447: Study Habits For the ADHD Student
If you’re a well-practiced student, you probably have your own system and set of practices for doing that job. Taking notes, studying, preparing projects, taking exams ... you know what works for you, right?
It turns out, it’s pretty easy to develop a false sense of security in our own systems to the point that they might not actually be helping you do the real work of being a student. This week on the show, we offer the timeline for effective study habits — originated at the University of Arkansas — a simple, straight-forward process to help you learn to study effectively and deliver the results you want.
Links & Notes
Notetaking
I know, these are both iPad Pro focused, but I encourage you to watch them for process, not technology, if you’re thinking about how to engage in material.
- 🎥 Samuel Suresh: “How I Take Notes with My iPad Pro in Lectures”
- 🎥 Ali Abdaal: “How I take notes on my iPad Pro in medical school”
Zettlecasten
If you’re not on the market for a new note-taking system, do not click on these links. There be monsters! If you’re embarking on any sort of research — and you have fun with this kind of stuff — you might just find Zettlekasten and some of the software tools that enable it really exciting.
- 🎥 Shu Omi: “Zettlekasten Note-taking Method: Simply Explained”
- 🎥 Shu Omi: “How to take Smart Notes in Roam Research”
- 🎥 Curtis McHale: “Getting Started with a Zettlecasten System”
- 🎥 Curtis McHale: “What Makes a Good Zettlekasten Note”
- 👨💻 Roam Research
- 👨💻 Obsidian
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by The ADHD Podcast Community on Patreon
Pete Wright: Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer: Hello everyone. Hello Pete.
Pete Wright: I doff my hat to you, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer: Well thank you. So kind.
Pete Wright: We're in the middle of our lovely back to school series here, not in the middle. I think we're at the end.
Nikki Kinzer: Correct.
Pete Wright: Is this the the last back to school thing we're doing?
Nikki Kinzer: Yes. And then we're going to be talking about some parenting things and then we're going to be going into October ADHD awareness and we have some great guests coming up.
Pete Wright: Oh, I'm very excited about that.
Nikki Kinzer: Very exciting.
Pete Wright: We have some such good stuff coming up, but today we are talking about study habits and we've done this. We've done this back to school thing a number of years and I'll tell you, as I was saying last week, I learn something new every time we do it. And I feel like study habits of all the things we're talking about in the context of being a student, study habits for me is the one that is most resonant because it applies to you every single day of your life. The real question is, how do you learn things? And you have to learn things all your life.
Nikki Kinzer: That's right.
Pete Wright: And I think my hypothesis is many of us forget this after we graduate. We think, oh, I'm done. Woohoo. Throw the mortar board up in the air and go try to find a job.
Nikki Kinzer: Which you have training that usually has to happen with that job. Which is really like going back to school.
Pete Wright: Going back to school. How do you learn things? Study habits for the ADHD student, particularly resonant for me, I'm very excited about talking about it and hearing what you have to say, because you're so smart.
Nikki Kinzer: I don't know if I'd say that part.
Pete Wright: Before we do that, head over to Take Control ADHD, get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, right on the homepage. We'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook @TakeControlADHD. And if you really want to show your support, if you really, really do, head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast, that's where you can throw us a couple of bucks every month and you can join our fantastic ADHD community online, whether it's our members group over on Facebook or our members online community on Discord, where if you support us there, magically new channels just appear for you out of nowhere, it's like getting off on the train at Station, what is it? Nine and three quarters. It's like a trip to Hogwarts. You just become a patron. You get to go to Hogwarts. What do you think about that? That's the best pitch I've ever made for our online community.
Nikki Kinzer: I think so.
Pete Wright: The beauty of it is you also get to access our online live stream of this very podcast. You can come join us for back channel conversations. You join us for a happy hour once a month, where we just get to laugh with each other as a group. It's just, it's really fantastic. They're ADHD people and if you're living with ADHD, listening to this podcast, it's hard, but ADHD people are the best people in the world. And that's what we are. We love to celebrate with our community. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast, join us. Let's see what happens.
Pete Wright: Nikki, you got to think about effective study.
Nikki Kinzer: It's a timeline.
