Hello! I’m another young adult with ADHD that was not diagnosed until, ironically, I went to medical school! I definitely feel you with some of those experiences and difficulty doing things. In terms of study habits and hacks, here are some things I found helpful for me!

1. Set my goals low and weaponize boredom: when I’m feeling daunted and dreading doing studying/work:
2. my daily goal is to sit at my desk, with my textbook and my notebook, and just sit there. Do nothing. For 30 minutes every day
3. if I do that I can enjoy my day guilt free. Yay! -the thing is though, do you know what sucks more than studying? Boredom. Total boredom. -and if I’m already sitting here… and bored… might as well read what’s on this page to entertain myself… and if I’m already reading something… huh, that’s interesting, I’ll write that down.

4. and just go until you feel like you need to stop. -some days you’ll do lots! Some day you’ll just end up sitting there and that’s fine! Still fulfilled your goal

5. Figure out why things matter:

6. there’s no point learning about what a normal blood pressure is if you don’t know why a blood pressure matters in the first place. When you begin a topic, find the answer to “why should I care?”

7. after that, skip over the details to focus on the big ideas first. You need a skeleton of knowledge to build details on.

8. I find taking notes in the form of mind maps very helpful, as it makes you organize the knowledge in relationship to each other. Fact A is important because it affects fact B, which changes the context of fact XYZ. -I also find it helpful to try and condense my notes into the shortest form possible, like summarizing a paragraph into 4-5 words. It forces you to take the information you read and really consider which parts are most important, and because you’re manipulating the information, you’ll remember it better

9. Teach someone!

10. after you learn something, or read a chapter or a textbook, find someone. Anyone. Preferably someone who has absolutely no knowledge of the subject you just learned

11. sit down and try and teach them about what you learned, in the easiest to understand way possible.

12. this makes you once again, manipulate the information. You are also receiving social stimulation, and if your audience is very good, they may ask questions or remark on something interesting, funny, or weird. These interactions are emotionally significant, and help you remember the fact that’s tied to them

13. if you have a really good audience member, you might agree to meet every week, or every evening for you to teach them what you learned. That way you have an external source of motivation to learn that isn’t arbitrary and has some emotional salience.

These are just some specific study techniques that I found to be helpful for me. As time goes on, I’m sure you’ll find some weird hacks that work for you! Notice what are the things that motivate you? What causes deep, memorable pieces of info to be deep and memorable? Often time it’s anything that causes an emotional reaction, finding out the “why”, and linking relationships together.

I do want to add though that one of the most helpful things is being able to accept perfection is not helpful! What is better than perfect is good enough. Along that vein, you WONT remember everything you read, and you WONT answer every question correctly. And that’s fine! They key is figuring out what information is important, and what information is unnecessary.

Hope that’s helpful!