alright so here's the thing

the meds help you to focus, and they also help you to sorta 'engage' in different things, at the right dose ideally they boost your focus so that it's more easy to maintain engagement without losing sight of whatever, but they shouldn't make it harder to engage in what you want to engage in in and of themselves, if that's the case, you're probably on too high a dose

HOWEVER, in saying that, you need to learn to exercise that functioning of willful engagement in your mind, and if you've gone unmedicated for ADHD your whole life, or never had a proper support system/treatment to help you to learn the skills to some degree, you probably have next to no idea /how/ to go about that, you feel as though it's beyond you

Tend to find that ADHD coping mechanisms are largely based in avoidance and habits that lead to stimulation, hence we procrastinate, not because we CAN'T get things done, we could even know they're easy to do, but it's how we've learnt to operate, procrastination becomes almost a way of life for us, because it was the only way we could seemingly get by

So how do the meds help if they boost your focus, but it's not the 'ability' to focus that's the immediate problem, after all, you can focus on your stimulating tasks, right?

for me the double edged sword is that IR works great at getting me primed for my activities, because it has the added plus of mental hoop effect; this is where we kind of have the unfortunate reality of feeling a need to jump through some kind of hoop to actually engage in something else to begin with, and we've learnt to avoid even trying to do it without jumping through some hoop because even when we've managed before to 'just do it', we struggle to stay focused and engaged due to how the disorder kinda works against us, feeding back on our desire to procrastinate and seek stimulation

so in that sense, your IR booster med is probably the most likely to help you start breaking through the 'inner bullshit' and actually practice engaging in different tasks, it will also keep you focused on it, for a short while after, but when the med drops out you lose focus and become sorta irritable/tired, not a great thing if you need to be focused

the XR med is kinda the opposite, it's not great for getting you immediately engaged because you tend to take the XR med to keep you 'functional' or 'focused' for the majority of the day,

the draw back on this is, it somewhat lacks in that other aspect where you switch from 'I can't engage in that' to 'Lets do it',

so in saying that, until you learn to actively engage in executive functioning and willfully change and engage tasks without thinking it's beyond you (which, yes, you can sorta retrain yourself to do, but it's a lot harder to learn than i'd like to admit), the XR will probably just leave you more focused on your existing habits, the procrastination.

Meds don't do away with procrastination, but they can prime you and keep you focused which can be a good tool against it, meds really are there to help you maintain your ADHD symptoms though, which procrastination /is not/ and /should not/ be directly attributed, otherwise it can be easy to see the meds as not working, and in that, you lose the ability to start seeing past the inner bullshit with their help. They're not there to magically make you want to do difficult tasks like some kind of productivity robot, they're not there to magically make you stay ON track like some hyperfocused laser beam, they're there to give you a better fighting chance at pushing yourself to stay focused on things that are difficult, you still have to put the work in, the problem is they also happen to make it easier to stay focused on things you enjoy, so in some sense, it can make it seem like they're not really working. Avoid chasing that boost through higher doses, it doesn't get you anywhere, and it leads to a world of confusion, not a fun time.

for procrastination, you need to learn to start practicing getting past that in your self, you need to see it for what it is, and you need to retrain your mind through awareness, practice, and eventually, it sorta just 'makes sense' and becomes an easy thing to get past, even while you're in the middle of your XR med dose

It takes time, don't expect the meds to magically fix that, if it's been a life long coping mechanism, talk to your doctor and see if you can't get further assistance alongside meds like CBT, because it will help you develop those life skills A LOT,

A metaphor to close off with:

if you lived without legs your whole life and were suddenly given a pair, you'd still need to learn to walk, that's the hard part, and it can be easy to just keep crawling if that's how you've always been doing it. But if your end goal is to be able to walk, there's no way you can short cut it other than regular practice