ADHD: Prescription For Procrastination

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This article is written by 1L success consultant Franklin Sims. If you are planning on starting law school soon or want help landing a job out of law school contact Franklin for law school success tools that work.

We all procrastinate and put things off. But for adults living with ADHD procrastination is a part of how their minds work. There are beneficial skills all law school students can learn from some of the best advice coming from researchers on adult ADHD. While in the real world procrastination is an everyday problem, in law school putting things off can hurt academic and career success.

The Science of Procrastination

According to psychology professor and procrastination expert Timothy A. Pychyl, PhD, procrastination is a negative coping mechanism. Like gambling or overeating, explains Dr. Pychyl, procrastination is a failure of self-regulation. In other words, procrastination is a coping mechanism because we mistakenly believe that delaying starting a task will make us feel better. Of course what actually happens is that it makes us feel a lot worse.

Along with procrastination my clients with ADHD also have to confront issues with attention, distraction and organization. Given the intense amount of information and content to organize in law school struggling with focusing ones attention and avoiding distractions is a challenging task to say the least. Thus, applying simple solutions to approach procrastination can improve the average law students’ performance but can be a total game player for a student with ADHD already facing a host of additional challenges.

Solutions

Let’s talk about two strategies ADHD students are using to overcome procrastination in law school.

At some time or another, most law school students are frustrated by their legal writing course. For students with ADHD the course is difficult because it requires hours of meticulous organization and synthesis of confusing arguments. While these aspects of the course challenge most students, organization and focus are particular weaknesses for students with ADHD.

Dr. Pychyl believes that when there is lack of clarity in a task or project then those with ADHD are more likely to procrastinate. There is no better example of an unclear project in law school than the typical legal writing assignment. Most law school students complain that legal writing professors’ expectations are nebulous and hard to put an exact finger on. But procrastinating on a legal writing assignment can be disastrous to a students grade and really hurt employment opportunities. Thus, the most important technique and tool I advise my clients to use is a legal writing template before writing their memo. The template is like a step-by-step guide that tells the student exactly what to write in each section of their memo. The template is created by taking turning their legal writing professor instructions into a clear visual aide that can be filled in. Constructing this document takes the mystery out of the assignment. Now that my client is more clear they can begin writing without the feeling too overwhelmed to even get started.

This leads me to the second strategy which Dr. Nowell, a renown expert in adult ADHD, calls “ always be starting.” Because most students with ADHD put off tasks, Dr. Nowell advocates beginning tasks immediately. In my work with clients this means reminding and encouraging clients students to begin outlining or writing assignments on the very day they are assigned. Once we get the ball rolling we can then apply our other strategies to avoid distractions and keep our attention focused.

Getting started right away has a lot to do with keeping a good calendar and making sure that you schedule your entire day; whether its eating, gym time or reading for class. By scheduling in time slots for legal writing we put ourselves in better position to earn a better grade in the course.

These strategies are great for legal writing because the more an assignment is edited and improved the more likely a student is to earn a competitive grade in the course. In my experience a strong grade in legal writing is a big plus for employers.

The biggest enemy to a law school student is stress. Stress impedes performance during studying and on exams. Since procrastination exacerbates stress techniques like these can help a student learning with ADHD symptoms or students with a tendency to put things off.

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