You are not alone.

Some words I took from your post were that “[T]there is only one truth. You […] ALLOW yourself to be distracted.” and “It will never be up to anyone other than yourself[.]”

There is a theory that our default state of mind is that “racing state” that coned88 described, that most people are like that most of the time. Only few people, like both you are coned88 notice that it is happening. Fewer still learn, internalize, and practice noticing when their mind wanders and bringing their focus back to the task at hand, or as you put it, being a man.

So in short, yes coned88, you just purge thoughts, actions, and literature that are not moving you towards accomplishing the task at hand.

This can be taught. Or, as you put it, “[P]hysiologically as a human you are designed to adapt” and, more or less, we all have the same basic physiology.

In response to coned88’s first question “Any advice on what I should do?”

coned88’s, I’m tempted to tell you about my personal story, but I will focus on the advice and try to rely on my credibility as a stranger on the internet and citations for credibility.

There are secular meditation techniques based on Tibetan Buddhism has been shown to increase the practitioners ability be aware of shifts in focus. I’m primarily citing personal experience.

I’d like to recommend a book, a course, with instructions to help you increase your focus, but I don’t know of one. The books I have read focus on managing stress and healing emotional wounds instead of improving mental performance. The vast majority of stuff out there uses a lot of poetry, jargon, and generalizations I cannot recommend, but this lifehacker article was the best I found[6]. I hope it helps you.

My secular interpretation of Buddhism is that they used fables to codify knowledge before they had writing. Information is easier to memorize that way[4]. Monks were trained to decode the knowledge from the fables. Or at least that is my understanding.

Considering the short history of psychology in the West[5], as well as the cults, self help gurus, and experiments with drugs in the 60’s, it is still hard to find credible sources that validate meditation. Advances in neural imaging, as well as a growing psychological literature, as well as my personal experimentation has lead me to believe that specific meditative practices lead to increased awareness and control of mental focus.

“Our data indicate that meditation training makes you better at focusing, in part by allowing you to better regulate how things that arise will impact you.” –Christopher Moore, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT as quoted by the MIT Press[1]

A lot of the current research[2] focuses on using fMRI machines to see what is happening in the brain during meditation.

"What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says, according the BBC article. How you use your brain has been shown to physically change over time based on how it is used. "One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says.

[1] http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/meditation-0505

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646

[3] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...

[4] http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...

[5] William James, Link to Harvard.edu http://bit.ly/1yrbVVD

[6] http://lifehacker.com/5895509/train-your-brain-for-monk-like...