Pete Wright: The timeline for effective study habits. I love this. This is a new way to think about this. You put the word timeline in and that changes the way I approach it. Why'd you do this?
Nikki Kinzer: Well, it's interesting because if you talk to any number of students, each one will probably have a different system and how they study. Which is great because there isn't any one way to do it correctly. You really do have to figure out what works best for you. Unfortunately, what I see too often is what they are doing isn't working, but they keep doing it that way and they're not getting the grades that they want. And this goes back to kind of what we were talking about last week. No one is really teaching them how to study, any more than somebody is teaching them how to use a planner or a calendar. I think that schools and some schools I'm sure are better than others on how they prepare students and how they talk about these timelines. But again, I think it's just one of those things that if you're not going back to it or you don't follow it, it's really easy to kind of forget what's effective and what's not.
Nikki Kinzer: Today what I'm going to do is I'm going to explain a four step process. And just to let everybody know, this information is influenced by the University of Arkansas. This is not something that I made up on my own. What I did do though, is I went through the four steps and I tried to put in what I thought would be relevant for ADHD students and not just students in general. Where I have tweaked the information is really putting it into an ADHD lens and how this could work for somebody who is going to college and has ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer: The first step here is what to do before class. And the first thing that I encourage my clients to do is that before you go into lecture, usually on the syllabus they'll say like what topics or what chapters is going to be covered during that lecture. You want to skim that chapter before going into the lecture. I'm not saying you have to read it or take notes on it or anything like that, but it is a really good idea for you to at least skim it, look at what are the main topics? What are the things that are bold? What's highlighted? Those kinds of things so that when you do go into class and the professor starts talking about this topic, you are going to be more prepared than you would have otherwise. The seed has already been planted on what you're going to be learning.
Pete Wright: And that's what you're doing is you're building anchors. From the instructor's point of view, it allows you to connect what your instructor is saying to places in the text. And that is a lifeline for you because there is nothing worse than getting back to your desk or getting back to your bed or wherever you study and saying, "I don't know how today's lecture connected to what he wants me to read."
Nikki Kinzer: Absolutely.
Pete Wright: I don't get it.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, and everything that we're going to be talking about really comes down to retention. We want your retention of the information that you're learning to increase. We want you to really get it so by the time that you get to that fourth step of studying for the exam, you really do understand and that's step one is just really coming prepared to class.
Pete Wright: And I think that's important. Can I just say one thing though, in there, on that point, and it's just, I would encourage you if you're listening to this and you're going back to school, you're already in school, to pivot your language. You don't have to study for the test. Ideally by the time the test comes, you know the information so well that you didn't have to study for the test because you know it.
Nikki Kinzer: And you're not cramming all of these chapters.
Pete Wright: You've done the work. You're not cramming.
Nikki Kinzer: At once. That's absolutely correct. The other thing that I suggest doing before class is reviewing your notes from the previous class. And this only has to take a couple of minutes. Again, we're not talking about studying. We're not looking at it and then trying to quiz ourselves. What I want you to do is, especially online right now. You're probably going to an online class while you're sitting and waiting for the everybody to connect, because it always takes time for everybody to connect. And can you hear me? I can't hear you. You're on mute. All of that stuff. Just take a few moments to review the previous class. And again, what happens here is it's all about retention because you have already prepared yourself by skimming for the chapter that you're going to be studying and now you're reviewing what you've already studied. And now you're going to just be that more prepared and ready to connect the dots.
Nikki Kinzer: It's just a, it's a really great way of again, like what Pete was saying, it's just really getting it into your head. Now, during class, of course, taking notes is always a great thing to do to keep yourself engaged. It's really hard to watch a lecture and just sit there. Most online classes, not all of them. I have found that not every class is recorded, but most are so this can actually ease a lot of stress or anxiety about worrying, oh, I got to get this down. I got to get everything down. Because a lot of times that's what happens is people write too much and then they're behind with wherever the lecture is.
Pete Wright: Well, the idea, you and I went to college in a different era, but I was very much of the era in which I would take my little micro cassette recorder.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, I did too.
Pete Wright: And I would set it next to me as I was in class. Or I would give it to my roommate and say, "Go to class and record this lecture for me and put it on tape."
