Study Habits For ADHD Adults

Even though these pages are about developing study habits for ADHD adults, these principles translate to any long-duration project that spans months or years! I must forewarn you, however, that if you’re looking for a quick fix, you’ve come to the wrong place. The tools and lessons in these pages are for those who genuinely want to transform themselves from who they are today to who they want to be tomorrow.

I could have made this set of pages shorter. Still, I decided to include my thought processes and reasonings as I progressed through developing good study habits and, more importantly, making these habits stick for the duration.

Distraction Is The Enemy; Perspective Is Your Friend

When performing any task that requires a focused mind, we have an enemy that masks itself as our friend, DISTRACTION! Distraction is an ADHD adult’s worst enemy! Distraction prevents us from reaching our goals and once accomplished, we blame ourselves for not being smart enough!

How many times have you started a new project? In the middle of it, you see something else that needs to get done, and you think to yourself, this will only take a minute, and you finish it, but before you do, you’re off on another tangent till the original project is all but forgotten. Does this ring a bell?

Projects are fun and exciting until they’re not. Once the real work is complete and all you need is to finish the project, it’s no longer a priority because now, it becomes a chore! The hallmark of adult ADHD homeowners is lots of unfinished projects. What do unfinished projects have to do with studying? Studying involves quietly sitting in one place for an hour or more. Sound boring? Boring is something all ADHD adults have trouble with at the best of times! At this point, many ADHD adults throw up their hands in frustration and yell to the World, “This isn’t for me!” but please bear with me. It get better, I promise!

If you’ve read this far, you might think: This is why I fail at studying. Fortunately, the truth is a different story with a much better ending! Not only can you study, but you can excel at learning! Almost as a rule, you will find that adult ADHD students graduate in the top 10% of their class! But how you ask? Not to worry, we’re getting to how next!

What The Adult ADHD Students Needs To Know

1. Being creatures of habit, we live by routines and habits, whether we know it or not. In the following pages, we will concentrate on developing habits, specifically, study habits as an ADHD adult.
2. “Normal” adults are reward-driven. ADHD adults are pain driven. What is the difference? One of the most common conditions of ADHD is anxiety disorder! I’ll worry myself sick over a deadline, imagining the worst outcome, but the reality is rarely ever as we fear. In my 73 years, I’ve seen the worst a couple of times, and in both cases, they turned out to be blessings in disguise. If you’re an adult with ADHD, anxiety comes with the territory, and anxiety is pain.
3. The question isn’t: How do I learn to ignore the pain of studying? The real question is: How can I create pain that results when I don’t study? ADHD Adults are dreamers, reality creators, and excuse inventors. One of the things we excel at is creative problem-solving to the extreme, which is why innovative organizations value us! We solve the World’s thorniest problems because we don’t think as “normal” folks do. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, is a good example. Steve came up with ideas we won’t have the technology to realize for fifty years!
4. Folks who rely on us to develop innovative solutions get upset when we’re turned loose without oversight. Yes, we come up with solutions nobody else does, but unless we carefully weed out the “unreasonable,” the list we provide contains fluff. Because our problem perspective wasn’t constrained to a narrow set of parameters, we give all innovative solutions, even those requiring future technologies.
5. You’ve developed lousy study habits over a period spanning years or decades! Creating new habits is easy, but making them stick is much more complicated. When I talk about creating habits, I mean replacing a bad habit with a good one and ensuring it’s embedded within your psyche, making it a permanent part of who you are. Creating a habit as complex as studying requires a minimum of twelve weeks!

Routines Vs. Habits

The difference between a routine and a habit may seem slight, but I assure you, the separation is the difference between success and failure!

• Routines: A routine is a behavior that involves a set of steps performed regularly. Routines are how we ensure we don’t skip steps in performing a behavior. Studying is a ritual. If we miss a routine, there is no immediate consequence.
• Habits: According to Dr. Benjamin Gardner, a habit researcher, a habit is an act that generates an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought but causes an uncomfortable feeling if not performed. Examples would be brushing/flossing your teeth, showering before work, or washing your hands after using the toilet.

