When Your Executive Functions Fail You

Recently, I heard that a notable Executive Functions expert was going to be the guest on a webinar the following day. It was not going to be recorded, as it was not a presentation. Rather, it was an informal Q&A, in which participants could send in questions, and he would answer as many as he could in one hour. I was beyond thrilled. I paid my fee, wrote a reminder in my agenda book, and spent at least 30 minutes carefully crafting my one question.

I bet you can guess from the title of this article what happened the next day – I completely forgot to attend. In fact, I didn’t remember until two days later.

How did I forget from one day to the next, especially when it was something I was highly motivated to remember?

I really have no excuse. It’s not like I got busy and lost track of time. I was sitting at my desk, taking care of mundane tasks that were necessary, but which had no deadline.

My executive functions simply failed me.

Although I’d written myself a reminder, I didn’t look at it. I don’t think I even took out my agenda book when I got to work that day. I thought I knew exactly what I had on my schedule.

The good news is, if you can figure out what went wrong, you can generally avoid making that same mistake again.

This executive function is known as METACOGNITION. It is the ability to think about your own thinking. Although it is considered a higher-level skill, this is something I address with my clients from the very beginning. I strive to foster independence as soon as possible, and to do this, self-awareness is key.

Self-awareness comes when you ask these guiding questions:

* How does your brain work best?

* What strategies work well for you?

* What do you need to be successful?

Self-awareness comes when you follow these steps:

* Make a plan

* Try it out

* Evaluate how it went

* Adjust the plan

* Repeat until you reach success

Self-awareness comes when you act with purpose and intention:

* Meditate on it – Visualize it [take a quiet moment to think, sleep on it, and then think again]

* Say it out loud – Verbalize it [tell someone who can ask clarifying or thought-provoking questions]

* Put it on paper – Memorialize it [write down key words and phrases to help you remember]

Metacognition is a complex skill, but it will help in all other areas of executive function. When you become self-aware, you are better equipped to regulate your thoughts, feelings, and actions. When you become self-aware, you begin to advocate for your needs and desires.

HERE ARE KEY EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS YOU CAN IMPROVE TODAY

1.  Time Management: The ability to manage your time.

I wish it were as simple as that sounds. Time management is something I have struggled with my entire life.

Does this sound familiar:

* You are either always late for something or rushing to finish

* You work all night to meet a deadline you knew about a week ago

* There are never enough hours a day to do everything you had planned to do

Here are a couple of things to consider:

How do I measure time?

If you were a fan of Iron Chef, you may recall there was always a discombobulated voice who would say: “15 minutes have elapsed. 30 minutes have elapsed” and so forth.

This is why I think that works: We humans underestimate how much time a task really takes. If you say to me, “You have 30 minutes to finish this,” I’m likely to think that’s plenty of time. If instead, you tell me, “30 minutes have elapsed. You should be halfway done,” that’s something I can evaluate. I would know if I’m still on page one of a three-page test, then I need to pick up the pace.

PRO TIP: Set a timer for 15-minute increments and evaluate if you’re on track.

Am I being too perfect?

Yes, there is such a thing. I recently attended a conference, where the speaker told us that her daughter, unbeknownst to her, was setting an alarm every morning to copy her homework over because she wanted it to look perfect. As someone who killed many trees growing up because I made a mistake and couldn’t bear to cross it out, this anecdote hit close to home.

But it’s not just about handwriting. It’s also about having too many great ideas and too high standards for yourself. Here’s something that took me too long to learn: Not everything has to be my best work or my best effort. I may know just the thing that would make this perfect. But does it need to be? When is it good enough?

PRO TIP:

Prioritize the top 2-3 things that are most important to achieve and spend most of your time and effort there. Next, take off your list anything that won’t make or break the outcome. Finally, accept that the remaining tasks just need to be “good enough.”

Time management sounds easy, but it can be one of the hardest skills to achieve. The good news is, we constantly get better at it IF we are honest with ourselves, evaluate our own performance, and accept that we all have our limits.

2. Working Memory: The ability to hold information in your head while you do something with it.

Weaknesses in working memory can be very debilitating, and unfortunately, research has shown we can’t improve in this area. But we can mediate the damage it does.

Does this sound familiar:

* You forget what you were supposed to do, sometimes while you’re doing it

* You lose track whenever a job or project has multiple steps or several moving parts

* You lose your train of thought when presenting an oral argument or retelling a story

Here are a couple of things to consider:

How am I doing physically and emotionally at this moment?

I normally have very good working memory skills. I can often perform multi-step math calculations in my head in less time than it takes my husband to find the calculator app on his phone. But I’m also the person who sometimes forgets what I’m talking about in the middle of a sentence. Recently, when our new house was not yet move-in ready, and we were staying with family, I regularly got lost on my drive to work, misheard what people were saying to me, and lost my train of thought when performing routine tasks.

