Careless mistakes: why they happen and a 60-second checking routine

"I knew the answer; I just made a silly mistake." Students with ADHD hear this phrase, and say it, all the time. Careless errors are among the most frustrating ways to lose marks. They are also very common in ADHD, because they come from difficulty sustaining attention to detail and monitoring your own work.

The good news is that careless mistakes are fairly predictable, and routines can catch many of them.

Common types

• Misreading the question (missing "not" or "except").
• Copying numbers wrongly from question to working.
• Sign errors and arithmetic slips.
• Skipping a sub-part or a whole page.
• Answering what you expected the question to be.
• Forgetting units.

Before you start

• Spend the first few minutes reading the whole paper. Note choices and mark allocations.
• Underline key words in each question.
• Plan your time, leaving a window at the end for checking.

During the paper

• Write down data from the question before solving.
• Show steps clearly; messy working causes copy errors.
• Tick off each sub-part as you finish.
• If you are stuck, mark it and move on rather than losing ten minutes.

The 60-second check per answer

After each question, take a quick look at:

1. Did I answer what was asked? Reread the question. 2. Do the numbers match those in the question? 3. Are units and signs right? 4. Does it make sense? Is a speed of 500 m/s sensible for a bicycle?

The final five minutes

Flip through every page. Look for unanswered questions, forgotten sub-parts and unfilled blanks. Then recheck the questions that carried the most marks.

Learn from your mistake notebook

Count how many of your errors in a practice paper were careless versus knowledge gaps. If careless slips dominate, your best gains come from the routines above, not from studying more content.

ZEKO collects wrong answers in a Mistake Bank with an explanation, so you can see patterns in the slips you repeat.