Seeking tips & coping strategies for better academic suc

Post Reply New Topic

I'm at the end of my first semester of a university course, and I've failed to do as well as I know I could. Organization, planning, and being balanced in my use of time to work toward multiple goals are the main problems I've identified. I'm probably doing other things very inefficiently, to make it more difficult for myself that I'm not aware of.

Surely other aspies have overcome similar problems. I've looked for books on advice for students with Aspergers but they all tend to heavily focus on coping socially--an important topic, but doesn't address my problems. Maybe it's because many aspies do very well academically already, were diagnosed at a younger age, and are more familiar with the requirements of formal study--going straight from high school to university/college. I was only diagnosed very recently, and haven't been in full-time formal education since high-school about 17 years ago.

Understanding the work is easy enough for me, except for occasional frustration & uncertainty regarding ambiguity & lack of clarity. Managing multiple demands and time-management seem to be my main problems--I tend to focus on one thing, or a subtopic of a subtopic of a subtopic, and neglect others.

What are the common obstacles of students with Aspergers to doing as well as they can in formal education? What has been found to work in overcoming these obstacles?

For better organisation, I've found David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" to present an excellent system for keeping up with multiple projects (although I have spent too long on establishing this system to the neglect of the projects it's supposed to help me organize). Any other book recommendations for aspie students, for problems other than human relations?

I read David Allen's GTD and was overwhelmed by his system so I haven't tried it for myself.

I'm a graduate student and what I do for academics is:

I make a list of all the assignments I will have due and tests that will be coming up, in chronological order, as a sort of time management triage. If nothing else, I can look at my list and see what deadline is next and use that to allocate my time.

For bigger assignments, such as research papers, I break the task down into stages and impose deadlines on myself and add them to my list. So, for example, by X date I have to have found a stack of books/articles that I will use for research. By Y date, I have to have read 1/3 of my sources and made notes on them, and so forth.

I keep all my syllabi and important hand-outs in a binder with dividers by subject. Each semester I can clear out the binder and re-use it. I have a separate folder on the bookshelf where I file all past syllabi because I have learned that it is important and useful to keep them.

I keep different colored plastic folders with velcro closures and binder holes (cost less than a dollar each) for each subject and keep research, completed papers and exams, etc. in them (Again, it's very useful not to throw away any class work until after final grades have been recorded.)

I set aside a specific amount of time each day to work on academic work. I use a kitchen timer to push myself to work for fifteen minutes steady and then I can take a five minute break (I usually check e-mail or play video games during this time. Sometimes I get up and do jumping jacks or toe touches during my break.) When the break timer goes off, I re-set the study timer. Usually I'll do four of these for an hour of coursework per evening. If I'm really involved in something -- like I've gotten very absorbed in writing a paper, I click off the timer and hit a couple of buttons to change it to count up and keep working. If I fizzle out and look at the timer to see that I've put in my scheduled time anyway, I stop for the day. If I fizzle out before my time is up, I go back to the fifteen minute blocks and usually switch to a different task at that point.

Doing a little bit of something every week day keeps everything moving along and keeps me from getting frantic with deadlines or scrabbling to put together something half-acceptable. I try to make a point of learning everything properly as it comes along so that all I have to do at finals time is a genuine review, not "cramming." And I strive to be meticulous about my organization of papers to keep from wasting time wondering where something I wanted is.

There are other details for working on a long-term project (dissertation) but I won't bog you down with stuff it sounds like you won't need for a while.

Shiyin: I have the same problem. I never realized how bad my time-management skills were until starting my university program last fall. I was always known for being right on top of everything at work, and now I feel like I'm incredibly scattered. -timer

Sparrowrose: The egg-timer idea sounds like a good one. I'll have to try that. It seems like something that might make it easier to focus, for some reason.

I do try to prioritize my due dates, but my problem with projects is that I get to researching the problem, and print out a massive pile of articles and check out books starting at the beginning of the semester. I follow this line of inquiry, then that line, then run down this other thing that's sort of related and interesting -- oh, look, bright-shiny and related concept over here -- and then -- ah, shoot, the thing's due the day after tomorrow!

That's why I impose deadlines on myself. By X date, I must have picked out a stack of research. I can still pick up more information if I want/need, but on Z date, I have to start making notes on articles (I use Freemind to organize my notes because I can simultaneously organize thoughts into what will be the paper outline as I put them into Freemind (which is free mind-mapping software) and if I'm careful to make my notes in my own words rather than lifting lots of pertinant quotations and if I'm careful to put citations in my notes and build the works cited section as I go, then by the time I'm done reading/skimming information and making notes on it, the final paper is already about 80%-90% written, just by cutting and pasting my Freemind comments in the proper order with some transitions and added thoughts inserted among them as needed.

