Preparing for KPSS and ALES While Working With ADHD

The day of an adult preparing for an exam while working looks like this: they get up at seven in the morning, leave work at six, arrive home at seven and have four hours ahead of them.

On paper there are four hours. In reality there are not.

This article explains that difference and tries to build a plan that takes it into account.

Not a time problem, an energy problem

Every plan built without making this distinction collapses.

What is empty at seven in the evening is the calendar. What is not empty is attention. In an adult with ADHD there is a background job that runs all day: sustaining focus, constantly checking so as not to forget, building compensation so that the symptoms do not show.

In the article on masking I explained what this effort is, and in the article on fatigue its bill. In short, the same work is done with twice the energy and the bill is paid in the evening.

That is why the plan “I'll study in the evenings” regularly breaks down in a candidate with ADHD. The reason it breaks is not willpower, it is budget.

Measure first

Measuring for a week before building a plan saves the following six months.

For a week, note at which hours of the day you can really focus. The criterion is not that you like it; it is whether at that hour you can read a text and understand it, and solve a question and check it.

The picture that emerges is surprising for most people. For the majority the most productive slice is the morning; for some it is the lunch break; after nine in the evening it is for almost nobody.

The plan is built on this measurement. A plan built on free hours leans on a resource that does not exist.

Giving the best slice to the exam

This is the most practical suggestion in the article and the hardest to apply.

Most of us give the best slice of the day to work. It seems logical: work earns money and it is where performance is measured.

But exam preparation is exactly the task that requires that slice. Learning new information, solving questions and analyzing mistakes; all three are the tasks that require the highest attention. They are not done with the leftovers of the working day.

The practical counterpart is this: forty-five minutes before work gets more done than two hours after work. At first this sentence does not sound believable to people; once tried for a week it does.

It may be possible to arrange the work itself accordingly. The hardest task can be put not in the best hour of the day but in the second-best. In the article on workplace accommodations I wrote how to ask for a flexible start time.

Keeping the daily share small

Here there is a calculation specific to ADHD.

Studying three hours two days a week and studying forty minutes every day are close in total. But their results are not close.

The second option moves you forward more because it provides three things.

Spaced repetition. Spreading the same time over time produces more lasting learning than piling it into a single session. This is one of the study findings with the strongest evidence.

A lower cost of starting. A task done every day starts more easily than a task done twice a week. After a three-day break, sitting down at the desk becomes a threshold again.

Keeping the streak. In ADHD a system that has been dropped is not rebuilt, it is built from scratch.

The size of the daily share is not important. Forty minutes is fine, so is twenty. What matters is that it happens every day.

The weekend trap

The most common plan of working candidates is this: get by on weekdays, make up on the weekend.

This plan works on the first weekend. It breaks on the second. On the third it is dropped.

There are a few reasons. The weekend is the day onto which everything accumulated during the week is also moved: housework, shopping, health appointments, social life. Eight hours of study is not added to this.

Second, a catch-up plan is by nature big. A big plan does not start in ADHD; I explained this in the article on task paralysis.

Third, and most important: every weekend that falls apart leaves some guilt, and that guilt makes the next weekday's studying harder too. I wrote about this cycle in the article on shame and self-compassion.

A better setup: put on the weekend not a catch-up but a separate task. Solving and analyzing practice exams. This is the only task that cannot be done on weekdays and really suits the weekend.

Not being able to switch off after work

The second enemy of evening study is not fatigue, it is the mind still being at work.

In occupational psychology this is called psychological detachment and is counted among the basic components of recovery. Emotional exhaustion is found to be higher in employees who cannot detach; unfinished tasks, meanwhile, occupy the evening through work-related thoughts.

In ADHD this is harder. I took it up in the article on not being able to shut down after work.

The practical conclusion: before evening study a short closing interval is needed. Writing down the day's tasks, deciding tomorrow's first task, clearing the desk. It takes fifteen minutes, and without those fifteen minutes the following hour is unproductive.

How to study

On the method side there are two things with strong evidence, and both suit a working candidate.

Testing yourself. Rereading a topic explanation produces familiarity, it does not strengthen recall. Calling information up from memory does. I wrote this difference in the article on topic review.

Here is the advantage of the working candidate: if time is short, solving questions is both more productive and easier to start than reading a topic.

Spaced repetition. When you finish a topic, write the review days into the calendar at the same moment. The decision is made then, not on the review day. I explained the method in the article on spaced repetition.

Let me say what does not work too: hours spent watching topic-explanation videos. Passive watching is the form most open to the mind's spontaneous wandering in ADHD; I took this up in the article on online classes.

Portable study

The most valuable resource of a working candidate is dead time: commuting, queues, the lunch break.

The work that can be done in these slices is limited but not zero. Solving questions is not possible; review is.