Nikki Kinzer: I never did that.
Pete Wright: Why do you look at me like that when you say that?
Nikki Kinzer: Because that feels like cheating.
Pete Wright: That was really judgy just now.
Nikki Kinzer: I'm kidding. I just didn't go, just hope for the best. Who am I kidding?
Pete Wright: And so I think it's really, I think having a recording of your lectures is really important. Even knowing that you may not go back and listen to it in full, but being able to skim through it is important. And I think there are so many tools right now for recording lectures, especially even online. You can put out your phone, if you happen to be going to school right now, you can go, if you have a Zoom call, you can record that Zoom call yourself either with software or even just put your phone right next to your computer and record the audio of your Zoom call. Whatever is easiest. The nice thing about it is being able to listen to it back at a different speed. For me, I feel like I can scrub through at 1.5 or double speed and I can get the information of the lecture I just heard and be able to take notes on it as I go if I found I got behind.
Nikki Kinzer: And check out what your combinations are with your school too, because a lot of them do have a note taking a person that will will take notes and then give you their notes. Many universities will also, the professors will give you their PowerPoint slides too so you can go through the lecture again with the PowerPoint, which can be really helpful. I think the key is finding a nice balance. What kind of note taking method do you like? Which we're not going to talk about today. I do think we have past episodes where we've talked about different note taking. And Pete, you'll have to look for those and put those into the show notes.
Pete Wright: Good luck, Pete.
Nikki Kinzer: I know.
Pete Wright: That's a message for future Pete.
Nikki Kinzer: Future Pete, that's right.
Pete Wright: I actually have so many, this is, we're going to talk about this in a minute. I'm going to talk about one. I just made you a liar. I'm going to talk about one note taking strategy that's new to me that I'm pretty excited about and I'm going to post all kinds of videos of some of my favorite. Believe it or not, I have favorite note takers that I look up to.
Nikki Kinzer: Really?
Pete Wright: I just weirded out. I just made me weird.
Nikki Kinzer: You're not weird.
Pete Wright: Wow.
Nikki Kinzer: I don't think anybody would be surprised.
Pete Wright: I just made me the weird one in the room. Okay. No one would be, wow. Yeah, definitely no more podcasting on Fridays.
Nikki Kinzer: Because you love technology.
Pete Wright: I do. I do. That is true. That's accurate. Okay.
Nikki Kinzer: Of course you're going to have a favorite one.
Pete Wright: Links to come. Right. Right. I'm very excited about that. And I think you're going to have a lot of resources to look at if you want them.
Nikki Kinzer: Why are you not talking about it now while we're talking about notes?
Pete Wright: All right. Because you just said that we weren't talking about notes, but I'm going to humor you because it won't take long.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, go.
Pete Wright: It's called, oh my goodness, it's called Zettelkasten.
Nikki Kinzer: Zettelkasten.
Pete Wright: I know, it's already weird. Look, Zettelkasten is a German word and I feel like I'm pretty on top of note taking strategies that have been around a while. Just given what we do.
Nikki Kinzer: You teaching classes.
Pete Wright: A love of, yeah, and me teaching classes. I had never heard of this at all. And yet it is a note taking strategy. A personal information management strategy that dates back to the 1500s. That is amazing that this has been going on for so long. People, academics, experts, researchers have been using this technique and the bottom, if you boil it all down, it really consists of building a library of knowledge in single notes. You have a concept and you essentially put it on a note card and that note card represents your words about that concept. A few sentences that say, "This is what this chemical reaction is." Or this is what institutionalized racism is as defined by this expert or whatever it is that becomes that note.
Pete Wright: And then in its purest form on paper, on these card catalogs of note taking, you would actually index it. You'd put a number on it. And essentially it becomes a card catalog of your personal knowledge. And in the early days before computers, that's what people did. They would create these file systems of knowledge, of things they've learned. They're essentially building flashcards of notes. And then when it comes time to bring them together, they actually can string these ideas together for their research papers, their documents. It's one of the researchers who pioneered Zettelkasten wrote 400 books using this method.
Nikki Kinzer: Wow.
