If you have had the experience of speaking to someone sitting near you and having them say, "Sorry! What did you say? I was somewhere else", you know about mind-wandering. Mind-wandering and being present are often thought to be opposites. "Present" and "presence" are words that pop up often in current discussions of meditation. Another common word is "aware", as in the title of Dr. Daniel J. Siegel's book "Aware".
Siegel's book is the most systematic one I have seen. He tries to give some structure and steps that can be followed in meditation.
When the subjects of attention and awareness come up, I often think of the man named "Apollo Robbins". You can catch him in action on some YouTube videos:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=apollo+robbins
Basically, Robbins is an expert pickpocket but he does demonstrations and shows his skills instead of stealing. Many books about modern life and living it well mention distraction. Robbins is an expert at short bursts of distraction so that you are looking elsewhere and attending to something else during the short time his hand is in your pocket.
A common discussion of sitting with your mind mentions how the mind wanders. I guess it is part of being an animal to have ability to notice things that might be signs of danger (What was that sound?) and to be alert. However, once we see a bear or a bull coming at us, we naturally concentrate on that phenomenon and worry about the electric bill some other time. One approach is to place one's attention on a spot on the wall or on one's breath and try to keep attention there. Subtly, sneakily, silently, other thoughts, images, ideas, worries, memories sneak into front and center. The advice is to stop thinking about the intrusion and return to focus on the spot or the breath. The trick is to notice that something has intruded and to drop it.
Why bother? There are tons of web pages, books, videos and coaches who have answers. I would say doing such a practice for about 10 minutes a day increases a feeling of comfort and respect for oneself. If you want, put this into Google and look over the results:
what are the benefits of meditation
