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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › What ADHD actually is
Read a paragraph and then say it back in your own words before moving on, or write one line per section, or read with a pen underlining as you go. The point is to give your attention a job so there is less room for it to drift off. If the material allows it, listening while you read can help as well.
He forgot and We found him lacking in constancy (Quran 20:115). Forgetting and not holding steady are placed in the human story from the very beginning.
طه
وَلَقَدۡ عَهِدۡنَآ إِلَىٰٓ ءَادَمَ مِن قَبۡلُ فَنَسِيَ وَلَمۡ نَجِدۡ لَهُۥ عَزۡمࣰ ا
We also commanded Adam before you, but he forgot and We found him lacking in constancy
Qur’an 20:115read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A literature review of mind wandering in ADHD gathers evidence linking unintended drifting of attention to ADHD symptoms, and names internal distraction alongside the external kind. That fits the experience of eyes moving over text while thought is elsewhere. It reviews associations, so it describes the pattern rather than testing any particular reading strategy.
Lanier J, Noyes E, Biederman J. (2021). Mind Wandering (Internal Distractibility) in ADHD: A Literature Review.. Journal of attention disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Words only stay when your attention stays with them, and another passive pass gives it nothing to hold on to.
If this is new and arrived suddenly after years of easy reading, mention it to a doctor, since sleep problems, low mood and thyroid trouble can all look like this.
Driving is one long attention task with a very high cost of failure, so it is worth deliberately giving yourself more margin than you think you need.
There is a real difference between a person who will not start and a person who cannot get started, and with ADHD it is nearly always the second.
A lot of people with ADHD quietly believe they are not clever. Usually it comes from reading a page four times and taking nothing in, and concluding the obvious thing about themselves.