just to expand on the meditation side, I recently had a huge breakthrough with my focus from regular 10-minute morning meditation sessions. After a couple of months of attempting to focus on my breath while dealing with a rapidly fluctuating train of thought/attention, eventually that part of my mind "detached" from the attentive focus that I control during meditation.

I can still "see" it if I pay attention to it or don't have anything to actively attend to, but there's a higher level focus which I'm in strong control of. Since then, a 10-minute meditation in the morning leaves me in near-total control of my attention for most of the working day.

This is just from a couple of months' regular practice, so this just goes to show you can achieve revolutionary as well as evolutionary progress from meditative practice.