What is executive function and can you improve it?
Executive functioning is a set of mental processes that helps us regulate ourselves to achieve goals. It includes skills like planning, prioritizing, reasoning, time management, organization, starting tasks, impulse control, working memory, flexible thinking, and emotional regulation. I imagine my frontal cortex (where this mostly goes on) as a board room with executives at the helm. Sometimes they run a tight ship, sometimes they run the ship into the ground, and sometimes they seem to have vacated the premises for a three martini lunch.
Sabine Doebel, a cognitive scientist, shares in her TEDx Talk that we can improve executive functioning, “but lately it has become a huge self-improvement buzz word.” She critiques the idea that “brain training iphone apps and computer games or practicing it in a specific way like playing chess…” are the solution. “Brain training won't improve executive functioning in a broad sense because it involves training it in a narrow way, outside the real world context in which we actually use it.”
Instead, based on her research (with adorable little kids), she proposes motivation and context-specific strategies. Things like putting your phone on silent while working, or planning to reward yourself when you are done.
This reflects what I’ve seen in sessions. People often expect me to give them a special key to productivity. I don’t have it. What I have is a process that helps you develop self-awareness and discover the strategies that work for you.
More interesting to me than improving executive function, is understanding the side effects of living in a culture that highly values it. I plan to explore it more. I’ll also be writing about:
The relationship between stress and executive function.
How can understanding executive function translate to better executives?
The pickle recipe I tested instead of sitting down to write this the first time (and why that maybe wasn’t an executive function fail).
