This is a weird take, but as a junior developer, I find I'm more productive on the days with meetings because I'm 'forced' to squeeze in the 'real work' rather than just being scared.

It might help if you introduce more things to focus in and out on. I find that when I'm playing a game I'm not as interested in/has down time, by having something like music playing softly in the background, I'm able to focus in better during slow periods.

Some amount of LoFi beats, classical, or music in another language might help a bit even if you feel you need to 'focus in' by just providing a bit more stimulation? I find that without music it's much harder for me to enter my flow state when programming even if I 'stop hearing' the music once I get into what I'm working on.

But everyone's different, that's just something that works for me, but I hope that you keep up the hard work. Focus is hard, and you're taking some important steps to try and restore yours.

I already listen to techno when I'm working. The problem is that when I'm not intrinsically/emotionally interested in a task I struggle to force myself to focus on it. It seems like focus is not something I can control, I always would rather distract myself with low effort dopamine fodder (youtube, twitter, reddit, hacker news, tiktok, looking for new music to put on, etc.)

I've been trying for years. I was introduced to technology very young, and have been using the internet since I was about 8 to 10 years old. I'm 27 now, I've been seriously trying to improve my focus since I was about 22, but nothing stuck. If intensive meditation cannot help me, I'm not sure if anything can, except maybe some kind of drugs.

Have you talked to a doctor about ADHD and possible treatment methods? The pharmacology behind prescribed stimulants work to flood our dopamine receptors greatly weakening that urge to check our phone for those sweet, sweet, notifications.

I'm British, and in the UK it's extremely hard to get adult ADHD diagnosis. Basically you have to go to a private doctor and even then they are quite strict. Due to my high academic achievement (doctor in quantum physics) they will probably say I don't have it. The situation there for adult ADHD is so bad that basically I just gave up on the whole thing and decided that I didn't have it.

I live in Germany now, but unfortunately I don't speak German anywhere near well enough to get a consultation.

Are there no English speaking doctors in Germany?

A specialist in the UK might be worth talking to. You’ve tried many natural alternatives and nothing helps you with your work. Meditating every day for a year is a big accomplishment and it says a lot for it to not help.

At my old job, even if you plugged a generic keyboard that you'd already been using with the computer into the wrong USB port it wouldn't work. I believe you can set this stuff all up to be looking for very specific pieces of hardware on specific USB ports.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do I actually use these? Control + A?

Not dumb, "c-" is ambiguous, but yes – it refers to the control key, so ctrl-a will get you back to the start of the line/sentence/etc.

My ctrl key seems to mimic my Command key for most of these command and not do anything in other cases (Firefox & Word). Is there some setting I need to change?

I'm using these keybindings in Firefox right now, without any custom config (other than mapping caps lock -> control). Go to the URL bar and hit control-a and control-e; do they work? Type a few words of a reply comment, and in the comment text field, try control-a and control-e; do they work?

The shortcuts are meant for applications using readline or readline conventions (so tons of command line apps, but also lots of Cocoa apps).

Firefox and Word probably are not in that category (don't know, I use Chrome/Safari and Pages).

Neither of those programs use readline. I map ctrl-e to end of line in Word because I use it so habitually. Safari uses these shortcuts as does terminal.

yes

Something that I've heard of people doing is getting a timer box. Basically what it is, is something that locks for a designated period of time.

When you're done work you can pop your stuff in it, set a timer for 16 hours or whatever is necessary then you can't access these things at all.

Here's a rough link to what I mean (https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Safe-Locking-Container-Height...)

Amusingly, I tried this approach. What I found is that I would make up any excuse to not lock my device in the timer box.

Seems like my addiction runs very very deep.

It sounds dumb and it's not how addiction works, but it might be worth just will powering yourself into it the first time then going with the calendar chain approach to try and not break your streak.

Even if you fail every once in a while, it'll be an improvement to what you're describing now.