There is a distinction here that sounds small and turns out to matter a great deal, because getting it wrong is the most common reason people decide this is not working for them.

A skill is the thing you are building. An exercise is how you build it.

Mindfulness is a skill. Meditation is an exercise.

The Comparison That Makes It Clear

Physical fitness. Being fit is a capacity. Lifting weights is a thing you do to build that capacity.

Nobody lifts weights in order to be good at lifting weights. They lift so they can carry things, climb stairs, and get through a long day. What they are after is the capacity, and lifting is how they build it.

It works the same way here. You do not meditate in order to become good at meditating. You meditate so that you can notice what is happening in you while you are in the middle of an argument, or a difficult meeting, or a moment where you are about to do something you will regret.

That is where the skill actually gets used. Which means the measure of whether this is working is not how your practice sessions went. It is whether you are catching things earlier in ordinary life.

A Distracted Session Is Not a Failed Session

That distinction matters, because a lot of people judge the whole approach by the quality of a single session. The session felt distracted, so they conclude they are bad at this, and they stop.

But noticing that you were distracted is the skill itself. Every time you catch that your attention has gone somewhere else and bring it back, that is one repetition. That is what you are practicing, and it is why a distracted session still counts.

Meditation Is Not the Only Exercise

All four of these are skills. Mindfulness, compassion, insight, and reframing are all capacities you build, and each one has exercises attached to it.

And meditation is not the only exercise available, which is worth knowing if sitting still is not something you take to. Writing builds these skills. Mirror work builds them. Deliberately paying attention in the middle of an ordinary day builds them.

These are different exercises that build the same capacities.

Pace

These are learned skills, which means they follow the rules other learned skills follow. They come from repetition rather than from intensity. A small amount done consistently builds more than a large amount done once.

Your brain physically changes with practice. That is not a figure of speech, it is what neuroplasticity means. But it changes through repeated use over time, not through a single effort.

So there is no benefit to pushing hard enough that you will not do it again tomorrow. Pick an amount you will actually repeat.