My ADHD Study Tips

ADHD doesn’t have to hold you back from academic and professional success. I attended Duke on an academic, merit based scholarship, went on to Cornell Medical school and matched in a pretty competitive specialty (ophthalmology). And, though my ADHD was mild (I didn’t require medication), I was able to achieve by implementing specific strategies that played to my strengths.

As I now help my son who also has ADHD,  it is has caused me to revisit the role ADHD played in my life in college and med school, the heck, even now as a working physician.

So, in this episode, I called my child psychiatrist mother, to ask her what qualities she saw in me that had her consider an ADHD diagnosis for me. And, we dive into the role of medication as well.

What tools did I use and continue to use to organize my life? In this episode, I cover:

1. Lists – lots and lots of lists.  I prioritize them based on due date and importance. But that took time to learn how to do.
2. Time boxing – the productivity strategy in which you allocate a certain amount of time to do a task and only perform during that time.
3. Time blocking is a time management technique which helps you divide your day into periods of time. This works well for medical/law/school where there are large amounts of information.
4. Chunking – lots of ADHD experts have discussed benefits of ADHD. Since I have inattentive ADHD, this works very well for me. Working for short, intense periods of time and then taking breaks.