Hi Jerry,
Here are some tips with noting:
Gil Fronsdal NotingNoting is a practice that can be done with labelling and without labelling. I had this problem too until I read the above advice. What you want to tap into is consciousness. The way people use the word normally can cause problems with understanding. What I mean by consciousness is the knowing part of your mind. When you "get lost in thoughts" your knowing part of your mind knows this happened. For example. Look at something and understand that YOU KNOW you are seeing it. Do the same with all the other senses and then treat thoughts the same way. Thoughts are registering in your consciousness all the time. The stress and strain of noting should be let go of because noting should be about seeing what's happening in real time to your consciousness.
I know this is very subtle but the practice is about truly zeroing in on what stress is. Stress is fixation and clinging to perceptions of liking and disliking objects from your memory or what's in front of you. By looking at the many different lists of what to note (4 foundations/5 aggregates), you start to organize your practice so you can notice more of what's hitting your consciousness. What you are to do is see the 3 characteristics in each of these phenomena until your brain loses enchantment/addiction/obsession with that phenomena. The fact that thoughts are hitting the knowing part of your mind means thoughts cannot be a permanent "self" because it's being seen by consciousness. Thoughts are impermanent because they come and go, and most importantly thoughts about likes and dislikes (with fixation/rumination) should feel stressful to the body. If you can do this you can see everything hitting your consciousness over and over again until dispassion naturally occurs.
To go more subtle with the practice notice how intentions also hit the consciousness. Intending to meditate or intending to note is more stuff that doesn't have to be grasped and clung to. Notice how the part of your mind that manipulates where your attention goes is also stressful. Let the attention go where it wants and just note it without labels and watch it pass away naturally. The practice is best when you don't
add fixation and don't
repress experiences. Just let phenomena (including mental movements) pass away on their own. There is no "you" that has to let go. It let's go on its own. So for example when you get lost in thoughts just let it happen and when the mind naturally comes back to the present moment don't do anything and look at thoughts
as an experience that just happened in the present moment like anything else. It's almost like a cloud that came and went and consciousness just watched it happen. High processing thinking is needed in life and you don't want to repress it.
As Daniel rightly likes to harp on it's important to look at how thoughts feel instead of obsessing on what they mean. Treat thoughts like sensations. Buddhists look at thoughts like a 6th sense. Here's an exchange with Kenneth Folk on his site I found helpful:
Practice becoming aware of the body sensations that correspond to a thought. Whenever a thought arises, feel the body. How do you know whether you like the thought or not? It's because the body sensations feel either pleasant or unpleasant. Notice that if you dissociate from this moment, i.e., step into the fantasy and leave the body, you will suffer. Suffering is not ordinary pain; ordinary pain is just unpleasant sensation. Suffering is cause by the dissociation, the stepping out of this moment, out of the body. Stay in the body and ride the waves of body sensation. Watch how the body reacts to the thoughts and vice versa. See how the looping between body and mind IS the dissociation. Short-circuit this by returning to the body. Stay with the body as continuously as you can. You are stretching the amount of time you can stay in the body without being blown out of it by an event or a thought. To be in the body is to be free. To be in the body all the time is to be free all the time.
Now you should see what Daniel points out repeatedly, which is that thoughts don't actually feel anything. They can make your body feel something (negative or positive thoughts) but they aren't an experiencer or watcher that experiences. Sensations hit your consciousness and thoughts aren't a "self" that experiences it before it hits consciousness. The habit we have is to think quickly over top experiences like it's a self experiencing it when experiences have already come and gone. Analyzing experience is just more thoughts. Thoughts can't hear and thoughts can't see, etc. Hearing can't think and seeing can't think.
The Role of Appropriate Attention"Then, Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bāhiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress."
By getting more disenchanted with rumination and fixation over likes and dislikes your concentration should improve so you can do what you want with life. Organize your life in goals and break down large goals into smaller ones and execute them day in and day out to change your active habits so that your mindfulness will actually help you in life. Meditation won't help with daily tasks except to reduce clinging but that should make it easier to just get things done because if you're not fixated there should be less old habits in the way and you let habitual impulses pass away before you act on them.
Finally with consciousness. It is also impermanent. Consciousness is always conscious of something. So if a meditator fades their senses with concentration up through the jhanas until consciousness doesn't have objects then consciousness disappears (briefly for most people) and that should be proof that there's nothing permanent anywhere.
So this is a lot to digest but it's all in one post.

Have fun with practice!