I’ve known many people who experience similar difficulties, and have had some of them myself. I have not found any reliable approaches that work for everyone, or even work for a majority. You’re likely to need to try a bunch of stuff, and figure out what works for you. This takes years (as it’s often weeks or months before you know whether a partial technique is actually useful for you), and changes over time, so it never ends. But for many, some idiosyncratic combination of some the following help a lot. This is not in order, just a brainstorm of things to try:
Daily meditation.
Rigid on/off schedule—pomodoro or the like.
Flexible on/off schedule—permission to work 30 minutes some days, and 10 hours when in the zone.
Psychiatric medication.
Self-managed medication (rarely successful long-term without combining with psychiatric).
Different kinds of music or background noise.
Behavioral triggers—if you notice X is happening, do Y. LOTS of variants of X and Y to try out.
Keep a whiteboard at hand, for short-term notes and memory prompts.
Other note-taking media—voice recording is out of style, but it works for some.
Switch topics often, to keep interest/novelty level high.
Switch topics rarely, to keep sufficient background knowledge in your cache.
Study partners—both for structure of time/topic, and to give a specific audience to summarize for.
I have a proof that this is a solvable problem, but it won’t fit in this margin.
I’ve known many people who experience similar difficulties, and have had some of them myself. I have not found any reliable approaches that work for everyone, or even work for a majority. You’re likely to need to try a bunch of stuff, and figure out what works for you. This takes years (as it’s often weeks or months before you know whether a partial technique is actually useful for you), and changes over time, so it never ends. But for many, some idiosyncratic combination of some the following help a lot. This is not in order, just a brainstorm of things to try:
Daily meditation.
Rigid on/off schedule—pomodoro or the like.
Flexible on/off schedule—permission to work 30 minutes some days, and 10 hours when in the zone.
Psychiatric medication.
Self-managed medication (rarely successful long-term without combining with psychiatric).
Different kinds of music or background noise.
Behavioral triggers—if you notice X is happening, do Y. LOTS of variants of X and Y to try out.
Keep a whiteboard at hand, for short-term notes and memory prompts.
Other note-taking media—voice recording is out of style, but it works for some.
Switch topics often, to keep interest/novelty level high.
Switch topics rarely, to keep sufficient background knowledge in your cache.
Study partners—both for structure of time/topic, and to give a specific audience to summarize for.
I have a proof that this is a solvable problem, but it won’t fit in this margin.