How To Focus An ADHD Brain When Studying | 8 Evidence-Based Tips To Use IMMEDIATELY

hey everyone welcome back to my channel my name is Amina and in today's video I'm going to be speaking a bit about some ways and some techniques that you can Implement into your revision and your studying over the next couple of weeks and months towards your exams particularly if you are someone who has ADHD or add so I just thought quick disclaimer I don't have either of these things but I do know that it is a problem that a lot of students face when thinking about how to focus thinking about how to study for long periods of time and I've had so many comments and so many questions of saying like can you give me some tips now as I said I don't have ADHD so I didn't feel like it would be a video that I could make um and authentically speak about because I don't actually know what it feels like to have an ADHD right but what I did do is over the past year so I have I asked a year ago over the past year I've been watching videos um I've kind of stayed on ADHD Tick Tock a little bit I've asked you guys questions on Instagram and I've kind of collated all of that together and I've got a list of I think it's about eight six seven eight um ways that are quite unique ways of being able to maintain Focus for long periods of time and actually try to get your best revision sessions down um in the next couple of weeks so I hope this video helps and if you do have any other tips then do leave them in my comments down below so one thing about ADHD is that it can make you quite impulsive and also make you very distracted based on your environment so one thing that I've noticed is that people with ADHD will say that they don't want to study at home because they find that at home they can get distracted by their environment lose track lose focus and also they can be quite impulsive and so you're at home you just think oh I'm just going to go to the fridge and just get a meal or oh I'm just going to go and do some online shopping because you're not in a in a space that promotes um kind of focus and long-term studying so one thing that I've read is that going to a library or going somewhere where everyone around you is studying can be really helpful so go into a space like a study area a co-working space your University or your school library and you know what even if you can't leave the house and you really want to try to find a way to have that environment but at home you can use study with me videos so if you go on YouTube me type study with me you'll get videos where you can have um someone in front of you on the camera like on YouTube and studying and you can try to follow on with them do your best to actually follow on with them take your phone put it in a box put it in a different room give it to your parents and so it's out of the way and at least you have that sort of Zone where you're able to continue and maintain Focus but also not get distracted by things around you it's really essential that you create a productive study setup that works best for you and you obviously know yourself better than anyone else the next thing is to break down sessions so this was a comment that kept on coming up when I whenever I asked whenever I read something it was that maintaining Focus for long periods of time was really really difficult and so I actually would argue that no one should be revising for seven to eight hours straight that isn't productive and a lot of research shows that we are not able to maintain um a good strong memory use if we're studying for that long so anything between 30 to 40 minutes is absolutely fine taking a break and then continuing on with it so don't be disheartened when you see sort of 10 hour study sessions on YouTube um they're probably not studying the whole time like they're not probably not absorbing all that information they're probably studying but they're probably not absorbing all that information for the whole 10 hours so don't be disheartened if you see that so you can use an app called forest and I'll show you over here what it looks like and this app allows you to lock your phone for the duration of the study period that you're using it for so you can say right 20 minutes or something like that you can also use a Pomodoro um technique where you essentially have 20 25 minute sessions and then five minute breaks and again this really sort of Speedy jumpy session so you know that I'm only going to be doing 20 minutes you put a timer on and when it finishes you stop so you have that sort of Sprint and you stop you take a break and then you do it again and you do as many poms as you need to get through that session now one thing that I noticed is that a lot of people that had ADHD said to me that when they get too tired so you might do three or four Palms so that's like 20 20 minutes and then you get to a point where you just cannot continue you just cannot keep going on don't stop so don't stop as in don't just get up and go and leave the session just sit still for a while so rather than getting up and saying oh I can't do any more just sit still for a while close your eyes just have a moment and just like kind of rezone and like refocus partly that really helps I can actually see how that would help you're not giving up but you're also giving yourself a chance to step away from it from a minute and then kind of trying to refocus and re and kind of go back to it again the third thing is movement so movement whilst studying has been shown in research to really help and improve focus and memorization with people that have ADHD so it could be at the thing where you have I don't know like a revision guide or some sort of notes or some sort of um maybe you're listening to some sort of lecture and rather than just listening to it sat down stand up and go for a walk so walk around your house if you have the space if you don't go to the Garden if you don't go to a park just kind of keeping um active and sort of moving around whilst you get on with that thing and the reason why it helps is because your mind is not focused on just that one thing when you're focusing on just the studying you can easily get distracted and bored which puts you off but when you're walking around your mind is a bit confused which is sort of a good thing because on the one hand you're walking around and you're staying active and you're moving your legs which requires its own energy and brain capacity and then on the other hand you are taking in this information at the same time so it doesn't feel so sort of