If I've hit date Z and must start reading and making notes on articles, I can still pull new stuff in, but I have to be spending time every day on the reading and note-taking because that's part of my deal with myself when I wrote up my triage list. If it gets to be due-date time and I'm still pulling new stuff in, I have another deadline date by which I must "cut my losses" and look at what I've notated up and hone it down into the thesis and exposition of my paper and just leave out all those other goodies that are beckoning to me.

It can be a little frustrating reeling myself in when I'm really getting into a topic and excited about it, but the method I describe has gotten me an A on every paper so I put up with a little "researchus interruptus" in the name of expediency. (Because I can also just keep on reading about it after the semester's over. If I'm really fired up for some ideas, they go in the potential dissertation topic files that I didn't describe and that aren't really as important to think about unless a person is planning to do graduate school and wants to get things off to an early start.

I just finished my freshman year and had a lot of success with managing my assignments. What I try to do is:

1. Make school my main focus during the semester. What I mean by that is don't work if you don't have to and try to eliminate any other unnecessary obligations.

2. Give myself time in my schedule every week where I'm stuck on campus and have nothing to do but my homework, a project or study. I try to set my schedule up so that there are gaps in between some of my classes so I can do this.

3. ALWAYS pay attention in class, it makes everything so much easier. Do your best to pay attention no matter how dull it is.

4. Make a routine where I usually do homework on certain days and projects on weekends when I have more time.

5. Make a list when the amount of things to be done gets too overwhelming.

So far theses guidelines have gotten me straight A's, so maybe some of it could work for you. Good luck in school!

Thanks for the suggestions so far. It's very useful to read of the work habits of those who have already been successful, and the things listed which I'm already doing are encouragement that I'm on the right track at least with these things.

I keep countdown timers (weeks, days, hours) to my deadlines on my PC's desktop, I work in 25 minute blocks with a timer (started this useful habit recently (after reading on the so-called "pomodoro technique"), -- it increases my focus a lot, pschristmas. I also keep records on my work sessions which I intend to analyze statistically during holidays after exams using a small computer program I intend to write for stats on average work start times, average work done on each day of week, break lengths, percent of work spent on each area, most productive times of day etc., which should help set work goals next semester, and once it's written will take about as little time to use as pressing a couple of buttons).

I've tried setting deadlines for sub-tasks of larger tasks, (such as on gantt charts) but unforseen events have always forced me to abandon these and the time I've spent on them turns out to have been wasted. If it has worked for you, sparrowrose, maybe I should stick with it.

Freemind is good software, I use FreePlane, a close descendent of it (also free), and especially TreePad (a paid version), to organise notes, thoughts, and implement GTD. I'll continue with GTD, as it really has helped a lot already, and is really just a matter of keeping track of each "project" (any task with >1 step), its "next actions", and filing notes on these according to the "project" it belongs to. This always needs to be done in one way or another anyway, and this seems to be as time-efficient as any I've found so far.

Being deeply absorbed in a topic helps a lot to achieve a lot, and I have received good marks and found the work easy when I have been (this year and also in previous less demanding part-time studies). ...But how to direct that to each topic in each unit being taken, and switch it to from one to another when needed?!

I will analyse my mistakes and successes during the holidays, and with both this and help from the replies on this thread, will surely help.

I'd never heard of gantt charts before. I'll have to spend some time reading up on that when I get up (I'm about to go off to bed now.) Thanks for drawing my attention to them!

I've used GanttProject (free download at http://www.ganttproject.biz/) -- good simple software for making them, but with limited benefit for me, as I said.

"a little bit of something every week" would be an improvement, maybe also using checklists on what this should be, and how much for each area.

You might also like OpenProj for your Ganttcharts. It's a free alternative to MS Project. I still procrastinate but at least I can see how much time I'm loosing.

I don't know if you were intentionally saying something different from what I said or not, but in case you mis-read me, I said a little bit of something every week day, not every week. I work that way so that I can take the entire weekend off to vegetate, catch up on housework, whatever. The week belongs to school, the weekend is mine, guilt-free because I did a little bit of something every week day.

Sorry, it was unintentional. I don't let a day pass without doing as much as I can. The mistake I make is not being balanced in what I do, getting absorbed in one important task and spending more time & effort than I should on it, and losing track of & neglecting other things I should be doing. My misreading of your comment, that doing a bit of each thing daily or weekly (so that everything receives attention as needed, not just one thing), was in hope of a possible solution to this imbalance.