Pete Wright: Of 20,000 cards that he would string together to create knowledge and tools that we have today. Digital tools today make this incredibly easy. And I've been exploring it over the last several months and I love it for some of the work that I'm doing.
Nikki Kinzer: That's great.
Pete Wright: I'm going to share some links and videos for you to see Zettelkasten in action, to understand kind of how it works and what some of the digital tools are that you can use to really make use of it. It's a work of knowledge management art and I'm very excited to be exploring it.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, and it's always great to hear, even though this has been around for so long, that there's so many different options of how to take notes. We've talked about Cornell Method, we've talked about mind mapping, we've talked about the standard bullet point timeline kind of things. And here's just another way of doing it. And I think for ADHD specifically, it's such a good thing that we have choices. That you can actually choose to do one maybe for one class because it makes sense and then choose to do it a different way for another class. Yeah, I'm excited to see the videos. This will be good.
Pete Wright: Well, and it's very similar to some of the other tools we've recommended before Quizzlet or Anki, these tools that allow you to build your own flashcard decks and use them on your phone, kind of you're waiting in line, whatever. It's a lovely sort of set of tools that you integrate into your life, not just for class. Just anything you want to learn, you think about these sort of atomic particles of knowledge. It makes you a lifelong learner. How do you do that?
Nikki Kinzer: That's great.
Pete Wright: Anyway, back to the show.
Nikki Kinzer: Okay. Well, just a couple more things to do during class. Now, recently we did talk about focus and trying to stay focused when you're watching a online lecture. If, that just sounds so sad, when you are back in school, not if, when, choose to sit in the front of the class in the center. If you're looking at where should I sit? Sit in the center in the front, because it will help you stay focused. It will kind of jolts you out of being distracted because if the professor's right in front of you, all of a sudden and then he or she's to the left and then to the right and back. Even if you're just following where the professor goes, at least you're focusing on that. That's a really good place for you to sit.
Nikki Kinzer: The other thing that I would suggest is have some kind of fidget toy, especially if you have the hyperactivity and the ADHD, just to have something to do with your hands while you're trying to listen in. And this is what I've been telling all of my students, you have ADHD, the people that are listening, you have ADHD, you're going to get distracted and it's okay. And the lovely thing about this is that these classes are mostly recorded. If you are in class, you can probably still record it as what Pete was saying. And so you have a chance to listen to it again. Or, if you have a friend who is in that class, or you can look at somebody else's notes, you'll be able to get the information again. Don't beat yourself up just because you got distracted and you had to pull yourself back in. It's going to happen and that's okay.
Pete Wright: I think that I support every single bit of that. And I would just add that as you're going to school online for many, many students, whether or not you're in this sort of toggle approach where you went to class for two days and suddenly you're online again, or if your whole semester is online, you can create the mental model for yourself that you're sitting in the front of the room. Use zoom as a way to do that for yourself, visualize yourself sitting in the front of the room. You're looking at the instructor from a perspective that is as if you're right in their face. You're looking right in the front. And I think that's an important way to go to it. Imagine yourself as a front of the room student and that will take hold.
Pete Wright: The other thing that I would add just from a technical adaptation is, and I know this is a little bit sensitive and a lot of schools don't have any sort of mandate for this, but my recommendation is if you have the bandwidth to support it, to turn your camera on while you are in class.
Nikki Kinzer: On you or on the professor?
Pete Wright: I see a lot of representations of class. On you.
Nikki Kinzer: On you. Oh interesting.
Pete Wright: Right. Right. Because that creates more of a connection between you and your instructor and it reminds you that you're an active participant in class by seeing your face there, you know that other people will see you stop and pick your nose or take a giant crumby bite of that croissant that you're not a 100% to paying attention to class. There are all kinds of reasons not to put your camera on. I recognize that, but I see this as a potential for you to create a connection with your instructor and with your learning as a visual reminder that you're here, you're present.
Nikki Kinzer: That's a good idea.
Pete Wright: You're not just watching another YouTube video. This is a real life engagement. And if you turn your camera off, you forget.
Nikki Kinzer: You do.
