What are Executive Function Skills?
Your executive function (EF) skills are sometimes described as the conductor of your brain, and I think this is a great analogy. If you think of the movie Inside Out, we all have a character who is kind of like Joy when she stands at the console in Riley’s brain, pointing her attention to various stimuli, calling up particular memories, and directing her behavior. Some of us have stronger access to Joy than others, and thus we have more control over where we focus the spotlight of our attention, or how well we regulate our emotional responses.
Both genetics and our early life experiences influence the development of our EF skills, and a number of conditions affect executive functioning—including ADHD, autism, and depression (among many others).
Some scholars break EF skills into as many as 40 separate skills, whereas others lump them into 5-6 big buckets, but we can all agree that executive skills encompass things like: planning for the future, prioritizing tasks, managing our time, maintaining focus on a task even when we don’t feel motivated to do it, and working toward multi-step, complex goals that seem far off in the future.
The “Essential 12” Executive Function Skills,
according to Dr. Peg Dawson and Dr. Richard Guare
· Response Inhibition
· Working Memory
· Emotional Control
· Task Initiation
· Sustained Attention
· Planning/Prioritizing
· Organization
· Time Management
· Flexibility
· Meta-cognition
· Goal Directed Persistence
· Stress Tolerance
How are Executive Function Skills Involved in Writing?
Just from glancing at the above list of executive function (EF) skills, you can probably start to imagine how they are involved in writing. Writing is a complex, multi-step process. To write successfully, you have to hold a lot of things in mind at once—you need to call on rules of syntax and punctuation, access your mental repository of vocabulary words, consider your audience and what they might know already about your topic, think about what kinds of evidence your readers will find compelling. You also have to be able to remember the material you’re writing about, sequence its presentation in a way your readers will find logical, and stay focused on your main themes to avoid leading your readers off-track. You have to keep your physical or electronic resources organized, and develop systems for note-taking and using citations, so you don’t accidentally plagiarize or misattribute material. Moreover, you have to become a student of your own work process, learning when, and under what conditions, you work best, so you can structure your day for maximum success. You need to learn techniques to get started or keep going even when you don’t feel like it, so you can be productive when you want to be.
It's very difficult to attend to all of these things at once!
Moreover, writing is often accomplished in multiple sittings—it’s the rare person who can sit down and bang out a “perfect” essay all in one go. Revising IS writing, or so the saying goes. However, many students find themselves so exhausted by the task of getting words on the page at all, or they rely on the adrenaline-fueled rush of waiting until the last minute until they start, that they leave themselves without energy or time to revise, and end up turning in work that is far less good than it could have been.
On top of all this, we have to consider that the reward of having done one’s writing is often seriously delayed—grades come days or weeks later (and may not be all that motivating), classes are passed after many small assignments are turned in, and degrees are earned after years of striving.
How Can Executive Function Coaching Help Writers?
Luckily, many supports exist for writers with executive function (EF) challenges. Coaching can both help you identify where you are struggling as a writer and what to do about it. Coaching makes both the problem and the solution more visible.
Via coaching, you have built-in accountability from your coach—someone else is helping you track deadlines and regularly checking in on your progress. You learn skills and strategies to accommodate difficulties you have with things like estimating how long a task will take, planning out a busy week, or prioritizing which tasks to do first. A coach can help you to modify the task (to make it easier to get started and stick with it), modify your environment (so you’re able to stay focused on the right things), and/or practice new skills in a supportive environment with regular, encouraging feedback until those skills become second nature.
Most of all, with the help of a coach, you learn how to take a multi-step complex task like writing and break it down into small, manageable steps.
Research shows that the EF skill adults struggle with the most, whether they identify as having an EF deficit or not, is “task initiation,” or simply getting started on difficult tasks. Coaching gets you started.
Who Can Benefit from Executive Function Coaching?
Who, specifically, can benefit from executive function (EF) coaching? The short answer is, well—anyone! We all have executive function skills and we can all benefit from training them. I specialize in coaching writing and executive function skills, particularly for individuals with ADHD, but my approach can benefit anyone seeking external support.
When considering whether or not coaching is right for you, the important thing to keep in mind is that the brain is plastic. Our brains change and adapt throughout our lives in response to new experiences. It is never too late to learn new skills, and practicing them within the supportive environment of coaching can be a way to make big changes happen fast and create lasting inroads toward becoming the person you want to be.
Coaching teaches you a method of learning about yourself and your unique pattern of EF strengths and weaknesses. Through coaching you learn to identify where you need support, and you have access to a whole menu of coping skills and support options that you may not have known were possible.
Change is possible. You don’t have to go it alone.
