Working With Executive Dysfunction: Tips, Tricks, and All That Jazz
Although I didn’t have a name for it for many years, I spent my early life working around a stark difference in my brain: that is, my brain struggled with “executive functioning” skills. Namely, my lack of ability to use these skills as other people do was called “executive dysfunctioning”. Executive functioning covers a wide range of abilities that aren’t conscious or effortful for most people, including controlling one’s attention span, using working memory, and solving problems. Executive dysfunction is also common with many brain-based disabilities, including depression, ADHD, and autism. In this case, we’ll be focusing on two of the things most people with executive dysfunction have the hardest time with: starting, stopping, and switching tasks as well as dis/organization.
I heard a metaphor for this a few years ago (I don’t remember from who), and it involves a fussy horse. The rider, in this case the person with executive dysfunction, wants to do something — perhaps move forwards, halt, or change directions. Where a typical horse would respond quickly and intuitively to the rider’s commands, this horse rears and refuses to obey. In reality, it can look like someone who, despite hunger and interest in food, can’t convince themselves to get up to make food. It can look like being absorbed in doing something until the late hours of the night, despite extreme tiredness, because your brain and body don’t want to cooperate. It can look like becoming dehydrated because getting a drink involves so many steps, all of which need executive functioning skills: stopping what you are doing, getting up, going downstairs, turning on the tap, pouring a glass of water, drinking, cleaning/returning the glass, going upstairs.
It’s hard as shit. And most of the people who have executive dysfunction don’t know that it’s executive dysfunction. They think, or have been told, that they’re lazy. Distracted. Unmotivated. They try, try, try to solve the problem under false assumptions about the way their brain works. And the solutions rarely ever work. I know this because, with the help of a disability team at my middle and high school, I (and the “specialists” I worked with) spent years trying to bend my brain into normalcy, working around executive dysfunction (or apparent laziness or a lack of motivation, because even these trained professionals apparently couldn’t recognize executive dysfunctioning if it bit them in the face).
By the time I finally realized what executive functioning was, and when I recognized executive dysfunctioning in myself years later, I had finally given up on bad “professional” advice and created my own strategies. I had come up with my own solutions that worked with executive dysfunctioning, not against it or around it. They were, and still are to this day messy, imperfect, and awkward looking to observers who don’t have executive dysfunction. They also work damn-well better than anything else I’ve tried.
I thought I’d share.
START IN THE MORNING
It took me years to get in a routine of showering. As a little autistic kid, I was filthy. I hated showering. At the time, it was sensory hell. Slowly, my sensory system adjusted so that was by and large no longer the case. Unfortunately, I still had executive dysfunction. Pulling myself away from something to shower was painfully difficult.
Then, I started showering in the mornings. To start myself off, I’d do it first thing when I wake up. Alarm goes off? I pull myself up out of bed before my brain can get distracted with literally anything. No checking my phone, reading a book, listening to music. Get up. Go shower.
Mornings (or rather, whenever you wake up after a long rest) are a good time to do important, daily, routine tasks that executive dysfunction can make hard. You only need to conquer one task-switch if you pull this off right: the switch from sleeping/laying in bed to showering (or whatever task you want to start your day with). The more you do this, the more it should be routine. I’ve found that hard routines like this, when repeated over years, are more resistant to executive dysfunction.
CHAIN YOUR TASKS & BUILD ROUTINE
I started with a “morning task” because it can be incredibly valuable to chain tasks one after another and build a routine or structure for your day. Executive dysfunction can be a struggle if you let yourself sit down and do something mindless. Sit down to chat to friends? Good luck stopping yourself. However, if you find a natural stopping point in a routine task, you have a place to jump off of in order to do something else. Done showering in the morning? This is a great time to slide yourself into doing something else important, like brushing your teeth. And if you’re really struggling on a specific day, you can do tighter chaining. If I have a feeling that my executive dysfunction will be rough on any given day, I won’t sit down after showering until I’ve gotten dressed.
This doesn’t always have to be chained one after another from the morning. Doing so, from morning to noon, would likely be a fast recipe for burnout. Instead, I suggest building several anchor points for yourself throughout the day. I’m comfortable enough right now that I only need 1: lunch. I know that, once I’ve finished lunch, I need to chain myself through the basic tasks (eating, cleaning up, getting up) and then straight onto whatever task I’ve prioritized for that day. For me, that’s usually homework.
Lastly, outside of “anchor points”, you can use a little more conscious effort to do smaller chains. If I know that I badly need to take out the trash, I’ll keep the thought bouncing around in my head until the next time I get up, then collect all of the trash at once and make sure I get that done then and there. If you’re already between tasks for any reason, that time is valuable: get short, easy tasks out of the way before you settle on a big one. Tidy up something small, get a drink, get your notebook. Then start.
