you have time to snap out of the craving.
Figure out your social settings - Some people with ADHD work with much fewer distractions if they are in the presence of others, even strangers. This body-doubling principle creates pressure to perform, which keeps you in line. For others, the presence of other people can be useless or even distracting. Experiment to see where you fall and plan accordingly.
Keep what matters in front of you - The ADHD brain is usually very visual, so you are likely to think about what is right in front of you. This is why if you want to get started, work, or finish a task, what's around you must offer multiple cues, prompting you to take action. For example, if you want to start an assignment, you keep relevant internet tabs open, or if you want to journal, you leave only the notebook and remove everything else from your desk.
Reduce unnecessary noise - Noise-cancelling headphones are your best friend if you are prone to sensory overload or distraction, even at the slightest sound. If you hate silence, try experimenting with white, brown, and pink noise, classical music, shows, movies, and video game soundtracks. The perfect balance can keep you engaged without taking your mind off the task. If the task is manual and repetitive, like cleaning the dishes or organizing files, you can even listen to a podcast, watch a show, or blast YouTube.

Key Takeaways

Your attention span is not broken. Instead of trying to fix it and become neurotypical, learn how to work with it. Think of any work session as a marathon with multiple parts and breaks in between. It is not a sprint that goes by at once.

Your efforts should go toward learning when you are distracted and pulling yourself back to what you were doing before. You can do that by meditating regularly, optimizing your environment, and cutting social media and other unhealthy habits that encourage counter-productive multi-tasking and impulsivity.