I find lately that I have a hard time enjoying things because I’m always thinking of other things. If I’m reading, my mind drifts to work. If I’m working, my mind drifts to what I will do after work. If I’m watching TV, I think about chores I should be doing. If I’m at the gym, I fantasize about being anywhere other than the gym.
How do you learn to just calm down and focus on what you’re doing in the moment? I’ve been thinking of taking a meditation class, is that just a bunch of nonsense?
Have you ever been tested for ADHD?
Is that something you can just develop out of nowhere? Because I never used to feel this way, never had a problem in school, used to be able to just hang out on the weekends and sit with a good book for an hour with no problem. It just seems to be something that’s crept up on me over the years.
To me, meditation is “be here now” practice. Have you considered exploring it?
Do you set aside blocks of time to focus - where you put away distractions and give yourself permission to relax?
It may mean that on some level you’re wishing for / seeking / needing something different in your life. That you have unmet interests & needs, perhaps, or unprocessed feelings that leave you with a degree of restlessness and disquiet until you pay better attention to them and sort out what it is that you feel and what it is that your’e feeling it about.
The ability to mentally absent yourself has been a useful skill in my life. I don’t want to be “present” every second while cleaning up gallons of vomit, working on an assembly line, etc.
It’s important to be able to turn it on and off though. Are you distracted by worry and anxiety about other things or is it that the other things seem more appealing and compelling?
I think it’s both… I am a fairly responsible person so ultimately the basic chores get addressed, but it’s things like if I’m watching TV I think I should be in the backyard tending to the plants. But it’s also if I’m at work, I’d rather be watching TV.
I don’t think I’m especially unhappy but sometimes it seems like I’m never satisfied with anything.
Yes, meditation will help immensely. Even a basic guide to meditation or guided meditations on YouTube should help you learn to focus on the here and now.
As AnaMen says, absenting yourself is a useful defense mechanism to unpleasantness, but you should be able to leap back into the present at will.
Maybe you’re just not that into watching TV?
I actually can’t imagine watching TV while not doing something else. It’s not “ADHD”, but rather the fact that TV alone isn’t stimulating enough for me. I need to have something to do with my hands. I’m sure my mind would drift if I ever found myself planted in front of a TV without nothing else to do.
I’ve used mindfulness techniques to get me through periods of anhedonia, when my senses are dulled and it’s hard for me to remember how pleasure feels. Like, if my appetite’s screwed up, I’ll take apart a tangerine and slowly eat it, making a concerted effort to savor the little details and not think about anything else.
My daily walking gives me another opportunity to be “mindful”. Instead of losing myself to my thoughts and zoning out (as I am wont to do), I’ll make myself pay attention to the scenary. What tree is that? Ooh, there’s a cat. It smells like wood smoke. The sky is the color of mashed potatoes. When did they put up that street sign? I usually allow myself to drift as much, but occasionally I’ll practice “being in the moment”.
But I think “being in the moment” is just a means to an end. Eating a tangerine at a snail’s pace is a good exercise when I’m feeling pretty lousy, but I can generally enjoy tangerines perfectly fine without being absolutely conscious of mysef. And my daily walks would be totally crazy-making if I never daydreamed during them. Some activities are simply more enjoyable when you aren’t paying attention to them.
I totally get what you’re saying, and to some degree this is me as well. I have to be doing SOMETHING else when watching TV; for most shows, I can’t just sit still. But then I realize after 30 minutes, I really have no idea what just happened. So I feel like I’m not devoting enough specific attention to either thing. At least when I go to a movie, I know I can’t do anything else so I’m sorta forced into paying attention.
I can’t watch TV much either. I keep getting up to do chores or spacing out.
There’s no reason to make yourself watch TV though. If you’re not enjoying it, skip it.
Maybe you aren’t committing to the activity and are too anxious about other things you “should” be doing. Put those things on a to-do list and give yourself permission to not worry about them while you’re doing something else.
Run through all of your senses to engage in the present moment. If you are working, practice tuning out distractions and distracting thoughts to really focus on what you are doing.
If you are at the gym, for example, think about how your muscles feel while you use them, while tuning out distracting smells and sounds. If you focus on one or two senses at a time, it’s less overwhelming.
Meditation is helpful for learning to let go of those thoughts. It doesn’t really stop you having them, it helps you teach yourself not to follow them, though.
My meditation instructor had me read a book called Mindfulness in Plain English - it really provided most of the instructions I needed and was easy to follow and learn from. After that it was more a matter of practice and learning to visualize/internally automate what I needed to do to detach from the distracting thoughts.
What I find is that meditation is practice of the skill I need to stop fretting about the thought distractions, but also stop following them or continuing to let them distract me when I become aware of their presence. Meditation has helped me - in any circumstance - turn my attention back where it belongs despite the presence of the distracting stuff 
I second the recommendation on Mindfulness in Plain English. (Looks like you can even read it online!) I’ve read a lot on meditation and that’s the first book I came across that explained what “watching the breath” really meant and went through the process of meditation step-by-step.