Any tips for focusing on schoolwork? The quarter ends next week for me and I have 12 missing assignments but I can’t just sit down and do it smh. My meds don’t do shit to help me so I basically run on caffine and Doritos
I was planning on making a longer and more detailed post about this since I struggled with the exact same thing last semester but I’ll do a quick one since you’re in a hurry!
-Ask a university student with ADHD
How to overcome executive dysfunction and just get it done!
A quick overview for the stressed and depressed ADHD student
All strategies mentioned are ones I have tried during a very stressful period in my life and I can happily announce that I succsessfully passed all my re-exams!
1. Study at the library or a similarily quiet place, by no means attempt to study at home or god forbid a café you’ll regret it.
Studying at the library takes so much less effort and energy than studying at home or in s noisy café, save your precious energy for focusing on your work instead of trying to avoid distraction
Libraries are great and full of people who are also studying which will help you feel more motivated!
2. Get rid of your phone 📱
This one ☝🏻 oh boy, it was a game changer, I know you think you may have the discipline not to get distracted but it makes a world of difference
Put your phone in a seperate room on silent if you can, this is the most effective way.
If not, put it at the bottom of your bag and make it as hard as possible to find
Use wireless headphones 🎧 for music so you don’t have to keep your phone within arms reach
3. Write down exactly what you’re doing and divide into small easily doable tasks
Part of the struggle is not knowing what to do, or the task feeling too big and too hard. Write down the task in steps, as many as you need, as simple as you can. Break them down to the smallest and most easily done bits until you feel like you can handle them.
Example: For uni last semester I had 3 smaller tests per week apart from the usual exams. We had to translate between 1500-3000 words every two days on our own and during lectures We’d do a quick 15 min test based on what we’d read that would affect our final grade.
”Translate 2000 words” sounds like a lot so the way I did it was that I put the text into a word file and dived it into seperate paragraphs
I’d end up with 10-12 paragraphs and that would be my focus
So if I had two days to translate, I’d translate 6/12 paragraphs the first day and the remaining 6 the next day
It feels much easier than sitting with a document of seemingly endless work. Because we can have a hard time planning and looking ahead, it helps to give yourself some structure
4. Check off and visualize finished tasks to boost motivation ✅
Again, using last semester as an example
The way I did it is something I call:
At this time I was obsessed with Zelda games and I randomly drew a little heart in my planner while thinking of Zelda and thought ”huh, what if I used ”video game hearts” as a representation for my own work?” And I have been doing it religously since.
The way I did it was I drew 12 hearts in my planner in a line like this, seperating them with a line in the middle.
When I finished translating a paragraph I would fill a heart with a bright pink pen because I love pink💗 It was almost like a reward and it made me more motivated to keep going, it also provided a visual to let me know how much work I had gotten done and how much was left
So when my planner looked like this:
It would motivate me because it meant I was almost finished for the day and I knew that I had completed half of the task already.
5. Wireless noise cancelling headphones 🎧 + ADHD friendly music
Noice cancelling keeps you from getting distracted by 🗣🎶👏🏻✍🏻👣
Wireless is just amazing in general but it also keeps you away from your phone which will often distract you even when you’re trying hard. Some models allow you to even change songs without touching your phone, which is super helpful
Make a list of music or find good mixes on youtube/Spotify that are not distracting 🎶 They can be motivational and upbeat or slow and relaxing, whatever helps you the most
I have a ”Motivational study songs” list with a lot of upbeat high tempo songs that are about reaching your goals, a mix of rock, pop, Disney and musical songs
Never gonna give you up by Rick Astley is the perfect ADHD study song idk why but it just works wonders for me
But some days the upbeat music is just too distracting so then I put on classical music (mostly Tchaikovsky) or a lofi youtube video. Changing up music is good since your ADHD brain will get bored of the same thing easily
There are also quiet and very aestethic ”☕️study with me 📖” videos on youtube that are like 2 hour long where a person just sits quietly and studies
they can be great because it makes you feel like you have a study buddy but they wont distract you by talking 🙊 as long as you don’t get distracted by them
That’s all for this post! BELIEVE ME i tried SOOO hard to keep it short and it was a lot longer at first i’m sorry if it’s a lot to read🙈
I hope some of this is at least somewhat helpful. Thank you for reading and good luck with your studies!💗
