How to Manage Life If You Have Poor Executive Function
Even if you’ve never heard the term “executive function,” you may painfully realize how important it is to daily life. Executive functioning is often described as the brain’s control system : it is the part responsible for planning, prioritizing, and completing tasks.
“Executive function is the CEO of the brain,” said Jessica McCabe , host of YouTube channel How To ADHD . “Executive function is a set of cognitive processes that help us self-regulate so that we can effectively plan, prioritize, and sustain efforts towards our long-term goals.”
What controls the executive function?
Getting things done requires a significant amount of mental skills, including the ability to accurately predict what is needed, the ability to solve problems when problems arise, and the emotional self-control to see things through even if the task proves impossible. be more difficult than expected. It is the basis of many different skills, including the ability to concentrate, make and execute plans, set priorities, follow tasks to completion, understand different points of view, regulate emotions, and keep track of what you are doing.
“We’re talking about turning intentions into actions,” said Ari Tuckman , a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of ADHD. Going from intention to do something to actual completion requires a combination of working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control.
In real life, executive function problems can look like losing your keys daily, missing appointments because you keep forgetting about them, struggling to finish projects at work, getting late payment penalties because you forgot to pay your dues. credit card. time or inability to stay organized. “It affects every aspect of our lives,” McCabe said.
Executive function can be affected by depression, anxiety, and disorders such as ADHD. Stress and lack of sleep can also lead to short-term disturbances.
Executive Function Problem Solving Strategies
The biggest problem when it comes to solving executive function problems is that all solutions also require executive function. “As nice as it is to offer lists to people with ADHD, they probably made lists. They lost them. Or they didn’t know how to prioritize,” said McCabe, who was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age.
This is the reason executive function is so difficult to solve—it is essential to almost everything you do and affects almost every aspect of your life. For conditions such as ADHD, the most effective way to improve executive functions is to seek medical attention—medication is often the main strategy. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder thought to be related to a lack of the neurotransmitter dopamine. However, as McCabe points out, while medications can help address the root cause, “pills don’t teach skills.”
Medications can help address the underlying neurobiological cause, but they won’t teach you the life skills you need to reach your goals. For this reason, the most effective course of treatment is usually medication combined with therapy, which can help develop the necessary skills.
Limit (further) executive dysfunction
If you have problems with executive function, it helps to support it in every possible way, including lifestyle. Stress and lack of sleep can lead to short-term impairments to executive function, and diet and exercise can help it perform at its best.
“It doesn’t make you superman, it doesn’t make you better than you are, but at least it allows you to use the best of what you have,” Tuckman said. Of course, as with many of these strategies, the double whammy is that when you’re overwhelmed, prioritizing sleep, diet, and exercise requires significant executive function. “It makes a bad situation worse,” Tuckman said.
Implement strategies one at a time
There will be hundreds of different strategies and tricks that can potentially help you with executive function problems. However, as McCabe notes, “Most of the support we need is in implementing these strategies. Every time we add something new to our plate to support our executive function, it confuses us.”
Instead, McCabe suggests being selective about adopting new strategies and giving them time to get used to them. She also strongly recommends thinking about what has worked in the past and using that as a guide to what might help now. “Don’t start from scratch,” she said. “It’s hard on the executive function.”
One of the most important things you can do to support your executive function is to make sure you spend your time doing what really matters, rather than trying to do everything. “Staying on top of everything is unrealistic for most people, let alone those with executive function problems,” McCabe said.
Potential strategies might include minimalism, automating things, or judicious choice of battles. “If you want to do more, do less, because the more we try to do, the more we have to keep track of, the harder it is for the executive function to stay on top of it all,” McCabe said.
Understand it’s a work in progress
Improving and maintaining your executive function is a lifelong process. What works today may not work a year from now, when circumstances may change—and there will be good days and bad days.
“Focus on the long-term game,” Tuckman said. “Focus on finding the best systems and strategies and then just keep showing up and applying them. If today was a bad day, come back tomorrow and start over.”