That's part of my triage: every day I work on the next thing that's due and I work on some long-term project. So, for example, I might spend two of my fifteen minute time periods on filling in the online worksheet for my next Spanish class and then two fifteen minute time periods taking notes for one of my research papers. If I get caught up in the research paper, I let it spill over (which is why I do short-term stuff first). If I have, say, three research papers due at the end of the semester for different classes, I rotate and work on a different one each day so I don't get caught up in the most fun one and neglect the other two.

I have it all printed out on paper and taped to the side of the bookshelf next to my desk at home so I can look at see what's the next short term project (and cross stuff off as I finish it) and the big projects I just remember which was the last I worked on and work on the next (next for me is defined by the order in the week that I take the classes. So a research paper for a monday, wednesday class might be A, for a tuesday, thursday class is B. and for a wednesday-only seminar is C.

I don't really think in terms of how much time each thing takes, I just do my short term stuff for half an hour (or an hour if I have a lot of stuff) and then work on my long-term stuff for half an hour (or longer, if I'm really into it) and it seems to be enough to get everything done (although professors say spend three hours at home for every hour in class and I don't come anywhere near that.)

Interesting. Your work habits must be efficient. Rotation of areas worked on seems to be what I'm most lacking, and thus may gain, from what you've described. Completing short tasks first to allow for "spilling over" at the end of sessions on longer-term work also seems a good idea. Thinking ahead and doing more work on long-term projects daily is another important improvement I can make.

Spending too long on one thing is often not because it's the most fun, as fun work tends to be completed in less time. For example, I've spent far longer on an essay I'm currently working on for neuroscience, my most frustrating current work (not difficult to understand, just difficult to organise work for), than more fun work for a computer science class (Java programming), which was easy to get out of the way quickly. This was probably because I'm much more used to writing English & philosophy essays than science, and approached it in the wrong way from the beginning, wasting time on one particular reading (too thoroughly learning its content, thinking too deeply about it, drafting ideas on & argument regarding this one reading) when I should have quickly picked out the main points & findings of several articles during that time, integrating notes on these into my essay draft as I went along. Less deep thinking on individual readings, less contemplation & independent thought is needed for writing for science than for English literature or philosophy. Knowing that will surely come with experience; I'll try not to make that mistake next time.

Do you decide beforehand how many 15m periods to give each area? Or plan a week/other in advance a sort of time budget for each thing to do? If so, how long does this take you? How long do you spend on planning/organizing what work to do & when, in total per week / month?

Sometimes it's fun (I love research so I can over-spend time on looking stuff up and under-spend time on organizing it and writing it out so I have to keep an eye on myself) and sometimes it's not so much that it's fun as that I'm "on a roll" with it and don't want to stop my momentum.

But some work is both short-term (like a regular assignment twice a week to fill out Spanish worksheets) and fast (I can write a one-page Spanish essay in about an hour because some of my Spanish skills are years beyond the level I'm studying at.) so I tackle it first to get it out of the way so I can spend as much time as I need/want on research projects without having to stop because the worksheet that's due tomorrow isn't done.

I know experts say to do the hardest stuff first to get it out of the way but that doesn't work for me. I have to run triage on my homework because if I just tackle the hardest stuff first, I never get to the easy stuff that's due tomorrow so I sacrifice many short and easy assignments for working on one long and difficult project and my grades suffer. So I do it backwards from how the experts say to do it and everything gets done. This is what works for me but it might not work for everyone.



Exactly. I've been going to university now for six years (four years undergrad, two years master level) and it has taken me all six of those years to "tweak" my system and I'm sure I'll still be fine-tuning things when I graduate a few years from now!



Let's see. How long I spend planning everything is the amount of time it takes to put all my syllabi together and type out a chronological list of stuff and then print it out. I've learned to put a blank space between weeks (to represent the weekend) and so I'll have about 15 "clumps" of stuff due. If I have a week with nothing due, I write "NOTHING DUE" for that week as a visual spacer.

Some stuff gets added in, like the Spanish worksheets I've spoken so much about (I'm trying to pull in a third bachelor's degree in Spanish at the same time that I do my graduate work. I don't know if I'll succeed in that or not, but I am trying to get as far along as I can.) are not in the syllabus, the professor puts them on a website week by week. So some stuff never ends up on the list. Sometimes I have to slightly re-vise my lsit and print out a new copy so I always save the doc file (I have a directory called "education" and it has subdirectories with names like "2009spring" and "2008fall" and within each of those is a directory for each class that semester. In the subdirectory for a semester, one file will be my triage list. I literally name it "triage.doc" and if I have to revise it, it gets named "triage_02.doc" and so on.)