The following paragraphs will show how to create a habit that drives study routines. By creating a habit as a driver, your brain develops an immediate negative response to missing a study session. In this way, we will overcome the #1 resistance to studying, the act of sitting down to study.

Remember earlier, we discussed how ADHD adults are pain driven? You will use pain to get what you want by tricking your mind into thinking the act of studying is as vital as a paycheck! How would you feel if you didn’t receive your next paycheck? Can you imagine the worry a missing paycheck would generate?

How do we create such trickery? By creating a strong enough motivation to overcome any excuses. According to Nir Eyal, author of “Indistractable,” Motivation is the desire to escape discomfort. The form of Motivation we will discuss is a vision, but not just any vision. We’re talking about a future vision based on what you’re studying to become. A vision so compelling that you will never tire of seeing it, and each time you experience your vision, you will get excited and passionate about your future. Your vision should make you jump out of bed every morning and want to yell to the World: I’m here, I’m becoming what I want to be, and I will become a beacon in the darkness for others to follow!

Creating your vision is not a 5-minute chore! Your vision must be passionate and significant enough to get you through the slumps and challenges you will face along your journey. A professor in one of my classes stated: “Nobody goes through a doctoral program without scars,”! Of course, this statement goes for any journey toward self-improvement you will take

People are adverse to change and will do almost anything to prevent change, including preventing you from getting your education, because if you leave, they must face their demons! You will lose friends, and you might not have time to stay in touch with the friend you don’t lose, but in the end, it will be worth the effort!

The Need To Create A Study Routine

As a 57-year-old ADHD adult, I’d experienced more than my share of failures in furthering my education. Do you know what the definition of insanity is? According to Albert Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over the same way and expecting different results”. Knowing I needed different results, I had to change my methodology, which started me on my journey.

One month before the start of my first class in my Bachelor’s program, I started seeing a psychiatrist to figure out why I always failed at college. My second session resulted in my ADHD diagnosis. From that day forward, I had two bosses; my vision and a passion for learning all I could about ADHD. By the start of my second semester, I had studying nailed down and was on my way. Of course, this wasn’t by chance. I read medical volumes and books on ADHD by and for laypersons. I interviewed mental health professionals and successful business professionals with ADHD, and a plan began forming to overcome my resistance to studying. When my plan solidified, I used it and gave it to others in my class who were struggling with tests. The results were the same for them as mine, and we formed a study group. By the time we graduated, we were #1, #3, #5, and #6 at the top of our class!

When I stepped into my first class on my Bachelor’s path, I did so with trepidation and a fear of failing again. Two years later, I was a powerhouse of knowledge and craved more! Six weeks later, I entered my Master’s program with the same results, except I had another problem now. Every class I attended stoked my passion for learning because I was fascinated by everything I was learning. My problem? How could I decide on a major when I was interested and passionate about everything? As luck would have it, fate intervened during my second semester when anyone who maintained at least a 3.80 GPA had a chance to sit in on the recently designed first class on the Psychology of Project Management. That was when I fell in love with industrial psychology!

Halfway through my Master’s program, I hit a wall! I was taking a Statistics class, which was kicking my butt! Ultimately, I felt lucky to get 83% for the course, the lowest grade in any class I took through my doctoral program! The pain of that class drove me to research further the different types of memory and how I might leverage this information to understand better what I was studying. At this same time, the business my wife and I started a few years ago took off and required more attention. I needed a better way to study, which allowed me to gain more knowledge with fewer hours!

I pleaded my case with the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD. He suggested reading Edward M. Hallowell’s new revision of “Driven To Distraction,” a book I consider the ADHD bible for folks with ADHD or family/friends of folks with ADHD. Dr. Hollowell’s book gave me additional ideas to provide greater learning leverage, such as smell and hearing. I hadn’t even considered using hearing or smell to engage my brain further when pumping it full of knowledge. Within days, I knew I’d hit on a winning combination! Adding these two additional senses to my repertoire of study steps resulted in consistently high grades with 25% less time spent studying!