A card system works here. Single-question review cards, on the phone or on paper. Five cards in five minutes. Three times a day for five minutes comes to an hour and a half a week, and that hour is stolen from nowhere.

Audio material is also an option but limited. Research shows that both listening to and reading the same text gives better learning than only listening; listening alone has no marked advantage. I opened this up in the article on audiobooks.

That is, a topic explanation listened to on the road does not teach that topic. It refreshes a topic that has already been studied. That is valuable too, but it is a different job.

Preparing for two exams at once

Studying for ALES (the graduate-study entrance exam) and KPSS (the public-sector personnel selection exam) in the same period is a common situation and is expensive in ADHD.

The reason is switching cost. Moving from one scope to another is a separate executive-function task, and that is already strained. I took it up in the article on difficulty with transitions.

If possible, separating the periods is more productive. If they cannot be separated, you should not touch both scopes within the same day: the day is fixed, the scope is single.

Practice exams and analysis

A practice exam is especially important for a working candidate because it is the only realistic source of feedback.

Once a week or once every two weeks, on a fixed day and at a fixed time. Taking it at the actual exam hour gives an extra benefit: the body gets used to that hour.

Three things to look at in the analysis: the reasons for blanks, the types of mistakes and how the time was distributed. I wrote this in detail in the article on practice exams and time management.

In candidates with ADHD one heading turns out especially crowded: losing a question they know through a careless error. This does not get fixed by studying the topic; it gets fixed by the habit of checking, and that habit is built in the practice exam.

If you take medication

There are a few points, and all of them are subjects to discuss with the doctor.

The range of the medication's effect directly determines at which hour study can be placed. If a long-acting form taken in the morning fades in the late afternoon, evening study makes an already difficult task harder still.

The second point is exam day. Changing the routine on exam day is generally not recommended; the decision is the doctor's.

The third is supply. A supply problem that coincides with the exam period is a serious risk; I wrote what to do in the article on supply.

I will take up the relationship between medication and studying in more detail in a separate article.

Trying over several years

This heading has to be written because most candidates are in their second or third year.

The real risk here is not a gap in knowledge. It is accumulated burnout.

Burnout comes earlier in ADHD, because even an ordinary day is spent with an effort to make up for things. I took it up in the article on burnout. When exam preparation that has lasted two years is added to this, the third year becomes far more expensive than the first.

The second risk is repeating the same plan. A plan that did not work for a year does not work in the second year either; the only difference is that the starting energy is lower.

There is a single sentence that has to be written at the end of every year: what did not work this year and what will I do differently next year? If there is no answer, the decision to continue is being made by habit, not by data.

The interview and oral stage

Passing the written exam is half the process. The second half strains a completely different side of ADHD.

An interview is a short, irreversible, real-time form of communication. Both listening and building an answer at the same time require working memory; excitement is added on top. I wrote about a similar mechanism in the article on giving presentations.

Three things work.

Preparing a skeleton, not memorizing. An answer memorized word for word comes to a complete stop at a single slip. A three-point skeleton tolerates a slip.

Writing the frequently asked questions in advance. Introduce yourself, why this institution, your strengths and weaknesses. The answers to these three are not built on the spot; they are written beforehand.

Starting by repeating the question. It both buys time to think and makes sure the question has been understood correctly.

On disclosing the diagnosis in an interview, the short answer is this: you do not have to disclose it, and there is generally no marked benefit in disclosing it at that stage. I covered this decision in detail in the article on job interviews.

Looking for a job at the same time

Many candidates are also looking for a job while preparing for the exam, and this becomes a period in which the two eat into each other.

The problem is not time, it is again switching. Writing a job application, going to an interview and studying for an exam put you into three different mental modes. In ADHD every change of mode produces a cost.

The setup that works is not to put the two tasks on the same day. Certain days of the week are application days, the others study days. Switching within a day leaves both tasks half done.

The second point: tracking applications requires a separate system. Where and when you applied, at which stage you are. This information cannot be held in the mind; the single list rule applies here too.

Pressure from family and surroundings

This heading has to be written because the most wearing side of preparation is often not the studying.

An adult preparing for an exam while working becomes a constant subject of questions in their surroundings. When will you take it, will it happen this year, are you still studying.

Most of these questions are not ill-meant but they place a separate load in ADHD. The reaction to the perception of rejection and criticism can already be intense; I took this up in the article on RSD.

What works is limiting the conversation. Deciding how many people need to know about the process and not giving details to the rest. This is not concealment, it is a boundary.

The rule I wrote in the article on stigma applies here too: you do not have to answer every sentence.

Courses, cost and the decision

For a working candidate the decision about a course is a matter of both money and time, and in ADHD it carries a separate dimension.

What a course provides is not content but structure: a fixed hour, the presence of other people, a calendar that comes from outside. These three are really valuable in ADHD and are the weakest side of studying alone.

