ADHD & Reading: 10 Tips for Reading and Studying in University & College

hello my name is sarah i'm a phd student nearing the end of my second year in a religious studies program and today i wanted to make a video on tips for people with adhd for reading or really just tips for people who struggle with paying attention to reading struggle with kind of taking it in anything like that if you have difficulties reading especially university or college materials hopefully this video will have something helpful in it for you because as those of us with adhd know reading can often be very difficult especially if it's not something that we're super interested in our minds can wander our eyes might get lost just going down the page without really taking anything in there are a lot of distractions that you know might keep us from being focused on what we're reading there's just a lot going on with the adhd brain that can that can make reading difficult the good news is that there are strategies that we can use to become better readers there are certain things that we can do that can help us to stay more focused and actually take things in remember things better and just overall be better readers and better students so hopefully this video will be helpful for some of that personally i have made it through multiple social sciences and humanities degrees including in in english which required a lot of reading so i have had to definitely come up with certain strategies for myself to help me get through those and this was before i was diagnosed with adhd i've only been diagnosed for about a year and a half now so i was unmedicated for most of my university and graduate studies journey and medication can certainly help with paying attention and focusing on readings but there are also other techniques tools strategies that we can use so that's what i'm going to get into here i have 10 of my top strategies for reading with with adhd or again just for people who have trouble with reading and staying focused on these things so my first tip might be kind of obvious but it is to eliminate distractions so make sure that you're in an environment that will be conducive to reading make sure that there are minimal distractions around you so first of all get comfy find a comfy spot so you won't be distracted by any discomforts make sure that you have eliminated any noises that might be bothering you so whether this is you know going into a quiet place or getting noise cancelling headphones also if you're a person who needs noise around you to work then consider that right so maybe you want to work in a louder section of the library or a coffee shop or something like that or have the tv on in the background a large part of learning how to become a better reader and a better student is finding out what works for you really and and what is kind of most helpful for you to to be doing these readings so part of that is finding the environment that works for you and what level of noise you need to to be able to work because i know some people can't work in complete silence they find that too distracting so figure out what works for you and make sure that your environment is suited to that it's probably going to be helpful to do something with your phone as well so turn it off turn it on airplane mode turn social media notifications off i am constantly distracted by notifications so i try to get a minimal amount of those on my phone when i can you can also put your phone onto a thing called like grayscale mode so it eliminates the color from it so if everything is in these like just black and white gray kind of tones it's less enticing for us to kind of go on it and become distracted by our phones anything like this that will help you not want to just reach for your phone every time that you have finished a sentence or something also if you're a fidgeter like me i highly recommend having something around to help with that so like a fidget cube for example or fidget rings fidget necklaces i always wear something like that because i find it just helps me immensely when i am reading i am constantly wanting to fidget with something so having something like that on hand is super helpful so my second productivity tip for you is to learn your body's natural rhythm so everyone has different energy levels that fluctuate differently throughout the day and it can be really helpful to learn about your own and learn about how your levels rise and dip throughout the day and whether that's you know a consistent thing or whether it kind of changes daily learning about your own energy levels will be really helpful for increasing your productivity so i know that a lot of people with adhd find that they are more alert and energetic and awake at night more like in the evening so they tend to be more productive then and for me personally it's like around three to five that's kind of when my energy peaks throughout the day so that's when i try to get the hardest work done so if i have really difficult readings i'll do them during that time of the day in order to learn about your own energy levels and to maximize them for productivity you can track your productivity for a week or two and just kind of note when you feel like you are getting the most work done then figure out if there's kind of a pattern that emerges out of that my next tip is to engage in active reading so this has been one of the most helpful things for me for becoming a better reader and overall becoming a better student is to actively engage with the text as i'm reading so this includes things like highlighting things underlying things writing things in the margin as you're going along making little notes to yourself as i'm reading i i always have a pen or highlighter or both in my hands i am constantly annotating the documents making marks on them i also use a system of various symbols as i'm reading to mark out important passages so a star beside something means that it's important and arrow means that it's kind of important and then like three stars beside a passage will mean that i want to use this passage as a quote somewhere i think it's a really good passage and i would want to put it somewhere so this is a really helpful technique especially if you're going to be like writing a paper or an assignment on this reading often what i'll do especially if i'm reading a really difficult text i will write down the most important things on that page or on like every couple of pages at the top just to remind myself of kind of what i actually read there because i do tend to forget really easily what i read like i can't just kind of think back to a reading and remember what it was about usually i'll have to like actually go back and look at those annotations and kind of see what i've said the most important thing is and then that will trigger my memory and i'll be able to remember it that way so this just helps me to not forget what i've read like five minutes after i've read it so having an ipad is especially helpful for this because you can use a program like goodnotes or something to easily markup pdfs but you can also print things out and mark them up like that or write in books like i like to do some people do think that that is ruining books and they don't like to do that so in that case i would recommend using like sticky notes or something my next step is to consider