How ChatGPT Helped Me Learn With ADHD

ADHD certainly does not make things easy, especially learning a new topic. As far as I can remember, even though I was very smart at school and always ended up getting a good grade, I had trouble focusing on certain topics or listening to certain teachers. Now that I know more about ADHD, I think I may have found the culprit.

Hi, I'm Saina and you're reading Sainaslife.

ADHD Drama at School

In my opinion, you can't really control your ADHD most of the time; it usually is the one that controls you. It's sort of a reaction to different situations and circumstances. When I was a child and I was at school-going age, I had lots of trouble that now I know originated from my ADHD. The biggest problem I can remember was lack of focus, in a way that I was zoned out for a few seconds and I would've missed an important part of the lesson, and some teachers didn't repeat it for you, just because they thought you were doing it on purpose, and that was one of the painful parts that ADHD people have to go through, being punished for something that is entirely out of their hands.

My Interest-Based Brain

After consuming loads of content and researching about ADHD, something finally illuminated in my head. It wasn't that I was always distracted and carefree; it was more about the material that I was learning. If the topic wasn't inherently interesting for me, my brain would have diverted my attention to something that I deemed more important or more interesting. ADHD brain is such an interest-based brain; it flies toward the interests and ignores all that is not interesting. So naturally, because not everything in a classroom is super fun, my brain was zoning out, daydreaming about the things that were more fun than that.

Honestly, I had a horrible time growing up with this trait of my ADHD, because many times I had to pressure myself into liking a topic even though I hated it. So I had to compensate by studying multiple times, recording the voice of the professors in university, listening to them on my own time, and creating notes that were simplified versions of the unnecessarily overcomplicated university lessons. I had to spend more time than neurotypical people to understand a course because in class I was daydreaming. The worst of it all were scientific papers. I cannot understand one paragraph of scientific papers to save my life! I think by far those are the worst enemy of people with ADHD, immediately followed by privacy policy texts. Those are both nightmares.

How ChatGPT Helped My ADHD

But nowadays there is a tool that has helped me tremendously and that is, of course, ChatGPT. This is not an ad and ChatGPT doesn't need any, but this tool has been a lifesaver for me when I'm trying to learn something. As I mentioned above, with ADHD, learning is a hassle; it's even more than a hassle, it's a nightmare. You can't just open a scientific book or a complicated online course, read or watch the content and voila. ADHD brain distracts you, pushes you away, burns you out to the point that it is physically painful to continue if the content is not your favorite topic. So what I do, I use ChatGPT to first completely simplify the whole content for me and apply it to my personal case, let's say my own blog, and then after I understood what the whole content is about, and I have mentally applied what I've learned to my own life, it becomes personal and a lot more interesting as a result.

With this method, I have been able to start the learning tasks that I'm always avoiding just because I'm not overly enthusiastic about them. ADHD and ChatGPT really go along together. Not only have I learned a lot about those topics, but also I have applied the knowledge I've learned to my own blog. You might not see it because I have added so many features to my blog that are not necessarily visible, but they have improved the quality of my content and how my blog performs.

Using AI the Right Way

I love ChatGPT. It works perfectly with my brain. If you also have ADHD, I suggest trying my method. Ask ChatGPT to simplify something that you've been struggling to understand, but don't forget that AI is not everything and you shouldn't directly ask for answers to academic questions; those are designed to expand your brain capacity. In my writings, I don't normally use AI unless it's for checking grammar and spellings that I've missed. I want my content to be genuine and from the heart and of my raw experience. Even though I use AI to learn easier, I believe that you shouldn't replace it with thinking. So moral of the post, use AI but don't overuse it.

As always, see you in the next post!

Best of wishes,

Saina.