But there is a risk: enrolling in a course produces a reward in itself, and that reward is received before going to the class. In the article on unfinished courses I wrote about this mechanism; the moment of enrolment feels far better than attendance.

The only question to ask before deciding is this: on which day, at which hour, will I watch the first lesson? If there is no answer, the enrolment is postponed.

The cost of studying alone

If no course is taken, the months spent alone at home produce a separate load.

Two things are lost here. The first is the companion effect: when someone is next to you, starting becomes easier and returning after drifting becomes quicker. The second is comparison: knowing where you stand is not possible when studying alone.

For the first, online shared study sessions are a partial solution. The effect is weaker but better than nothing.

For the second, the practice exam is the only measuring tool, and so it has to be regular.

When to stop

I want to write this too, because nobody does.

Continuing is not always the right decision. For a person who has got the same result for three years and has put their working life, relationships and health on hold during that time, stopping is not a failure; it is a calculation.

What I wrote in the article on taking responsibility for your own life applies here too: responsibility is not continuing, it is deciding knowingly whether to continue.

Using leave days correctly

The most valuable resource a working candidate has is annual leave, and it is often spent wrongly.

The common use: taking the week before the exam off. It seems logical, but in ADHD it generally does not work.

The reason is this. A long stretch of free time that opens up all at once means all the structure that comes from outside is removed. The order of hours that work gave goes, and nothing comes in its place. That week most often does not go as planned, and because it does not, it produces guilt in addition.

A better use is to break the leave up and spread it across the process. One day a month, as a full study day. Each one planned in advance and set aside for a single large task.

For the last week, easing the workload is more realistic than taking leave: not putting heavy tasks into that week, not taking meetings.

Question banks and managing sources

For a working candidate, since time is scarce, the choice of sources is more decisive than usual.

The most common mistake is using more than one source at once. Solving questions from three different publishers gives a sense of progress, but none gets finished and you cannot track which topic has been studied.

The rule: one topic source and one question bank per course. Not changed before it is finished.

The second mistake is not marking solved questions. You do not remember which questions have been solved and the same questions are solved again. In ADHD this comes directly from the mechanism I wrote about in the article on forgetfulness.

The solution is to put a mark on every solved question at once. Three different marks for correct, wrong and blank. These marks also become the map for the second round: in the second round only the wrong and blank ones are solved.

Body and health

In a long preparation period the first things sacrificed are sleep, meals and movement. All three directly determine study capacity.

Sleep. It is well documented that sleep loss is negatively related to learning and academic performance. In ADHD it also mimics and aggravates the symptoms.

Meals. Not eating enough during the day produces a marked drop in the afternoon. If you take medication, appetite loss deepens this picture; I wrote what to do in the article on appetite.

Movement. Work plus study means spending the whole day sitting. Short walks are an investment that pays off both physically and for attention.

These three are not a luxury; they are part of the plan. When they are not written into the plan, they are the first item to be cut.

Signs of burnout

In someone preparing while working, burnout comes earlier than in someone preparing full time, and in ADHD earlier still.

The reason is what I wrote in the article on burnout: even an ordinary day is spent with the effort of compensating and masking. When a second full-time job is placed on top, the numbers do not add up.

The early signs are these: the weekend begins to pass completely empty, even the simplest tasks become impossible, irritability increases, and nothing that used to be enjoyable is enjoyable.

When these signs appear, what to do is not to work more but to reduce the load. You do not need to give up the preparation; reducing the daily share is enough.

The distinction between burnout and depression becomes important here too, and a specialist makes that distinction. I took up this distinction in the article on depression.

How much to tell those around you

Who should know about the preparation process is a decision, and this decision has two sides.

The benefit of their knowing: having someone to be accountable to carries the process. In ADHD, accountability that comes from outside is more reliable than discipline built from inside.

The cost of their knowing: constant questions, constant comments, and everyone finding out when the result is announced.

The middle way that works is to choose one person. Once a week, telling only that person what has been done. No details are given to the rest of the surroundings.

At work, the general rule is in favor of not telling. I wrote a similar calculation in the article on job interviews; exam preparation can also be read at work as a signal of leaving.

What is left for me

The most tiring side of preparing for something while working is that both lives expect full performance.

At work nobody knows you are preparing for an exam, and because they do not know, their expectations do not drop. On the exam side, the same scope is measured as for those preparing full time.

Both sides treat you as having full capacity, and you have a single capacity.

In this situation the most realistic thing to do is to build the plan at half of your capacity. A plan built at half is carried; a plan built at the full amount is dropped in the first month, and when it is dropped, only guilt remains.

The information here is a general framework. Decisions on diagnosis and treatment are confirmed with your doctor, and exam details with the current guide.