Creating My Vision

Visualization is a powerful tool! If done right, the visualization involves all five senses to envision what you want for tomorrow! Visualization creates an image in your mind of a future as if it were happening today. A compelling vision is not something you make in a few minutes but must evolve, using several tools to probe your brain. Since ADHD adults have a deficit in working memory, using a journal is a requirement. I chose a Leuchtturm 1917 hardback dotted journal because it is fountain pen friendly. I’ve always loved the feel and look of a fountain pen and have used them since childhood. I can change the color of the inks to match my thoughts and moods and use different colors in my journals for other things, like Red for priority, Yellow for highlighting, Green for future topics, and violet for nodes.

Creating a vision sounds simple. Creating a compelling vision that drives passion and forward momentum is anything but straightforward because of the first question you must ask yourself: What do I want? What I thought I wanted was an intrinsic idea that defied definition. I wanted fame and fortune, but they are not definable because they constantly move. As it turned out, what I wanted instead of fame was to be respected in my field and community.

I utilized three powerful tools that provide a complete picture of what I want from my future. I did not include how to use these tools, as there is a ton of information on the Internet to help you; otherwise, these pages would number in the dozens!

• SWOT – SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A quick look on the Internet provides lots of information on how to SWOT a subject. SWOT is an excellent tool to explore ANY question at home or work! I use SWOT at home to analyze any complex question I need answers to, such as where we should go for this year’s vacation or if going back to college is a good idea for me at this time. Project/Change Managers are experts with SWOT, utilizing SWOT for analyzing a project early on.
• Mind Map – There is much information on mind mapping on the Internet. A mind map is primarily unknown to the general population, most likely due to the complexity of understanding what the mind maps are for. A mind map is a tool used to drive thinking within the brain. A mind map can be a general map of ideas or driven by a central theme, such as a graduation party or what major to select in college. The basic principle of a mind map is to create an evolution of an idea, using nodes to expand from the central point. You can go it alone with a sheet of paper, which is the most intuitive method, or use the software. Mind mapping software has several advantages over paper:
  • Offers an unlimited canvas size and node expansion
  • Attach files, photos, spreadsheets, personal thoughts, etc.
  • Save/export from any device attached to the home network
  • The best software can make AI-driven suggestions
  • I use MindNode, a mind-mapping software for Apple users.
• Scrapbooking – While scrapbooking can seem a bit hokey, a visual representation can help to solidify a vision in ways the printed word can’t. I scoured the Internet and magazines like Inc, Entrepreneur, Wired, and Fast Company for images that moved me. I also collected pictures of kayaks I wanted (I race kayaks), bicycle tours I wanted to ride in, furniture my future house would have, and places my wife and I wanted to visit. Trust me, when you hit a wall, start thumbing through your scrapbook, and dozens of new ideas will percolate in your brain!

I started with questions: Why did I want fame and fortune/wealth? When I SWOT and mind-mapped these questions, I came up with a list of dozens of wants, distilled to the following list:

• Peace of mind
• My wife is happy
• A house in a community heavy with veterans
• Safety
• A better-paying job that I was passionate about
• Publish one fiction and non-fiction book producing residual income
• Be respected in my career and community
• Be able to help others become their best selves
• Be able to afford a better lifestyle without pinching pennies
• Be able to send my kids to any college of their choosing
• My wife and I remain healthy as we age

SWOTing the above took nearly twelve hours over seven days. As my vision percolated, I daydreamed about wants/needs, resulting in two visions; one for home and one for work. As my visions evolved, so did my scrapbook as I continued adding ideas and concepts to my vision.

