🧠 How to Study with ADHD (Especially in Med School), Part II

Work with your neurochemistry, not against it.

✦ Step Two: Design for Dopamine

Arguably, the single biggest mistake I made in med school (currently still here!) was trying to brute-force my way through a study schedule. Everyone else seemed fine sitting for three-hour blocks, powering through First Aid or watching Pathoma like it was a Netflix binge. In contrast, I’d start on the same page, but then end up at a Walmart at 7pm for groceries… and I already had a full fridge.

“Why? Why am I like this?”

Dopamine. It goes a long way.

Dopamine has been getting the spotlight recently, and for good reason. See, ADHD brains don’t automatically find school rewarding. We need some crude (for lack of a better word) incentive. We need novelty: movement, color, sound, urgency— some kind of hook to make the task even remotely stimulating. Once I stopped trying to “discipline” my way into focus and instead started engineering dopamine into my study sessions, everything changed.

What I did (n=1):

• ⏱️ Timed bursts: Set a 50-minute timer and race the clock. Not “study for 3 hours.” Just “beat the clock in 50.” Dopamine loves urgency. That being said, there’s a lot of nuance to this: there’s a very good chance you can’t study/sit still for 50 minutes. I was like this too. Solution? 20-minute timer. Can’t do that either? 10. Treat your brain like a muscle here— you haven’t worked out that properly in forever. Let’s try it again. Sets of medicine for 10 minutes. Rest. Another set of medicine for 10 minutes. Repeat. I personally prefer a task to be done with (“I finished cardiology today”), but oftentimes, tasks are too large to do in one sitting, so they have to be broken down.

• 🏃 Movement: After said 50 (or 10) minutes, move. Walking outside in sunlight (wear sunscreen) would be ideal, but even some push-ups at home will do. Can’t do push-ups? Dance. Hell, do your laundry if need be— the point is, after your “set,” you need to get the body moving to stimulate some dopamine. This is effectively your “rest” between sets. It helps you stay on track and stay organized. Note that your movement/rest time shouldn’t be too long.

• 🥦 Eating Healthy: Booooo! Yeah, I know, but you don’t want something easy— you want something that works, right? So, there are a lot of details when it comes to eating healthy because it’s relatively difficult to define “healthy” in this regard. What works for me may not work for you. Therefore, I won’t specifically say what I ate. However, there are some universal nutrients that will help with brain health: Omega-3s (fish oils), Multi-vitamins (B complex, vitamin D, etc), and so on. These can be obtained via organic means (the actual foods) or via supplements (OTCs). Either way, they should be looked into. Or perhaps more accurately, you should check if you are getting enough of these nutrients and adjust accordingly.

By doing all these, I managed to control my dopamine and increase my success with studying. You can do the same.

Stay tuned for Part III!