Writing a Thesis with ADHD: Finishing a Long Academic Project

You open a thesis file. You type a title on the first page. Then you close the file and do not open it for three weeks.

Many people who do academic work know this scene. For someone living with ADHD, the scene can last a little longer.

In my own academic work, when I was dealing with long texts, the hardest thing for me was not the writing itself. What was hard was making a job whose end lay months away feel real today, now, at this desk.

Why a thesis is such a demanding job

Looking at a thesis through the eyes of ADHD, it seems as though the places where one struggles most have been put together on purpose.

The deadline is very far away. Months from now stands, in my mind, at the same distance as "tomorrow." No urgency comes from inside to start today.

The steps are unclear. "Do the literature review" is not a step; it is a heading written over dozens of steps. If the first move is not clear, there is no starting point either.

There is little external structure. There is no class schedule, no weekly assignment, no teacher chasing you. Meetings with the supervisor can be infrequent. During school years, the structure that came from outside filled in the order that was missing inside; in a thesis, that structure largely disappears. I described the general version of this in the article ADHD at school and university.

Some parts are truly boring. Formatting the bibliography, fixing table numbers, going over the same paragraph for the fifth time. A job that does not interest you is among the heaviest in ADHD.

What the research says

I have to be honest here: there is very little good research directly on "thesis writing in students with ADHD." There are findings that come from neighboring areas.

A review that surveyed the ADHD literature in university students reports that between 2 and 8 percent of the university population report clinically significant ADHD symptoms, and that ADHD is consistently linked with academic difficulties in these students. The same review also notes that at the time of writing there was no controlled intervention study specific to university students (DuPaul et al., 2009). So the evidence we have on what to do for students is still weak relative to the size of the problem.

The procrastination side has been studied more. A study with university students without a diagnosis found that, even after hyperactivity and impulsivity were taken into account, inattentive symptoms were linked with procrastination (Niermann & Scheres, 2014).

A broad meta-analysis that gathered the general procrastination literature ranks the most consistent predictors of procrastination as follows: finding the task aversive, the reward or outcome being distant in time, low self-efficacy, impulsivity, and self-control dimensions such as distractibility and organization (Steel, 2007).

Looking at this list, I see that writing a thesis ticks almost every box.

For me a thesis is a time-management job before it is a writing job. The writing part comes by itself on the days when I can make time real.

Bringing the distant goal closer

One of the oldest findings that is meaningful to me comes from educational psychology. In a classic experiment with children who struggled in mathematics and had no interest in it, one group set near subgoals for themselves, one group only a distant goal, and one group no goal at all. The children who set near subgoals progressed quickly in self-directed learning, mastered the material, and their self-confidence and interest in the subject grew. The distant goal had no measurable effect (Bandura & Schunk, 1981).

This study was done with children and with a sample without an ADHD diagnosis. But it translates very well to a job like a thesis: "Handing in the thesis in June" is a distant goal and in practice says nothing today. "Extracting notes from five sources for the first subheading of the second chapter this week" is a near goal and tells me where to start today.

A system I find worth trying

What follows is not a list of rules. Each item can be tried one by one and dropped if you do not like it.

Describing each piece in its finished form

Instead of "write the methods section," it works to write in one sentence what each piece will look like when it is done: "The sample, the data collection instrument and the analysis plan have each been written as a paragraph, with their sources added." A job with no definition of done never gets finished; you only get tired.

Tying interim deadlines to someone else

I can easily shift the dates I set for myself. The dates I have promised to someone else stand much firmer.

Talking with the supervisor and splitting the big deadline into small pieces (such as a draft of one chapter every month) creates an urgency from outside. In the glossary this approach appears as staged delivery. If the supervisor cannot meet often, a mutual delivery agreement with a study partner does a similar job.

I discussed the habit of solving everything left to the last night with that night's urgency in the article panic productivity in ADHD. In a thesis, that night has to keep coming back again and again, and the body does not put up with that for long.

Closing each session with a return note

The most expensive moment of a thesis, I think, is the moment I come back after a break. Where did I stop, what was I doing, where was this paragraph going? The half hour I spend remembering this often takes the whole energy of that day.

Now I try to end every work session with a two-minute note:

• Where did I stop? ("The second paragraph of 3.2, I was about to describe the opposing view.")
• What is the next concrete step? ("Reduce the finding in source 14 to one sentence.")
• What idea do I have in mind that I have not written down?

When I open the file the next day, the first thing I read is this note. Starting becomes possible without hitting the wall of task paralysis.

Using interest as a door

You do not have to write a thesis from beginning to end in order. Entering through whichever section stirs a little interest that day, and then moving to the duller part, often gives better results than starting with the dull part. I cannot summon hyperfocus whenever I want, but I can leave a door for it.

One warning: it is also possible to stay for hours in the interesting section and never move on to the dull one. A timer, or a fixed switching time in the calendar, keeps this door from turning into a trap.

A visible progress chart

In long jobs like a thesis, progress cannot be seen with the eye. The file was open yesterday and it is open today. Writing all the subgoals on the wall or in a fixed place on the screen and crossing them off as they are done brings the reward from months away to today.

A weekly thesis card Every Monday write only three lines on a card: this week's single near goal, the first concrete step of this goal, and whom you will show it to and when. If the third line stays empty, the goal will most likely slip.

Have someone with you

Writing meetups where everyone does their own work in the same room at the same hour, or online silent work sessions on video, can start a job that cannot be started alone. In the glossary this appears as body doubling.

The last ten percent

The most dangerous place in a thesis is, I think, its end. The job is almost finished, the novelty has completely worn off, and the remaining jobs are the dullest ones: formatting, the bibliography, the abstract, the acknowledgments page. The state that appears in the glossary as the ninety percent syndrome is common in long projects.

In this stage I find two things worth trying. The first is to write the remaining jobs one by one, as very small items, and not leave any of them under a heading like "corrections." The second is to deliberately brake the search for a perfect text in the final stage. The final version of a thesis never looks completely finished in its writer's eyes. I dealt with where this urge comes from in the article perfectionism in ADHD.

Not forgetting your right to support

At many universities, disabled student units can offer arrangements such as extra time or flexibility with deadlines. Whether these arrangements exist and how they are requested varies from institution to institution. Asking for information does not mean you have to tell everyone your diagnosis.

If the thesis process is turning into long-term burnout, constant sleeplessness or hopelessness, the matter may be bigger than the plan; talking with a mental health professional may be necessary.

What I think today

For years, finishing a long academic job was explained to me as a matter of "willpower." Now I see it more as a matter of design: bringing the distant closer, making the unclear concrete, making the silent visible.

Willpower is of course needed. But I see that willpower lasts much longer inside a well-built order.