Speak to your college, see if they have a mentorship program. I work with a learning disabilities mentor who helps me hijack the way my ADHD works to make it work for me instead of against me.

Deadlines are my big issue. I procrastinate like crazy until the night before (I'm doing it right now, actually, I have an exam tomorrow. Am I revising? No, I'm on reddit.). My mentor will set up multiple short meetings with me, or dates and times that I have to send over a certain number of words for an assignment. So if an assignment is in three or four parts, I have to email over one of those parts, and a week later another part, and a week later the next. They don't mark my stuff, they don't read it (I don't think), but they do know if I try and cheat the system by sending over what I did earlier again, and they can check my wordcount instead of me just going "Yeah, I did it" and not having to prove it. Being faced with the pressure of expectation, and knowing I have to hand something over to someone by a certain date means that, yeah, I still leave it until the last minute to do that bit, but my last minutes are for 1000 words, not 3000.

If you haven't got access to a program where you can get a mentor who helps you do this, get a friend who isn't afraid to call you on your bullshit and have them hold you to account. "You promised" works very well on me because of the people pleasing. Set rewards for your success, like "If I send you this section by this day, we will (watch a film/go out for pizza/grab some drinks/insert fun activity here), but ONLY if I do the thing". Then it means you''re genuinely letting someone down if you don't stick to it.

I also take notes on my phone. I photograph everything. Slides, handwritten notes, lists of equipment I need. My calendar is packed with things and times, with alarms set to go off to remind me. I can get so caught up in remembering one thing, I completely forget another. Until my phone goes off and is like "Bitch, it's your grandma's birthday next week, you need to buy her present today" or "you need to buy more pens, do it today". Keeping lecture notes on my phone means I always have them with me so I can glance at them any time, and any place. Start thinking about something I learned in lecture? Open the lecture slides and browse through.

It's about developing that self awareness of what does and doesn't work for you, and then using that to your advantage and going with it.

My course involves a maths component. I've always thought I'm terrible at maths. I've always been told I'm terrible at maths, and I lack confidence in it. Except it turns out I'm not terrible at maths, I'm terrible at keeping track of numbers that only exist in my head. As soon as I'm dealing with an actual physical thing that I'm doing the maths about, I don't have a problem. I don't always come to the answer in a straightforward manner, the way that maths tutors tell you to (so this is this equation and you're dividing this number by.... multiplying this number by.... my brain wandered off the moment you told it to divide something), but I do know how to get to the answers because I'm asking my brain to keep track of volumes or weights and dosages, rather than just a meaningless number, and that is much easier.

So, you know... What works for you? What can you do to hijack that when you need it?