How I Used Meditation To Fix My ADHD

Hello all, this is the 2nd in a post series in which I talk about productivity and maximising work output. I suggest you read the first post in which I outline the 4 key areas linked with productivity. In that post, I talked about the importance of deep work and minimising distractions. This one is still going to be on the topic of focus but instead of talking about the ways we limit external distractions from interfering with our work, I am going to talk about ways we can begin to maximise our own internal capacity for focus and control.

A Short Story About My ADHD

I would like to preface this story by saying I am by no means a medical doctor & just because I have found something to work for me it doesn’t mean it will necessarily be a fix for others. If you are struggling with any mental disorder/dysfunction or believe that you might be suffering from one, I strongly urge you to seek professional help from a trained doctor. That being said I do believe that we shouldn’t let prescribed labels become concrete definitions of who we are and what we can accomplish, I believe as human beings we are more than capable of overcoming many obstacles that we ourselves previously thought to be insurmountable, provided that we are willing to carry the burden of responsibility to do so.

When I was very young I used to get into a lot of trouble in school for being easily distracted, I was constantly told off for fidgeting, talking and doing anything but concentrating on schoolwork. I felt like I was physically unable to sit down and do anything for longer than 15 minutes. This began to bother me so much that I told my mother that I felt weird because I wasn’t able to sit still and concentrate the same way the other kids in my class were able to, I actually thought there was something wrong with me. After seeing a doctor for a couple of sessions they diagnosed me with ASD/ADHD. Now my mother never really explained this to me or brought it up ever until I was around 18 nor did she take the option to have me medicated. Because I wasn’t aware of my diagnosis I felt like I was almost forced to adapt and find a way to cope with my symptoms as a result.

Fast forward to today and I have found a way to go beyond just coping and to completely unlock my focus, now I find it relatively easy to engage in regular deep work sessions with no little to no issues. While I do recognise there will have been other external factors at play that contributed to my behaviour, and that these types of diagnoses can cover a very broad range of symptoms and behaviours. I have only really found it accessible very recently (in the past year or so) and I attribute it mostly to what I am talking about in this post. After all of that being said I still to this day find it very difficult to concentrate and remain undistracted if there are other people in the room or if I am multitasking.

The Mindset Issue

When most people think about their capacity for focus they seem to think of it as something that they have no influence over as if it’s something that changes depending on the weather, “I can’t focus for longer than X amount of time”, “I’m really distracted today”, “I need total silence to be able to work”. The problem with this type of thinking is that it totally strips you of any responsibility. If we don’t take ownership, we totally strip ourselves of the power to change it, to quote best-selling author Mark Manson ‘With great responsibility comes great power’.

Cognitive Effort – There is no Easy way

focus: to give attention, effort, etc. to one particular subject, situation, or person rather than another.

Oxford Dictionary

To increase our brain’s ability to focus we need to find a way to have it improve its ability to concentrate its attention on something specific for a period of time.

In my research learning the most effective study techniques A common theme was pointed out to me by Ali Abdaal in one of his online courses. It seemed that the more cognitive effort you have to exert trying to remember something or retrieve information the better you would get at it. One such example is that of active recall, active recall is widely regarded as one of the best study techniques and it involves the learner trying their best to recount material from memory and test themselves on it, this has far better results than a more passive method such as re-reading over notes1. The key to this is that it’s active, it requires effort, you have to actually get your brain to work hard and try to recall the information.

We can carry over this principle to focus. If we exert cognitive effort to work to concentrate our attention on something specific or at least try to, then we can train our brains to get better at doing that very same thing. It’s great! it’s like we are working out but instead of it being physical we are doing it mentally.

Meditation – An Ancient Practice

Meditation is nothing new to the world in fact it’s been around for hundreds of years but the science behind it seems rather inconclusive. This is mostly likely due to the fact Meditation is a very broad term and it seems many differing practices come under the umbrella term of meditation. Despite some of the ambiguity surrounding it, meditation has been shown to:

  • Enhance attention
  • Improve emotion regulation
  • Reduce overall stress levels2
  • Be used as a treatment for specific disorders such as PTSD, anxiety, and depression3.

The part we are most interested in is the enhancement of attention, this is exactly what we need to enhance our capacity for focus. If we can better control our attention then we can have an easier time getting into the zone and unlocking our focus.

Mental Training – It’s not just hippy stuff

A specific type of meditation we can utilise is that of focused attention meditation or FAM for short. In this style the practitioner attempts to concentrate all their attention & awareness on something specific and static, often people will choose to focus on the breath because it’s available to literally everyone and is relatively mundane and boring.

We can focus our attention on the movement of air in and out the nostrils or the feeling of the stomach moving up and down with each breath and when the mind begins to wander (it will) all you must do is recognise this and gently bring your attention back to the breath. Really we are actually cultivating two skills here in one practice, we are improving our ability to set our attention on something specific for a specified time and we are also improving our awareness to realise when we are not concentrating, then being able to bring our attention back to the task at hand.

This and all types of meditation follow the cognitive effort principle we talked about before, we are exerting effort in trying to focus our attention on something specific and in turn we are improving our brain’s capacity for concentrated attention. Meditation isn’t just spirituality, although it can be, it’s mental training! In fact, the Buddhist word ‘Bhavana’ associated with meditation literally means development4 (everyone should read M. Epstien’s thoughts without a thinker btw)

Key Takeaway – Focus on Improving Focus

I have been meditating consistently for the better half of a year now and personally, I have found it to improve my focus, emotional stability, creativity, and overall stress levels. I urge everyone to try this practice because there seems to be a whole host of benefits rooted in this ancient tradition. The key takeaway for this productivity area is that we can — and should, be actively working our brains to increase our ability for awareness & to focus for longer periods.

Footnotes & Sources

  1. Butler, A.C. (2010) ‘Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying.’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(5), pp. 1118–1133. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019902.
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  2. Tang, Y.-Y., Hölzel, B.K. and Posner, M.I. (2015) ‘The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), pp. 213–225. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916.
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  3. Khoury, B. et al. (2013) ‘Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis’, Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), pp. 763–771. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.05.005.
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  4. Epstein, M. (2013) Thoughts without a thinker: psychotherapy from a Buddhist perspective. [2nd] rev. pbk. ed. New York: Basic Books.
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