embodied reading so to take the body into account when reading so there is no separation between mind and body they are inextricably connected and the body is always involved in the reading process it's never just the intellect but the body is always involved in anything that involves reading learning skill development anything like that the body is involved even if we think it's kind of just going on all in the brain so in order to take advantage of this you can use your body in the reading process so one strategy for doing this would be to follow along with your finger as you're reading for example in order to help you keep your place and kind of help you make that mind-body connection and hopefully help you retain that information better you can also get up and walk around as you read or read while you are cycling on a bike at the gym or on a treadmill walking something like that just get up and you know involve your body in the process more so you can even read out loud as you're walking around and kind of match it to the rhythm of your body especially if you need to memorize something that you're reading if it's going to be for like a test or something like that then walking around and kind of matching it to the rhythm and kind of having that connection again between mind and body might be really helpful for retaining information another reading strategy that you might want to try is to experiment with audio elements in your reading and this is going to be especially helpful if you are like an auditory learner so again this is where it's really important to kind of get to know yourself get to know what kind of learner you are how you learn best so if you learn from like lectures and verbal things and oral speaking better you think than reading then it might be helpful to read things out loud to yourself for one or to use certain kind of audio devices to help you with your reading so like audible for example audiobooks so instead of reading the books you can listen to them if they are available on like these these websites like audible and things um there's also the audiobook bay which is you know i'm not necessarily recommending that you pirate things but i'm just saying that there are a lot of free audiobooks there if you do want to check that out so when i was a student in english if i had to do a project on a book or i was using a particular book for an essay or just any book that i thought was really important i would read it and listen to the audiobook as well because i found that like having those two different ways of taking in that information was really helpful for me so i tend to listen to the audiobook first and then that's where i can identify really important and helpful passages and things and then go back and read the actual text and just having both of those methods i find is personally really helpful for me there are also a variety of text-to-speech apps that you can use some are better than others so if you have like a pdf document or anything else that you need to read and you'd rather listen to it you can put it through one of these text-to-speech apps i use natural reader i find that it's helpful for me when i need to be doing readings that maybe like aren't so important but i need to get like the general gist of them i will use this to to read those pdf documents and i can do other things while these are being read to me so like i can do the dishes or do other chores or something and that way i feel like i'm getting something else done while also doing my schoolwork so it's killing two birds with one stone really although i do have to say that the robotic voice from text to speech apps can be really annoying especially if you have issues with like sensory or like auditory things kind of bother you it might not be for you the next strategy that i have is colors so color cording is an integral part of my reading process i use different like color coding methods and systems for different classes for different papers highlighting different themes grouping things together based on theme or based on where i want to put them in the paper things like that as i'm reading using these colors to kind of organize my thoughts in that way is super super helpful and i find that it helps me to not only organize things for when i need to go back and like write a paper or do an assignment or something but it just helps me remember things more too because i will remember things in terms of these themes that i've kind of categorized them into at the graduate level especially there will be a lot of overlapping themes in your work for courses or for papers or whatever it is as you're kind of narrowing down what your research is going to be on so for me where i'm at now i pretty much have this like one legend of of colors that i use for everything i i have these like core themes that correspond to certain colors that i will always be using as i'm highlighting things or using sticky notes or pens or whatever and again if you are writing a paper that will be using these things that you're reading or an assignment or anything it is super super helpful to already have things organized by theme future you will thank you the next tip is to use certain electronic tricks when you're reading so i find that sometimes when i'm reading a document especially like a pdf an article or something my eyes will often tend to like skip across the page and sometimes i find that i'm not actually taking in what i'm reading or i'm reading like the same sentence over and over and over again so if you have the document that you're supposed to be reading in like electronic form that you can copy and paste and actually take the information out of that and put it into a word document then you can kind of play around with that and make it easier to read so you can make it a bigger font for example or you can separate paragraphs up into sentences and make them into bullet points and i find that that can be really helpful for reading especially when you're grappling with like really heavy themes um really like a lot of theory things like that things that are hard to read if you are breaking it up into these bullet points and dividing it like that it makes it a lot easier for your brain and your eyes to to process and to kind of make sense of if it's not all just clumped together in this one big paragraph also just enlarging the font size on your device can also be helpful so if you're reading it on like a tablet or a computer just enlarge the font size and that can be also really helpful for kind of processing the information the next tip i have is to make sure that you're being mindful about note-taking so this is something that i also really need to work on is to be more mindful about note-taking so it's not very helpful i find to take notes as you're going along necessarily and to just kind of like interrupt your reading to to be taking notes like every few seconds i find that what works for me is to take notes in the margins as i'm going along to annotate as i'm going along and then after i finished a chapter or the article or whatever it is then at the end of that to take better notes more kind of structured notes in a in a different notebook or on on the computer or something like that and to make sure that i am putting them in my own words for one so that i can help myself remember things better