Here is why: Working memory is highly dependent on your mental capacity and physical well-being. Working memory fluctuates in an individual, depending on what else is happening. It can be easily derailed by sleeplessness, hunger, thirst, or fatigue. Stress, anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions can also greatly affect one’s working memory performance.

PRO TIP:

Be mindful of how you are feeling. If this is an “off” day for you, now is not the time to begin a difficult project or make a big decision. Instead, tackle the tasks on your list which are easy or mundane, and which you can do on “auto-pilot.”

What changes to my habits or environment can I make that are easy and no-brainers?

I started off this article by talking about an executive function FAIL that happened to me. Ever since that day, I always open my agenda book as soon as I get to work, even if I’m sure I know what it says. It’s something that’s easy and a no-brainer, and after only a week of doing so, is now so automatic in my routine I don’t even think about it. I’m not saying I won’t ever have an EF fail again. But I can be sure not to have that exact same one again.

Do what feels intuitive for you. I once worked with a teacher who jotted reminders on a Post-It note and stuck them on her head. Every time someone laughed or asked her if she knew there was a Post-It stuck in her hair, she would remember what it was she needed to do. Maybe you send yourself emails or move your wristwatch or ring to the other hand. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you.

PRO TIP:

Get in your own way. Put your reminder in or on something you can’t live without (i.e. your phone, your keys, your backpack). 

Research has shown that working memory cannot be improved upon in a meaningful way. And even those of us who are “good at it” struggle when we are not feeling our best physically or emotionally. New habits are sometimes hard to develop, but once they become automatic, they are just as hard to quit. Stick with it, and soon, you won’t even think twice about it. 

3. Focus and Attention: The ability to maintain attention to a task.

Focus and Attention are the foundation of every other executive function. Deficits in these areas affect all others. You cannot learn, process, or complete something when your lack of attention makes you miss whole chunks of important details.

Does this sound familiar?

* You have trouble staying on topic when talking

* Your mind wanders when reading a book or watching a movie

* You are extremely distracted by sights or sounds around you

Here are a couple of things to consider:

What is preventing you from staying focused?

Oftentimes, when we find we’ve lost focus, three other things have happened before we notice it. Your phone buzzed with a new incoming text. But while your phone is in your hand, you mindlessly (out of habit) check your social media notifications. And while you’re doing that, you see a musician you love is about to drop new music, and you switch over to Google and start reading all the latest articles about it. At some point, something snaps you back into focus, and you realize you completely forgot about the report you had been working on.

So what was the first thing that drew your attention away? Do you need to put your phone in a different room or in a drawer while you are working? Is the house too noisy, and you need headphones? Is the room too stimulating, and you need to relocate to a more boring space?

PRO TIP: Once you find the optimal environment for your best performance, don’t vary it too much. Your brain will form an association between the activity (i.e. homework) and the context. Maybe it’s a chair you only sit in when you’re working, or a “study” playlist. Soon enough, your brain will associate the two, and you’ll achieve deep concentration as soon as your butt settles into that seat, or that first song plays. 

Are you overloading yourself?

Forget multi-tasking – that’s not a real thing. It is impossible for the human brain to fully pay attention to two tasks at the same time. What you’re really doing is shifting focus from one thing to another, often so quickly it seems like you’re doing two things at once. But let’s assume you’re in your quiet boring room, and your phone is turned off, and you still cannot focus on your work. Is it possible you’re overloaded? We all have our limits, like the browser with 20 tabs open, slowing your whole system down.

Take stock of how you’re feeling. Have you been sitting for too long? Maybe you need a 45-minute “on,” 15-minute “off” schedule. Is the assignment too big to take on all at once? How can you break this big task into three small manageable chunks? Is what you’re doing so boring it takes all your energy to will yourself to trudge through it? Maybe you need to switch off between two different tasks – 20 minutes on this, and 20 minutes on a less-boring task, before circling back.    

PRO TIP: Try for “one more.” When you feel overloaded, try for one last push. Can you just write one more paragraph, read one more page, or complete one more math problem? Knowing you will soon have a break allows you to jump into deep focus for “one more” thing.

Focus and attention are a foundational EF skill, meaning that it allows all your other executive functions to work. When you find yourself struggling, it’s best to narrow your focus. Forget what the big assignment is or what else is on your long to-do list and focus only on the one thing right in front of you.

Obviously, there are more executive function skills than the few I discussed here. We will get to them in future articles. I hope you found some easy ideas in this one that will help you today. If you would benefit from having me guide you through these, or if you want other ideas tailored to your unique needs, call or email me to book an appointment. I’m excited to hear from you.