Tool: meditation

This one is so obvious it almost feels dumb to include, but it's so important that I can't leave it out.

I was a practicing buddhist for a while. While I no longer consider myself a buddhist, some concepts and practices are dear to me —like meditation.

Sit comfortably but straight.
Set a timer.
Focus my attention on breathing.
Every time attention wanders —and, oh! it does— redirect it to the sensations of breathing, kindly.

These objects help:

Hearing protection earmuffs (3M Peltor Optime 101). My internal noise is still enough, thank you.
Meditation cushion. Helps me sit straight and it's comfortable.

Bonus points:

I've been trying to calm internal speech down during meditation.
While focusing on breathing, just try to keep words from popping up.
Surprisingly, it works some of the time.
It takes a few minutes for the chatter to start quieting.
The amount of words and thoughts that come rushing is sometimes impressive, or overwhelming. It varies a lot, from session to session.

If you're enterested in the buddhist meditation practice, search for Shamatha meditation.