Within six weeks, I had two visions that excited me and made the adrenaline flow, and thumbing threw my scrapbook sent shivers of delight up and down my spine. In total, the evolution of my visions was spread over 97 pages. The distillation process reduced my written visions to three bulleted pages. I was happy and excited with the results.

Does this sound like a lot of work? Remember, your vision needs to encourage and inspire you through slumps and challenges when you’re tired and discouraged and must survive the march of time, and must excite you as much at the end as in the beginning!

My Vision

My work vision is me presenting to a group of about 40 executives. I wear a tailored grey 3-piece suit, pink dress shirt, and a red and purple paisley power tie. I propose turning the organization from a has-been into an industry powerhouse using the Red-Ocean/Blue-Ocean organizational development principles. I own the consulting company I represent and am part of a five-person traveling team. We have a loyal following of medium to large organizations, with a dozen more hoping to be added. Work is rewarding, and we are passionate about what we do and how we do it.

My family lives in a quirky and diverse neighborhood of entrepreneurial veterans, including four of the five members of my team. Everyone is a friend, and community get-togethers happen twice a year on Labor Day and Memorial Day. Even though separated by school and marriage, my family is close, with deep ties to the community. Evening meals are exciting, with everyone vying for time to say why their day was the best through an evening meal conference call. One evening a week, I lead high school students through a highly successful Junior Achievement Entrepreneurial program, and two evenings a week, I teach a Change Management For Entrepreneurs class at the University. Weekends find me competing/training for road bicycle time trial events or fly fishing a mountain stream with my wife. Major Holidays are huge affairs as our family, now numbering close to 25, get together at a different hotel close to one of our kid’s families on a rotating basis. By the time we count inlaws, the number closes to fifty, so we use hotel conference rooms.

My wife and I, Alpha’s, work together as she handles the books and scheduling. Even though we own a T.V., it’s been weeks since we’ve turned it on. If we’re not involved with work or family, we’re engaged in some art activity or learning a new art skill together. We’re taking a class in Calligraphy, which we plan to use when creating our Holiday/Birthday cards. Empty nesters, my wife and I live in a smaller 1,800 square foot, 4BR, 2BA home that fits our personalities. We each have our own office. Our three-car garage splits between my wife’s side for her car and my side, which is my home workshop.

The Awakening

Using a friend as a sounding board, I complained about several challenges and setbacks that laid siege to my journey over the past four months. He listened as I lamented. When I finished talking, he suggested I read a small book I could read in the evening. If you haven’t read Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist.,” it should be a top-priority read! This book changed my life and solidified my journey. No event, however harsh, could alter my path to attaining my doctorate! The day I read The Alchemist, I became an unstoppable force! Since that day in February 2014, I’ve read The Alchemist four more times, each time getting what I needed! I don’t want to spoil the lessons, so I won’t expand more on the book except to say, read it now!

Creating Your Study Space

Here are three truths for creating your study space:

1. You won’t use it if you don’t LOVE being in your study space! Your study space should beckon to you every day, and you should look forward to entering your study space and closing the door against the troubles of the outside World!
2. Your study space has to be your own! While you might use mine, you must modify yours to fit your needs and wants. We are different individuals with different families, upbringings, experiences, education, and values. Each of us is unique, and there has never been, nor ever be, another person exactly like you!
3. Creating the best version of yourself is a journey, and knowing how to create spaces in your environment is part of that journey. If what you’ve created isn’t working for you, change it. If you run out of ideas, drop me a line in the comments section at the bottom of this page, and I will brainstorm with you. Being in charge of your life doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Being in control means you know who to go to for the answers you seek!

Setting up your study space takes thought, time, and energy. Remember, the time you spend inside your study space and the importance you assign to that space in terms of projected income and peace of mind from furthering your education makes it a worthwhile and necessary endeavor.

