Neurodivergent Study Skills Tips

Neurodivergent Study Skills Tips

Kerry Stott is completing an MRes in clinical awareness of shame with nurses, OTs, and social workers at the University of Brighton with a plan to continue towards doctorate level (and beyond). Kerry balances research and studies alongside clinical work as a Lead Practitioner with working age adults in the community. Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD her love of helping others naturally extends to other neurodivergent people and in empowering them to be able to learn in a way that most suits them. In this blog Kerry shares study skills tips for neurodivergent people.

1) Focussed 15 minutes – if you are struggling to get started or feeling that you are procrastinating, set a timer for 15 minutes, put all distractions away. It is helpful because it is only a short space of time to work. At the end of the 15 minutes you can choose to stop or if you are in the flow, carry on. If you choose to stop you have achieved 15 more minutes of study than you previously had and you should feel proud. It may be that you decide to do another focussed 15 minutes later in the day.

2) Cut the studying sessions into small chunks. No one can sustain studying for hours and hours, if you are able to do this it is called hyper focus (see below). A reasonable amount of study time is 1-2 hours, which you can do once a week or several times per week.

3) Hyper focus. We all love hyper focus as we can achieve great things. However, what can happen is that we expect our brains to work in this way all of the time. It may be better to think of the brain like a muscle: you may be able to do 100 squats today but guaranteed that your legs will feel it tomorrow (or the day after) and you will not be able to replicate those number of squats again. The brain is the same, if you have hyper focus then expect your brain to be a bit tired afterwards and give it a bit of time to recover.

4) Hydrate and food. Forgetting to hydrate with non-caffeinated drinks really affects our ability to focus and retain information, plus if we are hyper focussed we often do not get the signals that we are hungry or thirsty so when we do get them we are parched and starving. In relation to food, whilst crisps and chocolate are tempting (and possibly their own unique legitimate food group) it is better to try and eat as healthy as you can to ensure that we do not get spikes or dips in our blood sugar. It may be helpful to set up alarms and reminders to prompt you to eat, drink, and go to the loo.

5) Work out how you learn the best. School may have taught us that reading is the only way to study: they were wrong. It may be that you struggle with reading, software such as Natural Reader (free on the internet) will allow us to download documents and listen to them. This can enable us to do other things with our hands such as crafting or drawing or doodling which can be relaxing or we can be learning whilst walking or driving. Accessing audio versions of books is helpful as well and often cheaper than buying a hard copy.

6) Work out when is the best time to study for you. Possibly you are an early riser so getting up at 5am and studying for a couple of hours a couple of times per week may be helpful. Possibly you prefer working later at night when the kids are in bed, great, just make sure you are able to get enough rest. Perhaps you like to nibble away at projects and do a little bit but often. Perhaps you only perform well when you have a few hours before the deadline. Whatever your preferred method, do that. There is no ‘best’ way to study, there is only the best way for us.

7) Study buddies and cheerleaders. We all need support in our studying, be it friends, family, whatsapp groups, or other support. Tapping into our support networks. Allow ourselves to be supported and most importantly inspired and motivated by the people that love us. People can be really down and sarcastic about inspiration and motivation but it is how things get done.

8) Atomic habits. James Clear in his book Atomic Habits states that doing tiny things, making the smallest adjustments may not make huge differences in the short term but the cumulative effects of them is staggering. Reading for 10 minutes per day is not a lot but over the course of 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years it is phenomenal. Also, as we make small changes it allows us to build on that and be able to make those significant changes that people outside of our personal worlds see.

9) Movement and momentum. Having a massive piece of work is daunting and can stop us from going forward. Choose the small jobs, choose the jobs with the easy wins. As we build momentum with the small and achievable jobs, that movement will allow us to tackle the larger projects.

10) Chunking. Neurodivergent brains become overwhelmed with sustained focus. Break the task into pieces, and then see if you can break them down into even smaller pieces. When you have done that write a ‘Done It’ list (not a ‘to do’ list) to help you see all the things that you have achieved.

11) Procrastination. It could be that the procrastination that you are feeling is the ‘freeze’ of the threat response (fight, flight, freeze). Take a few deep breaths and see if this is triggering for you and if so what is it? Frequently neurodivergent people are told that they are ‘lazy’ or ‘don’t try hard enough’, this is simply not the case. Work out what this is bringing up in you and then allow yourself time to care for yourself.

12) Referencing Software: Programs such as Endnote© and Zotero© allow you to clump your references by way of what module/essay you are working on. They allow you to use a variety of referencing styles so there is no need to have them written down on scraps of paper or a different document. It allows in essay referencing as well as compiling a reference list at the end. There are numerous Youtube© videos to help you set them up.

Clear J (2018) Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Penguin: New York

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