Pete Wright: It just becomes another thing you can watch. And I don't think you're as engaged. I do not believe you're as engaged.
Nikki Kinzer: Great tip.
Pete Wright: That's kind of my hypothesis. I think it's too early to know whether or not I'm right. But I would encourage you to try it out and see what you think.
Nikki Kinzer: Try it. Yeah, absolutely. That's great.
Nikki Kinzer: Okay. After class. We talked about time blocking and before we talked about, or I guess last week we talked about time blocking and having these study sessions. Before you sit down to go do your homework or start studying or whatever it is that you need to do, especially with homework, review your notes from the class that you had that day. You are reviewing notes and skimming chapters quite often. If you look at before class, you're skimming the chapter, you're reviewing your old notes, you're taking notes during class and now here it is after class. You're getting ready to have a study session. Review your notes again, from the classes that you had that day. Again, it helps with retention. I know it sounds like overkill, but it works.
Nikki Kinzer: If you want better grades, this is how you do it is you keep building that knowledge and you keep repeating it and you keep putting it in your mind and keep engaging in it. That's such a big piece too, with ADHD is that you have to engage yourself into the material somehow. Whether that means, I tell people who are taking history classes, think about when you're studying different people in different times, who would you be? And why would you be that president? Or why would you be whoever it is that you're studying? And put themselves in that position and think about well would you have done the same thing? Would you have done something different? Because all of that means you're engaging with it. You're personalizing it. You're making it something that means something to you.
Nikki Kinzer: Now, if you're taking a math or statistics class, that's not going to work. It's not going to be easy to engage yourself into that. But some of those other classes, history, psychology, sociology, a lot of those things you certainly can. And when you're reviewing your notes, because you're doing it on the same day, you can add little visuals around them. Timelines, diagrams, mind maps. I taught my daughter when we were studying for her permit, when we were studying different traffic rules and stuff, we would draw it out. Okay, this is where you can turn right without having to wait for the red light. You can go ahead and turn and those kinds of things help because you can then visually see what it is that you need to know. Add to them as you're reviewing them.
Pete Wright: One of the sets of videos, resources that I'm going to put in the notes, really demonstrate experts on note taking, doing exactly this. Figuring out a way to augment based on their quick sketches and notes during class, but to augment their learning by truly interacting with the material after class. I think it's really, it's great stuff.
Nikki Kinzer: Now for the exam, there what I'm going to talk to you today about is a very small portion of how to study for an exam. And because there's so many different strategies that you can use, but this is kind of the meat of it. The first thing you want to do and we mentioned this last week is develop a study plan. When you know when your exam is coming up, whether it's a midterm or final, figure out how much time you need to study effectively, or the amount of material that's going to be on that test. For a midterm, you may be okay to study a week out or a weekend before. For a final, I would suggest that you start the plan a couple weeks ahead, but then start knowing that in a week or so, you're going to start really working this plan. But we got to look at how many chapters do you have to read or go over? How many topics? And you just start breaking it down.
Nikki Kinzer: And you review, you study, you review and you study. If you have a midterm that is chapters one, two and three, then the first day you may be studying chapter one. The next day, I want you to review what you studied in chapter one and then go to chapter two. The next day, I want you to review what you studied in chapter one, chapter two and then go to chapter three. Every day, you're going back to the very beginning. You don't have to spend as much time on it as you do on the new chapter that you're studying that day. But you want to go back because this is the retention. I can't emphasize it enough. If you keep reviewing it, you're going to know it. You're going to know it and then by the time you get to that test, you know it. And if you don't know, if you really are confused and you have questions, go to your office hours, talk to your professors.
Pete Wright: Please go to your office ours.
Nikki Kinzer: Please. They want to help you.
Pete Wright: Please.
Nikki Kinzer: And even with it being online, then you send that email and you set up a Zoom call and don't be shy because we want you to get that help. Attend study sessions, meet with a study group, even with Zoom, talk to other people. Because again, the more you engage yourself in the material that you're learning and you get to have conversations with somebody else who's in the class, the retention goes up because now you guys are communicating. You're having a conversation about what this means to me. How do you interpret this? What questions do you have? You may know more about something than somebody else does and you can go over it that way.
