Executive Functioning Skills

What can I do to get more control over my life?

In the case of executive functioning skills, you can search out resources that can help. These resources should be able to do two things. First, they should help you to recognize and learn about your weak spots so that you can come up with work-arounds for them. Next, they should support or “scaffold” your ability to learn and develop your executive functioning skills despite your brain’s frustrating lack of cooperation in those weak areas. Sometimes a resource is a teacher or a parent, a partner or friend, a book or a therapist. Whatever form this help and inspiration comes in, you can learn to recognize and take advantage of the things your brain tends to be good at doing and to gradually grow habits and routines that will help fill in the weak spots. For example, Odd are, you’ll find yourself getting organized and then, during crunch time, some of it falls by the wayside and you slip back towards chaos.  But each time you get back to your structure, it will be easier.  (One caveat here, is that you need to make sure the process of organizing doesn’t become your next rabbit hole,  spending gobs of time excessively developing your organization plan and not actually working on the tasks you’re trying to organize yourself to get done!  Remember, prioritize!)

Check out my resources list for Executive Functioning Skills to learn more ideas that can point you towards wrangling your “To Do” list and feeling less overwhelmed by your life.