What’s executive function? A good basic description is that it’s how the human brain plans, organizes, and self-regulates. Everyone has their own specific EF profile - executive function skills that are naturally easier and harder for us, resulting in a very individual blend that makes specific things harder or easier to get done.

And academic success at college, and in many careers in the U.S., relies very heavily on certain EF skills.

So if that’s a little harder for us, it can really get in the way - in those contexts.

But we don’t have to get stuck there and develop a self-identity (or a GPA, or a resume) that reflects our weakest EF spots!

Instead, we can build an incredibly satisfying toolkit (or toybox, if you prefer) that helps us do what we most want to do, and be successful on our own terms.

For example, if it’s really hard for you to start on projects because you tend to feel daunted, confused or overwhelmed, so then you avoid them for a long time and they’re hanging over your head and you don’t start them until it’s too late to do a really good job, you could spend a lot of time getting told (or telling yourself) that you’re horrible at schoolwork or that you’re a total procrastinator.

Or you could just accept that task initiation might not be super-easy for you, and then you could learn all about that and develop super-pleasurable workarounds so you can do it differently whenever you want. Voilà!

As another example, you might be exceptionally strong in goal-directed persistence, mental flexibility, and, once you get started, you can keep your attention on something that needs to get done. Meanwhile, you also find it very difficult to get started on work that doesn’t interest you, you lose your keys twice a week and forget to do the reading assignments that you have to do before you can write the paper, and you’re easily riled up and sometimes have trouble calming down, which makes it hard to get to work when you need to. You’re able to keep your dresser drawers incredibly organized, yet you’re (no offense) horrible at planning (and finishing) complex long-term projects without support. Also, you miss important details and show up late for nearly everything you do.

In that case, we have choices about which executive function area seems highest-leverage or most important to address. If I were your coach, we might first develop structures to help with working memory for the important stuff, and emotional/nervous system regulation tools, or we might choose to work on task initiation and time-management. It’s up to you!

Once you know more about your EF profile - and what each of these tendencies is creating in your personal, academic and professional life - you can build personalized systems that really, really work. And the best part is that it relieves a tremendous amount of stress and self-loathing, and liberates you from productivity shame - which frees up energy for the things you really want to be doing.

Want to know more? Here are some of the books I’ve found really helpful.

Chapter 4, How to (Executive) Function, contains a really good EF overview - and I deeply appreciate Jessica's casual, down-to-earth approach.

This was one of the first books, years ago, where I felt truly “seen” as a competent yet disorganized person who is surprised every night that dinner needs to be made.

I like Phil Boissiere’s way of organizing EF into over-arching categories - and his emphasis on how learnable these important skills are.

Many years ago, my boss sent me to a workshop with Peg Dawson, where my world cracked wide open when I saw, for the first time, that the stuff I had struggled with all my life fit into a simple framework with very common categories. (Categories that didn’t include *You Are Just Really…**Bad*.)