How My Study Space Is set Up, Based On Lessons learned

• Eliminating distractions is not a suggestion but a requirement! Whether it is the view through your study space window, activity outside your study space, or the rhythmic thumping of music from the room above you, distractions are the enemy and must be dealt with! There are many types of distractions; however, we are mainly interested in those affecting you when you’re inside your study space.
  • Visual distractions are the easiest to eliminate. A door to close out the outside World and a blanket or drape for the window
  •  Olfactory distractions by closing the door or window
  • Auditory distractions can sometimes be troublesome, especially when you live close to neighbors, like in an apartment. Sometimes, a chat with the offending neighbor will fix the situation. As a last resort, a set of over-ear noise-canceling headphones does the trick.
  • Environmental distractions like too hot or too cold can be worse than auditory distractions! Trying to write notes with cold hands is not fun. Neither is putting up with sweat dripping on your carefully formatted notes.
• Placing my desk against a blank wall was a significant part of eliminating distractions. The walls behind and to the right of my L-Desk, are covered with stark white photographic background paper, which serves two purposes. The paper provides a distraction-free surface and bounce lighting to eliminate shadows on my desk and study space.
• A tall Oak filing cabinet sits to the left of my desk, limiting peripheral distractions, such as moving shadows from under the door.
• The outside of my office door has a sign on it. One side is blank, and the other reads, “STUDYING, DO NOT DISTURB!” My family knows there are consequences for disturbing my study time if it is not warranted. Sunday afternoons are part of our family time, reserved for doing something fun together, like walking on the beach or park, playing Pickleball, or swimming at the local community pool. As long as I complete my studies, we get our time together; if not, lost study time replaces that time, and they go without me. The same goes for the grandkids when they are here. We do something fun on Sunday if they allow me to study without distractions.
• Lighting
  • My desk has three lamps with L.E.D. 6400K, 15 Watt daylight bulbs to eliminate shadows on my desk and study space. These lamps are the long goose-necked variety that keeps the bright glare of the bulb out of my view field.
  • The overhead light is off, so my desktop is the only lit area in the room to prevent distractions from other parts of the room.
  • Information overload is no joke!
• The window is covered with a heavy drape/blanket to eliminate stray light.
• There is nothing on my desk except the following items:
  • A smell can be a powerful sense when setting a stage or mood. An ultrasonic crystal Essential Oil Defuser with my study oils loaded sits near the computer with the stream pointed just to the left of my head. I use a combination of Brainstorm and Attention Assist Essential Oils from Rocky Mountain Oils in a 2:1 mix, respectively. The defuser is programmed to run three times for ten minutes with ten-minute breaks. The soft hum from the defuser, the faint stream of defused oil mist across my desk, and the wonderful smell of defused oils further anchors my mental study state.
  • Three fountain pens sitting in a capped 4″ length of 1-1/4″ thin-wall P.V.C. pipe attached to the side of my monitor. Why fountain pens? Because I love how they feel and write. When I write in cursive, all the letters are evenly slanted, and the writing takes on an almost calligraphy look.
    • A pen with Saphire Blue ink and an extra fine nib for making notes in a quad rail notebook.
    • A pen with sunset orange quick-drying ink and an extra fine nib for making notes in the margins of textbooks.
    • A pen with Florescent Yellow quick-drying highlighting ink with a Right Hand Oblique “B” Nib used for highlighting.
• Two hardback journals, each formatted in dot grids.
  • A note journal for recording the most important notes, mental observations, stunning realizations, or anything else I must remember for all time.
  • A free-writing journal. Free writing is simply clearing my mind and then writing whatever comes along. This activity precedes studying and gets my brain into a creative study state when I remember more of my reading.
  • I use Ryder Carroll’s “The Bullet Journal Method” of note-taking to find anything within seconds, even years later.
• A pair of Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones hangs on the side of a filing cabinet. These headphones are for blocking out a lawnmower or other noises from outside my study space.
• My computer
  • A journaling program called “Day One” is loaded and on the screen. The keyboard is compact, to type faster than I write.
  • All programs that receive data from outside sources, like emails or texts, are disabled, including backgrounds and screensavers.
  • The computer sound is disabled till I need it.
  • The monitor has a program for my study profile with more contrast and less illumination.
  • Speakers, USB expanders, and assorted chargers are out of sight behind the monitor.

