A crowded schedule can train your eyes to search mainly for exits.

Overload changes what you are looking for. When every hour is committed, attention reorganises itself around escape: which meeting could be shortened, which commitment might cancel itself, how soon this conversation ends. You stop being present anywhere because presence has become expensive. The people around you can feel it even when nothing is said, and it is rarely about them.

If you recognise this, take one thing out of the week rather than trying to be more present inside it. A single genuinely empty afternoon does more than any amount of resolving to concentrate.