3 ADHD Systems That Transformed Me Into a Top 1% Student

Overview

Rav describes how adapting his study methods to his ADHD helped him move from struggling at university to graduating with honors and achieving top results across most of his final-year modules. His central lesson is to build systems that fit the way your brain works, rather than trying to work like everyone else.

Strategies and Techniques

• Borrow momentum and use body doubling: Ask someone to work alongside you or help you get to a study space. Another person’s presence and routine can make it easier to get started and push through the first difficult minutes.
• Create accountability outside your own brain: Rav sat near the front of lectures, where the lecturer could see him. The added social pressure helped him stay focused.
• Accept support: After his ADHD diagnosis, Rav worked with a university study-skills tutor to plan the week, track deadlines, and work backward from exams. He encourages setting aside pride and getting help when needed.
• Keep one source of truth: Put notes, course materials, and important documents in one digital location. Rav used Google Drive to reduce clutter and the risk of losing physical folders.
• Turn reading into listening: Use text-to-speech to listen to difficult or lengthy material, follow along on screen, adjust the speed, and replay sections. Rav found this made academic reading more manageable.
• Learn by teaching: Prepare to explain a topic to someone else. Teaching requires you to organize ideas, understand how they connect, and actively retrieve what you’ve learned. Studying with classmates can also make learning more social and engaging.
• Build in autonomy and personal interest: Rav draws on self-determination theory, emphasizing autonomy—the ability to make choices—as a source of motivation. When possible, choose topics, formats, or angles that genuinely interest you, even for tasks you cannot avoid.
• Make goals feel like a challenge: Rav turned studying into a game by aiming to do his best rather than merely pass. He found ambitious goals more motivating, though he notes this also made him highly competitive.
• Focus on the approach, not self-blame: Rav says his improvement came from changing how he worked, not from becoming smarter or forcing himself to be someone else. He also highlights rebuilding confidence and self-esteem as an important part of the change.

Presenter and Sources

• Presenter: Rav, who identifies himself as an organizational and social psychologist at the London School of Economics.
• Sources or concepts mentioned: Self-determination theory, particularly autonomy, and research on reading difficulties experienced by people with ADHD. No specific studies or researchers are named.