As I settle in to study, I go through three mental exercises to prepare my brain to enter its study state:

1. After setting the stage with lighting, oil defuser, and setting up my desk, I close my eyes and get clear my mind. Because I’ve done this many times before, it takes me less than a minute to relax and prepare for my visualization exercise.
2. Visualizations are potent tools many professionals use, including some of the greatest athletes. My visualizations begin with my vision, allowing my mind to expand my vision of the future.
3. My final mental exercise is a 5-10 minute free writing exercise. The free-writing practice is the last activity before I begin studying, which gets my brain into a supercharged state for absorbing material like a sponge. Free writing is clearing your mind and then writing whatever comes. I frequently find answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask! Reading past free writing sessions is like going through a treasure chest of suggestions.

As I stated, once your study space exists, it only takes 10-15 minutes to enter your Study State. How long do I study for? Anywhere from two to four hours, depending. If I enter my hyper-focus state, time seems to speed up significantly. An example of this phenomenon is the following. I started studying at my typical 2:00 p.m. An hour later, I couldn’t understand why I was so hungry. A glance at my watch revealed that it was 8:30 in the evening! Glancing through my notes, I’d completed the following:

•  A seven-page assignment on leadership differences between men and women.
• A four-page assignment on the pros and cons of 6-Sigma.
• A six-page Creative Writing assignment.
• An outlined version of answers I was expecting on a test I was to take the following day on Change Management.

It is incredible how much studying you can get done when motivated by a compelling vision of the future, a love for being in your study space, and a love of learning!

Is All This Worth Getting My College Degree?

According to scientists involved with study habits, it takes twelve weeks to create a new habit!  Pull those eyebrows down, will you?  Yes, twelve weeks!  No, I’m not kidding!

Let me ask you a question; Would twelve weeks of your time be worth creating a study habit?  No?

If you finished college and earned your Associate’s Degree, how much would that degree be worth over the next forty years?  A quick check on the Education Data Initiative website indicates the following:
Associate’s Degree ROI (Return On Investment)

Time                 Degree Based Earnings               ROI
10 Years           $56,975                                            97.8%
20 Years           $113,546                                        363.5%
30 Years           $236,450                                        720.7%
40 Years           $374,744                                     1,200.8%

40-year total     $3,020,000 – as in Millions

Let me ask that same question; Would twelve weeks of your time be worth creating a new study habit? Of course, it would.

Conclusion

Looking back over the five years it took to achieve my doctorate, my vision, study space, and study routines were all I needed to get me through the hurdles, challenges, and setbacks. Before I knew it, I was walking on stage to receive my diploma as a doctor!

Are all the above preparations necessary? For me, they were and still are! The practice of studying is as much an essential part of my day as eating or drinking, and the pain from not going through these steps is something I don’t allow. Even today, years after graduating with my doctorate, I still love getting into my study state and can achieve this state anywhere, any time, regardless of distractions!

Terry L Southern
YouAndMeAndADHD.com
DrTerry@admin
Adventures With ADHD, LLC

References

Eyal, N. (n.d.). Stop Confusing Habits for Routines: What You Need To Know. NirandFar.com. Retrieved August 12, 2023, from https://www.nirandfar.com/habits/

Gu, C., Liu, Z. X., Tannock, R., & Woltering, S. (2018). Neural processing of working memory in adults with ADHD in a visuospatial change detection task with distractors. PeerJ, 6, e5601. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5601

Hanson, Melanie. “College Degree Return on Investment” EducationData.org, November 19, 2021,
https://educationdata.org/college-degree-roi

Nemeth, C., Papautsky, L., Grome, A. & Fallon, C. (2014). Computer-Based Training in Human-Systems Integration . Technical Report. Federal Railroad Administration. U.S. Department of Transportation. Washington, DC. 20590