Revision techniques for students with ADHD

For many students, this time of year is a familiar mix of pressure, revision timetables and increasing levels of anxiety. If you have ADHD, then the whole thing can feel 10 times harder.

Organising what to revise, when to revise, sitting still, trying to get started, attempting to stay focused and getting distracted by…well, anything and everything! So much stress, and you haven’t even opened a book yet.

The advice offered by parents and teachers might be "try harder" or "just concentrate", and your friend just informed you that they’ve been revising for weeks already, which is enough to make any student with ADHD feel like they are failing before they even begin.

This article aims to help you understand why revision feels difficult and give you some practical strategies that work with your ADHD, not against it.

Is your room sabotaging your revision?

(Too much reading? Skip to the tips below!)

For those with ADHD, one of our greatest difficulties is staying focused on the task, particularly once it starts to get difficult or dull; our brains will instantly look for something more interesting to distract us from the boring task.

We need to think about the environment that we are trying to study in and whether it’s helpful to us. The first question to ask yourself is, where is the best place to study? Are you better off studying at home or elsewhere, like the library or a coffee shop, for example?

The next question is whether this environment is full of distractions, and whether we can control those distractions. We tend to respond to the loudest, most interesting stimuli that are around us. For example, notifications pinging on your phone and messages popping up on your laptop are obvious distractions, and they command our attention instantly (and of course, if we don’t reply straight away, then we will probably forget to reply!).

Sometimes the distractions are more subtle, like the unfinished project on your desk or the pile of clean clothes you were supposed to put away. Suddenly, these seem like vitally important jobs that need doing, now. Ask yourself what you can do to minimise distractions in your environment.

Top tips

• Tidy your room (yeah, sorry, but your parents are right). It’s actually really difficult for you to focus in a messy room. We need to reduce visual noise and remove temptations.
• Clear the clutter from your desk.
• Shut down the tabs that are currently open on your laptop before you begin working.
• Switch all notifications on screens to do not disturb, and don’t forget your watch.
• Put your phone out of sight, away in a drawer or preferably in another room and switch it to silent.

Using senses as a strategy

Some people believe that the most effective way to revise is sitting at a desk in silence. If that works for your brain, then you can skip this section completely. However, for many students with ADHD, the opposite is true. Sitting still and in silence not only feels like torture, but it also hinders our ability to focus. Instead, try using your senses to boost your learning and retain information.

Music

Music can be an amazing study tool! It increases our dopamine levels, helping to regulate our attention, improving our mood and helping us to relax. Music can also help to shut out other background noises and distractions, like conversations or the dog barking next door. Music that is repetitive and instrumental tends to work best, such as lo-fi hip hop, deep focus music, classical or videogame soundtracks. 

Background noise

Background noise could be your thing instead. Try white noise or pink noise (research has found both helpful for those with ADHD in terms of concentrating). Soundscapes are another useful background noise to help with focus.

Movement

Movement can reduce restlessness and stress, freeing up the rest of your brain to focus on studying. There’s lots of research showing that students with ADHD learn and retain information better when they are engaged in movement.

Top movement tips

• Seating, such as a chair on wheels or using a yoga ball as a seat, allows for constant movement.
• Fidget tools such as spinners or stress balls help as they allow for tactile input.
• Studying while standing up or walking around is another great option. Listening to an educational podcast while walking, or reviewing your flash cards as you wander around your room, can be a really helpful way to process information.
• Don’t forget, when it starts to feel like your brain is struggling to stay on task, a quick movement break can help you re-energise and reset.

Stop rewriting your notes and try these techniques instead

Adding a variety of different methods of revising can really help prevent boredom burnout (or bore-out). By changing methods of learning, you are stimulating your brain and keeping it interested with new challenges.

Here are just some ideas:

• Watch a revision video on your topic.
• Write out flashcards with complex problems, formulas or information and then stick them up around the house in different areas.
• Create a mind map, using different colours, symbols, drawings and diagrams to make it interesting.
• Talk/teach the topic to someone else. This forces us to manipulate the information so we can explain and teach the topic to another person.
• Get a study buddy.
• Highlight your key words, not all your notes. The aim is to challenge yourself to select the most important bits.
• Practice past papers. Not the most exciting thing, but it can be useful to practice timings on the different papers. It also helps make it more interesting if you make it competitive by beating your last score.
• Gamify revision. There are several apps where you can create your own flashcards and quizzes.

How do I get started?

If you struggle with just starting, then here are my two top techniques to get you going:

Pomodoro technique

1. Pick a topic to study.
2. Make a deal with yourself to study for 25 minutes (just 25-minutes? That’s doable).
3. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
4. Once the timer goes off, you get a 5-minute break! (If you discover when the timer goes off that you are in the middle of a flow of work and want to carry on, then ignore the timer and carry on)
5. After your 5-minute break, pick a new topic and start again.

This technique works because it helps to reduce overwhelm. The idea of 3 hours studying maths can be overwhelming! However, 25 minutes of studying maths feels achievable. It also helps us with time management by breaking revision into small time chunks for us.

Body doubling

Get yourself a study buddy. You don’t need to be studying the same thing, and you don’t even need to be in the same room. You can just jump online together. Agree on the amount of time you are going to study for and tell each other what topic you will be studying, set a timer and off you go. Just having another person with you holds you accountable, improves your focus and helps you start the task rather than wandering off to do something more interesting. 

Remember, revision will look different for everyone. It will be trial and error to work out the best strategies for you personally. Even small, regular amounts of revision can make a big difference and will feel far less stressful than having to rely on the old habit of last-minute cramming.