in in my own voice and i'm not just like copying and pasting from the article and also summarizing things so being more mindful about not just taking like tons and tons of notes which is something that i tend to do but really just summarizing things making them concise putting them in brief terms that i will remember but that's still getting out the important information so this is something that i definitely need to to work on more something else that can be really helpful is using a time tracking and reward system so people with adhd we know that we have trouble staying focused and also with time management so using some kind of time tracking system while you're reading can be very effective and useful so you can use the pomodoro method for instance so this is the method where you work for 25 minutes and then take a five minute break and usually you'll set like a timer or something to alert you when the time is up and of course you can adjust those times to whatever works for you right so if you're someone who likes to work for longer stretches of time and then take a break this can be really helpful as well um so personally i like to work for about like 45 minutes to an hour and then take like a longer break so like 10 or 15 minutes but it completely is up to you how long you want to be working for how long you want to take breaks for and to kind of work that into your reading so this is helpful because it gives you those brain breaks that are super necessary when working and reading for long stretches of time and you can also implement like a reward system into this as well so like after working for an hour or after working for like 30 minutes or something you can treat yourself with like a piece of chocolate or a cup of tea or some coffee or something like that just giving yourself these little rewards to motivate you to keep going and to motivate you to work throughout that time if you're using the pomodoro method there are like physical devices that you can buy that are specifically made for this so like little alarm systems that will work for this there are also like a ton of apps out there that you can use for this i personally like the study bunny app because i think it's absolutely adorable you have this little bunny character who's studying along with you and as you're working you will accumulate coins that you can use in the app to buy little outfits for the bunny little like cat companions or backgrounds all sorts of cute little things so i really like it because it's fun and it also means that when i look at my phone i see this like study bunny app on it and i feel guilty for closing that and opening up another app or something so it keeps me off social media it reminds me to stay focused on whatever it is that i'm working on and my final strategy is prioritization so really thinking about prioritizing what is important for you to be reading so in university and college there are often a lot of assigned readings depending on what field you're in and while it's expected or hoped that you will do all these readings and of course it would be great if we could all do all of the readings all of the time this is often just not possible especially for those of us with adhd we really need to learn how to prioritize and to figure out what's important what we really need to be reading and what we can maybe skim or neglect and this is especially true in grad school there is a ton of reading that you will need to do in a lot of grad programs and it's just impossible to do it all sometimes so for me when i was taking courses i would average about 400 to 500 assigned pages of reading every week and that is something that some people can do and that's fantastic and kudos to them but i can't there's just no way that's happening so i really had to learn how to prioritize and figure out what i needed to actually get done to do well in my courses and to do well on papers and things like that and also learning to prioritize readings that were important to my own research and the things that i want to be focusing on down the line and this is something that i would recommend for people in university and college programs in general when you have a lot of assigned readings prioritize the ones that you find the most interesting things that are relevant to your research interests things that you think will help you with papers down the line or projects down the line things that you find interesting and things that are actually going to keep you wanting to read and engaged in the readings and engaged in the materials prioritize reading those first if you can sometimes there are other things that you won't necessarily be interested in that you do have to read but that's just how it is sometimes so there's a trick that's typically used by grad students who don't necessarily have time to do all of the readings so with an article this would be to read the introduction the conclusion and then the first paragraph of every section and then just skim the rest so this way you can get like a good overview of the article and you can have something to say about it like in class if you're discussing it in class or something then with a full book it's often recommended to just kind of read the introduction and the conclusion and the like introducting uh paragraph and concluding paragraph of every chapter so again you get like a broad overview of the book and then skim the rest if there are particularly interesting chapters read those so again you'll have some knowledge of the topic and can discuss it in class or wherever if need be but you don't necessarily have to read the whole thing i don't think that i know anyone including people without adhd who actually do all of the readings in grad school i think that that's an anomaly almost um you pretty much have to use certain strategies to get by basically because otherwise there would just be no time left in the day for anything else really so especially for people with adhd it is important to be able to prioritize and to recognize that you don't necessarily have to do all of the readings as long as you are strategic about it so those are the top 10 tips that i have for reading with adhd if this is something that you struggle with i feel you i know it's rough but there are various things that we can do to make it better and to just make reading a more enjoyable experience so hopefully something in this was helpful for you whether you have adhd or not and please let me know of any videos that you would like to see on this channel i focus on kind of university college tips and things like that along with the the vlogs that i do kind of documenting my own journey doing a phd with adhd so thank you so much for watching and i will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Sarah E. Best

Views: 15,264

Keywords: how to study with adhd, adult adhd, adhd study tips, adhd reading tips, procrastination tips, how to focus with adhd, university adhd, adhd university study tips, study tips for adhd college students, reading strategies, study strategies adhd, grad student, humanities student, active reading, how to annotate, how to annotate an article, how to annotate books, how to study with adhd in college, study tips for neurodivergent students, doing a phd with adhd, adhd grad school

Id: LzvoyGp2hjg

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022