monotonous and sort of boring and essentially it just helps you stay alert during that whole session try it it actually works really well I've tried it before as well and I I actually quite enjoy it the next one is to have snacks available to you as you study now the brain is one is is a big organ we don't realize and appreciate how much energy it actually uses but it does use sugar in order to um kind of give us that energy and break it down and allow us to process and keep active and keep our brains active so don't have sugary food like sweets and processed sugar because that's only going to make you kind of peak and then crash of course but what you do want to have is something that's going to keep you alert and active and sort of um awake for the majority of the time so something like um a banana nut uh yogurt things like that that are going to sustain you but also in a healthy way that will keep you alert and keep you awake throughout the study session the next tip is having visual aids and usually using them as much as possible um throughout your studying sessions so one thing that I would highly recommend is if you don't understand a concept to draw try to draw it visually let's just have an example right we've got a pathway of um in in biology let's say and you just cannot visually memorize it it's just you know word Arrow word Arrow word Arrow it is very complex rather than having that try to draw it out in a way that you can kind of memorize it as a diagram so maybe it has curves in it maybe you use different colors maybe you highlight it maybe you use a specific theme and that is now your diagram that you can now kind of visually look at and memorize and then take that and use it within your exams and as of Vision essentially these are able to break down information for you a lot easier than maybe this massive image this you know this massive textbook paragraph does and it allows you to retain that information and again this is all research based so it's something that um it's been shown in research to help in general even if you don't have ADHD it really does help to visualize and show that information as a diagram and top tip if you want to you can actually draw those diagrams out in exams and you do still get marks I used to do that um and I'll still get the marks for it even if I don't write out in sentences by drawing it out and just saying like here is what I'm trying to explain you still can get the marks for it we also at the page doctor have a ton of templates that break down different processes for you so like essay writing literature review writing systematic review templates and these are all templates that I've had loads of actually loads of comments and reviews from people that have ADHD saying I have ADHD and I use this and it really helps me because I just need to be able to see every step like really clearly do this step number one do the step number two do the step number three and it just really helps another tip that I've seen is to have an alternate task option so let's say you are listening to a lecture in biology right it's a Biology lecture um for module number one and you now it's an hour long and now you're bored of it 20 minutes in you are bored rather than clicking off and going elsewhere going to lecture number two for module two right start that one instead 20 minutes in you're now bored of that one go to option number three lecture number three um watch 20 minutes of that so now it means that you are able to jump from one task to another task rather than saying I can't do this I'm bored of this and clicking it off and just going away you're moving from module one to module two and that is already open for you so the key thing here is to have all of these lectures open up for you already so you're not just like figuring it out after you've given up with lecture one you're not just like oh okay now I need to open lecture two it's already there so you click away from that one and you click onto the second one apparently it helps the next tip is to find a study partner and one of the things that this really helps with is because with social interaction and sort of maintaining focus and sort of having accountability these are all things that um people with ADHD can sort of suffer from and so having a partner having someone that you can kind of do this studying with can help you to keep on track of things and just kind of have that accountability that you may not have otherwise and last but not least is to have um artificial deadlines that you set for yourself and have a reward at the end of it so this could be let's say you are writing an essay and it's due a week from now having a deadline saying on Monday two days from now I need to have written the introduction on Tuesday I need to have written the first paragraph on Wednesday Etc cetera right so by Friday I have to have the completed draft that I'm going to submit so it's not just a kind of having that end date and it looming up on you um and then you get stressed out and you know anxious and nervous and now you're panicking right so having those small deadlines in between really help you set up that step-by-step kind of process and also having a reward so you might want to have like a really big reward at the end of it and small ones in between so you might say right every day that I complete this task I'm going to give myself X thing that you really want and a small thing and then at the end of it I'm gonna give myself this thing and having that reward and also it might not be a thing it might just be I'll go for a walk I'll you know watch 10 minutes of something um that you don't normally allow yourself to so just having that sort of process where you're giving yourself step-by-step tasks and then the end goal it really helps with creating sort of a sense of urgency so I hope that you guys found this video helpful like I said um these are all tips that I've kind of taken from reading listening asking you guys and I'm sure there are so much more and you know ADHD um this is a massive Spectrum so what works for someone else might not work for the other person so if you do have any other tips I would love love to hear them and maybe even do a second video about this and so please leave them in the comments down below and who found it helpful then also leave me a huge thumbs up and I'll see you guys in my next video okay bye

Channel: Dr Amina Yonis

Views: 18,054

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Id: PqlvVq1OHlg

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023