If there’s one sentence I’ve heard most often from my clients with ADHD, it’s this: “I just can’t focus.” If you’re a student, sitting in class or a lecture hall, staring at your instructor who’s been talking for what feels like hours about something you couldn’t care less about, you know exactly what I mean. Your body is there, but your mind? It’s already gone. Somewhere between planning your weekend, worrying about an email you forgot to send, and wondering if your desk neighbor’s pen click is actually a form of psychological warfare.

Procrastination, or, as I like to call it, “chronic postponing,” is probably one of the biggest struggles I see as an ADHD coach. And let’s be honest: who among us with ADHD doesn’t know that feeling? We want to start, desperately even, but something inside us just won’t let us. The reasons vary: lack of motivation, boredom, overwhelm, perfectionism, or fear of falling short of our own expectations.

For the longest time I thought the theory of learning styles was based in legitimate research. I had encountered the theory during my time as a graduate student and now as a professor I knew some of my colleagues promoted it in their classes. It was not until a student of mine during some random discussion piped up and said: Learning styles have been debunked! I was stunned. And a little skeptical.

When people come to me for coaching, they often arrive with a sense of urgency. “I just need a few tips,” they say. “Something to help me stop procrastinating,” or “Maybe if I had the right calendar system, I’d finally get things done.” And I understand. I've been there myself, convinced that if I just found the perfect method, everything would fall into place.

When I was a student, I hated oral performance grades. They always seemed to be somewhat unfair. I was a natural talker and participated quite a bit. But I was also easily bored and liked to chat with my classmates. Consequently, my teachers wouldn’t give me the high grade I thought I’d definitely deserved because they felt I was a distraction to my peers and disrespected my teachers by not paying enough attention.

Test-taking anxiety is a common struggle for many students. When I was a professor, I saw it again and again: the fear in students’ eyes, the nervousness before an exam, the trembling of their voices when they had to give a presentation. Ultimately, I tried to eliminate as many tests as possible and had students do projects instead. Or I gave them a choice between several possible test modalities they could choose from.

When you are in school, college or working a job, you often encounter tasks or projects that overwhelm you, especially when they are complex and stretch over a long time. You can feel like you are standing in front of a mountain with no idea how to scale it.

Like so many times before, you find yourself in a pickle: You have to read an important text for class, but you’re unable to do so. The topic is so boring you can barely stay awake. The length of the text frightens you.

Do you have a calendar? Do you like writing things down in a specific place so that you won’t forget them? Or do you have lots of post-it notes flying around in your apartment and loose paper with important information? You might have heard it a thousand times, but keeping a calendar when you have trouble remembering appointments or deadlines can really be a lifesaver.