So. Anyway. I know I only have about an hour to an hour and a half of focus in me in one sitting, even with the timer breaks, so what I do is I sit down and look at my triage list and look at any other stuff like my Spanish worksheet website and see first "what is due tomorrow?" If anything, I start there. If nothing, I look for "what is due in the next few days?" to see if I can work ahead. None of this will be the big projects because they're always due at the end of the semester.

Then I start with the "what is due tomorrow" or "soon" stuff, be it reading a chapter, doing a worksheet, reading an article, studying a verb structure, etc. Usually for my political science and history classes it's a reading of some sort and for my Spanish classes it's studying a form, writing a short essay, doing a worksheet. I have found that I can usually clear up the "what is due tomorrow" in half an hour unless the reading is really bad (I'm a slow reader.) I basically just use as many 15-minute blocks as I need to get tomorrow's work done. If tomorrow's work was really short or there wasn't any, then I spend a block or two on future homework.

Then I make myself spend at least two blocks on long-term research unless I spent a whole hour (or more) on short term stuff, in which case I will just do one 15-minute block on long-term stuff. Enough to have done something and moved it ahead but not enough to get terminal homework burn-out.

I don't really plan ahead how many blocks something will take or home many blocks I'm going to spend. But the sort of "intuitive homework sense" I have developed has been developed over several years. And I have learned where I can get away with slacking. For example, if I just have too much homework and I can't stand it, I usually slack on some reading. If it's not a reading that I have to present in class, I can usually get away with skipping one here and there and no one realizes because it's not something tangible that gets handed in and if information on it is important enough to be on the test it usually gets discussed in class anyway so I can listen and remember and sort of fake my way through it. I try to do all the readings, of course, but that's the first thing that gets slacked off on if I find myself in a "homework bottleneck" at some point (which I try to avoid by working ahead when I can.)

So some nights I'm at homework for an hour (never less) and some nights for two hours and I don't really plan it ahead other than to make sure I sit down for homework at leas a couple of hours before anything else I might want to do like eat or watch a movie. Sometimes, in the last few weeks of the semester, I'll be at homework for three hours or I'll end up doing a few hours on the weekend even though I prefer to keep those days empty of major responsibilities for my own menal health. But I never have to do the "I was up all night finishing this paper" that I hear my classmates complaining about. (I couldn't do it anyway. I need a LOT of sleep in order to function well and I would break down if I were pulling all-nighters all the time.)

I think I answered your questions. Feel free to ask anything again if I didn't answer well enough. And thanks for discussing this topic! I have learned a few new tricks from others in the discussion and I enjoy talking about organizational skills as I ten to get a little perseverate-y about organization of objects, time, tasks, etc. and love talking about it.

Wow, these are amazing tips. You guys rock!

I did pretty well in college, if I may say so myself. My system was a lot simpler. I used a calendar that I carried everywhere, and wrote every assignment for all my classes on one calendar. I also put down all of my tests and what pages I had to reach in each book and by when. Then every day I did the stuff on my calendar. If I thought about everything I had to do, I would get overwhelmed.

For papers, I backed up so many days and said draft due, backed up so many days and said research/outline due and so on.

For some reason, I still prefer paper to-do lists and a paper calendar over ones on the computer or cell phone in my personal life.

At work, I now use the tasks list in MS Outlook because I can't possibly keep track any more of what I have to do on every day because of the sheer volume of stuff they have me doing (easily jobs of 3 people).

So everything that comes in, I assign a deadline to it and save it as a task with a reminder. Then I simply do the tasks that come up each day on my reminders as they come. For projects, I assign each step as a task in Outlook and do them on their deadlines. Otherwise, I would never, ever be able to keep track. Anything that I am waiting on someone else for, I set as a task to remind them so that I can follow up when they forget or ignore the request. There is also something really cool about checking off the task when I'm done.

The downside is that once in a while, I forget to add something to my tasks, and then it doesn't get done.

Wow, I didn't know there was something like that in Outlook. I've never used Outlook and had somehow gotten it into my head that it's an e-mail program and since I was happy with Eudora when I first encountered Outlook and now I'm even happier with Gmail, I pretty much ignored the existence of Outlook.

What I *really* could use, though, is something like what you describe but easily accessed online so I can hit it from campus or from home. I tried a few online task managers, though, and they were so slow and clunky I went back to my print-out list taped to the bookshelf system.