You can think of your executive functions as a collection of instruments that when working together create beautiful, coordinated music. But when several of the instruments are badly out of tune or out of time (or playing different music altogether!) the whole piece devolves into a chaotic mess. It doesn’t matter much if the clarinets are playing beautifully if the trumpets decide to start blasting free jazz and the violas start playing double time.
At Tenafly Executive Function Specialists (TEFS), we understand the significant impact EFs have on each other. Let's delve deeper into some key EF “instruments” and how they’re intertwined:
Initiation: The ability to overcome internal resistance and start tasks that may not be very interesting, fun, or exciting. When initiation is weak just about every other EF is affected but time management, self-guiding, and planning in particular.
Time Management: The ability to estimate and allocate time, and stay within time limits and deadlines for all sorts of tasks and activities. When time management is a struggle, inhibition, attention stability, planning, and self-monitoring are often both a cause and effect.
Working Memory: Working memory allows you to hold onto important details and thoughts while actively engaged in a task, readily recalling them when needed. Working memory is an issue for most ADHDers and has the greatest impact on initiation, time management, organization, planning, and impulse control.
Emotional Regulation: Emotional regulation equips you to manage your feelings effectively, preventing them from negatively controlling your behavior. When emotions are dysregulated, all other executive functions are more challenged.
Planning: This EF allows you to make decisions in advance, choosing priorities and charting a course of action in the short, medium, and long terms. Without planning, you’re simply reacting to life. When planning is a struggle, inhibition, impulse control, self-monitoring, time management, and working memory are often the most affected.
Inhibition: Inhibition helps you block out external and internal distractions, allowing you to focus on the task at hand. When “holding out the noise” is a big problem, impulse control, attention stability, self-guiding, working memory, and, for many, emotional regulation suffer most.
Impulse Control: This EF helps you take a pause, look before you leap, and think before you speak or act. It allows for intentional living instead of reactive living. When Impulse control is a chronic struggle, all other EF’s are made worse.
Self-Monitoring: Also called meta-cognition, self-monitoring allows you to remain aware of your actions, and emotions, and accurately track your own progress on tasks and activities. Time management is closely interrelated but so are self-guiding, planning working memory, and initiation.
Self-Guiding: This EF empowers you to direct your energy and focus intentionally. It also allows you to break free from hyper-focusing when needed. This EF often gets confused with initiation and the two are very closely related. Self-guiding can be thought of as the connecting tissue between planning, initiation, time management, and attention stability.
Attention Stability: Maintaining focus is crucial for completing tasks. Attention stability allows you to sustain your mental focus, especially for activities that may not be inherently stimulating. This often gets correlated with inhibition, impulse control, and self-guiding and they are certainly dependent on one another.
Organization: Organization allows you to structure your world, prioritize tasks, and keep things and thoughts in order for easy retrieval at the appropriate time. Organization is defined differently for different people but it's often only attainable after a person acquires a degree of stability in many of the other EF’s. It’s often the first thing EF-challenged people attempt to tackle but it is among the last EFs to stabilize.
Realistically, the goal is not to become the New York Philharmonic of happy & productive living. We may be starting as a grade school orchestra with many of its players only just learning for the first time that they’re all supposed to be watching the conductor and playing the same piece. It’s going to sound like cacophony for a bit and you’re going to have to practice. But in time you’ll resemble a middle school orchestra, then high school, then a junior college, and then… who knows? At that point, your life and the music it creates will be vastly more dynamic and harmonious than where you began.
At TEFS, we specialize in helping individuals. Wrangling all your EF instruments, getting them on the same page, and working together is an overwhelming project for anyone. Working with a coach who knows the ropes is your fastest path to becoming the capable conductor of the beautiful music that is your life.
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