HARD AND SOFT TIMETABLES
This one was a game-changer for me, and something I still rely on to this day. Unfortunately, it requires a pretty good sense of how long things will take you, so if you have time blindness, it can be challenging. That being said, I believe practicing this technique can help you get a better sense of how much time you need for things.
Hard and soft timetables are guidelines you can set for yourself and more towards. Timetables, here, are set times that we can set for ourselves to start a task. A soft timetable is a general time that can be pushed back. They’re great for tasks that aren’t as urgent or less important. Hard timetables are when you’re running out of time, typically, especially if something is important. If you haven’t been able to meet your soft timetables, if you never made soft timetables to begin with, or if you had no time to prepare, you want a hard timetable.
How exactly you want to set up your hard and soft timetables is specific to you. I have a pretty specific set of unwritten rules that I generally try to follow by, but the likely case is that anything on your end will involve more variables than I can account for here. The important thing is to keep an eye on your averages and potential worse-case scenarios: try to figure out how long things will take you on a good day, then know how fast you can do it in a crunch if you need to or how much time it might take if everything goes wrong (like you get really distracted, your executive dysfunctioning works against you despite everything else, etc).
And, of course, pay close attention to your executive functioning in any given day: is everything taking way longer than normal? Don’t just consider the worst case scenario: plan for it, and set a hard timetable with a lot of wiggle room to give you time. If you know that you’re running out of time, set a hard timetable SOON and do it knowing the quality of your work might suffer.
Hopefully, planning ahead will mean most days are “average”.
MAKE THINGS EASIER FOR YOURSELF
When I was struggling with executive dysfunction, my disability team tried to compensate by adding in more supports. Ironically, this failed: the supports were complicated and there were so many of them that I was never able to consistently do all of the steps they asked of me.
I only stopped losing my papers when I threw away my binder with 8 pockets and started putting all of my papers into the one laptop folder of the bag I carried with me everywhere.
I try to cut out steps when I can, too. If I was putting all of my papers in one folder, I wanted to make it as easy as possible to do so. I wore a messenger bag: instead of pulling the backpack off my back and unzipping it, all I had to do was unzip. Stuff it in. Get it out. I always knew what to do and where to find my things.
Struggling to get up and throw away trash? Take out the getting up: put small trashcans by all of the places you sit regularly. Chain up taking out the trash: if you’ve gotten up from your bed to use the bathroom, chain together taking out the trash can by your bed. And create soft timetables to take out the trash on a more set schedule; make it a routine.
Hell, if you’re having a really hard time with something, do it the dirty way. If executive dysfunction makes it hard to clean dishes, use paper plates and cups. It’s not environmentally friendly in most cases, but it’s not you-friendly to get charlie horses in the middle of the night a few times a month because you’re so badly dehydrated that your body is fucking itself up. Figure out green solutions once you’ve stopped killing yourself.
CALL UPON YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
In my first few years of university, I wouldn’t get up to get dinner many nights. I’d wake up at 3am, stomach growling — and I’d be out of food. The dining hall was closed, the student marketplace was too, and the nearest store was 40 minutes by bus (and the bus wasn’t running at these hours).
I had to figure out something. So I asked my friends for help.
When I started to get hungry earlier on in the day, instead of ignoring my body, I’d text a friend. I’d say, “Hey, tell me to go eat”. And they did. And, as weird as it was, it helped me get up.
I’m not sure if this is useful for everyone. This technique has largely lost its shine for me, and I have the feeling that in many cases it’s less effective the more you use it, so maybe use it sparingly. But it’s damn helpful at least for a little while.
I found that I did the best with a sort of straightforward, non-joking but non-judgemental command. “Go eat, Megan” was the best, and “Haha, go eat, nerd!” did just alright. “Go fucking eat already” was just rude. And anything too polite didn’t feel obligatory enough. A “please” would make it inert. Make sure to communicate any needs you might have here.
BE KIND WITH YOURSELF
I’d like to end this off with a reminder for kindness. If you’re reading this, you might’ve just learned with executive dys/functioning is. You might’ve known about it before, too. Either way, it’s likely that you’ve probably had a long history of blaming yourself for executive dysfunctioning. All of us do.
Give yourself time. Know that no solution is going to change everything overnight. Hell, these solutions might not work at all. I only know they work for me. Allow yourself to take time to understand your own brain and environment and do what’s best.
I hope this guide helps. Go forth, friends!