Nikki Kinzer: And then the last thing that I want to say is you want to act like you're the teacher. When you are at your final stage and you are just reviewing, you're not review, study and review, study, you're just reviewing. This is where you want to be about a day or two before the actual test. I suggest that you get up from wherever you are and you be the professor and you teach the class and you tell your plants, your dog, your cat, your stuffed animals, the trees outside, whoever you want to talk to, what you know in your own words and what you'll find out pretty quickly is what you don't know and what you need to go back through and review more.
Nikki Kinzer: But you do these things and again, I just can't emphasize enough about the retention and how much more confident you will be when you go in to take that test. If for some reason you come back and you didn't do as well on the exam as you thought, I highly suggest too, that you get the exam if you can and talk to your professor about what went wrong. Because something didn't connect, if you didn't do as well as you thought you did, or that you felt like you should have done or whatever. Don't just let that slide, figure out why.
Pete Wright: Yeah. Right, right, right. Understand that. And I just, I want to reinforce this. We talked about it earlier when we started, but I want to reinforce this. If you are doing the things that you need to do before, during and after class, if you're taking notes, if you're reviewing the material, if you're building sets of flashcards that you need to remember key terms and concepts and you're able to do those things in micro doses, micro doses of class learning during the semester, you will be ready for the exam without a lot of stress at all. Because you'll get to it and you'll look at your study plan and be like, oh, not only do I know this, I've integrated it into myself and I know how to use it. And you'll be able to demonstrate that mastery quite easily and efficiently. And so you won't need to worry about it.
Pete Wright: And so I think that that is the mentality change that I would call for in this conversation, which is start with the end in mind. And it's not to do well on the test, it's to be a person who knows how to do the things that you're learning here. And the more efficiently you can be that person, then tests are nothing to you.
Nikki Kinzer: Exactly, exactly.
Pete Wright: You dominate tests, you eat them for lunch.
Nikki Kinzer: Right. Right. Well, and one last thing too, that I want to suggest is that if you're a full time student, that is a full time job and to treat it like a full time job. And it's hard for young adults, I think because it's such a transitional time period. They're on their own, but they're not because the parents are still kind of supporting them but they're in college, but they have a lot more freedom. And it doesn't feel like it's full time because you're only taking 15 credits, 15 hours of school. But you got to also have the mentality that it is if you want good grades. And I don't even mean, I'm happy, I think it's great when somebody gets a C and they worked really hard and got that C. I'm not saying that the good grade has to be an A. I want you to do the best that you can and feel really good about what you're doing, but it is a full time job.
Nikki Kinzer: And to do these things that we've talked about, it takes time and work and you've got to put in the time and work to do that. And that's where you start thinking of this as a job. If you weren't in college, you would have a 40 hour, a job or you would have some kind of job, that you would have to go to support yourself. Right now, this is your job and it's you're still learning a lot about life and you're still trying to figure out how to manage time and all of that and it's going to get messy and things are going to happen. But the skills you learn now will definitely help you as an adult when you go into the working world. Because as we said, all of this applies.
Pete Wright: Yeah, every bit of it.
Nikki Kinzer: To your future adult self.
Pete Wright: That's right. That's right. I love this subject so very much and I think it's something that I hope that people who are not students don't see this title and jump right through it and skip it because I think these are concepts that are absolutely critical for. And this is as somebody who is deeply into his forties.
Nikki Kinzer: I know, right? Me too.
Pete Wright: And has spent 15 years teaching class online and in classrooms at universities and I still see it as something that I deal with all the time.
Nikki Kinzer: Great.
Pete Wright: There you go. Thank you.
Nikki Kinzer: And we do have a sheet. We have a worksheet. Or not a worksheet, it's just a download of everything that we've talked about, plus more. There's a few things that are in the sheet that I didn't talk about today. That's in our show notes and you can take a look at that too.
Pete Wright: Lots of links, lots of things that will help you get started. Lots of videos. Videos are fun.
Nikki Kinzer: They are fun.
Pete Wright: Watch the videos. Yeah. Enjoy the stuff. Thank you, everybody, for sticking with us and for your time and for your attention. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you next week, right here on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
