How I Beat My Executive Dysfunction
I spent over three decades of my life believing that I was deeply, incurably lazy and hating myself over it. Till this last year, I’d never heard of executive dysfunction, nor gave myself permission to view this severe lack of get-up-and-go as a disorder and not a personal flaw.
A meme on Facebook changed my whole world.
The image describes what executive dysfunction feels like. If you’ve ever had a Mystery Illness and spent ages trying to get the doctors to A) believe you and B) accurately diagnose you and C) provide you with an effective, reliable treatment that makes the core issue go away then you know the feeling that putting a name to your misery can bring. This meme hit me hard and led me on a path out of a lifetime of self-hate.
The Dark Times
It’s worth explaining, for those unfamiliar with executive dysfunction, what it feels like to have it. I am intelligent, motivated, creative, and do not deal with anxiety. Sometimes, despite all those qualities, I find myself paralyzed to do something I want to do. It can happen for big projects or inconsequential desires. If it’s something small, like wanting to play a game, it’s not that impacting. A bit of an annoyance but not disruptive to my life. If it’s a phone call I need to make to get the class I need or a bill I need to pay, it can be life destroying.
ED can impact memory. It can make memorization challenging and remembering tasks you need to do is sometimes impossible. Multiplication tables used to put me to tears out of sheer frustration. I love math and have always been good at it, and I felt like I -ought- to be able to memorize the numbers, but I couldn’t. I could do the work in my head, but that always was a bit slower than my peers who had remembered the patterns of the table. This personal failure was deeply discouraging and had me convinced that I was bad at math until I entered algebra. That’s been the case for anything that leaned on rote memorization. Given time and repeated use, I’ll remember what I make use of; I can place them into the context of my life.
ED played a role in the loss of my home, in the loss of jobs, in relationship failures related to my inability to track and remember planned events and dates.
I have sat for days getting more and more frustrated with myself but physically unable to bring myself to do a task I desperately wanted to do. The want is there, strongly there, but my ability to follow through on that wish is utterly absent. It’s a misfire in the brain that fails to translate willpower into action.
That began a multi-year process of trying to find tricks that worked for me to hack my recalcitrant brain into allowing me to act like a Real Adult. Talk therapy is not effective for me and never has been, but I tried. I tried a whole host of apps designed to gamify my life, reward list checking with growing trees (that still appeals to my inner hippy), I tried building routines (useful, but failed to thrive), I tried getting folks around me to serve as reminders, tried using my phone’s calendar (beeps work if you have the sound on and remember where you put your phone). In the end, I stumbled on tactics that work for me. My hope is that it might serve someone else with the same struggles.
My 5 Step ED Hacking Program
Forgiveness & Flexibility
Without a doubt, the single biggest piece of my evolutionary puzzle was giving myself grace to misstep. Understanding that there were underlying factors that make doing simple tasks more challenging for myself allows me to let go of any guilt I would feel in failing to achieve something. Instead of guilt, now I add them to tomorrow’s agenda. No shame, no judgment, no guilt.
Removing the shackle of that pressure for perfection lowered the frequency of when I felt paralyzed to do something. It still happens, but the paralysis is less overwhelming and I can push through it with my other tools if it’s something I truly need to do.
Beyond myself, I make a point of telling people in my inner circle about this challenge I deal with. I let them know how it might impact our interactions — I might forget a date or struggle with getting something done. I might ask for frequent reminders. Allowing the people that love me a greater awareness of my challenges creates an opportunity for them to be a part of my support network instead of an amplifier for my struggles.
Planning Ahead & Little Steps
Understanding what was going on in my brain allowed me to think about how to get ahead of the challenges my misfiring neurons creates. If I know I might find a task impossible to complete on any given day, I build in time to get that done. I keep track of important dates and know the earliest I can start working a problem or a project. I plan to start on the first available, reasonable date. If I can’t do it that day, there’s always the next. The chances of me being unable to accomplish it within the whole available window are much slimmer than the chances of failure if I don’t -start- attempting till the last minute.
The other part of this is breaking down projects into manageable bites. It’s a lot easier to combat the paralysis if the task is smaller. A whole project, like cleaning my room, might be more ED-inducing than putting the dirty clothes in the laundry room. I treat my task lists like I would approach a patient with memory care issues like dementia — one simple task at a time. The lowest level of complexity. Each success builds on the earlier success until I have the whole project accomplished. Sometimes, it gets done promptly and other times it might take days to work through it. But! I find myself actually accomplishing tasks and projects that matter to me this way.
Movement & Time
One of the tricks I hauled over from my therapists over the years was the move-and-do. Every time I get up, I try to carry out a small task. Task an empty glass to the sink, put my shoes back where they go. On challenging days, this helps prevent me from sinking into despair and reminds me that I can stay in control of my life, whatever my challenges.
The other tool I use heavily is a Pomodoro timer. Essentially, it uses the idea that we best focus with shorter increments of work and more frequent small breaks followed by larger breaks. You zero in on a task for 25 minutes, take a short break of 5 minutes, and start up again for 4 rounds or until the task is completed, whichever comes first. After 4 ticks, you take a 30-minute break. Hyper-focus during the ‘on’ rounds is critical to Pomodoro’s success, you avoid for 25 minutes checking your phone, your email, or any other potential distractions from accomplishing your goal. The short breaks let your mind rest and help you keep that kind of focus.
Morning Pages
A habit I acquired from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, a useful book for any creatives, is her morning pages exercise. Cameron suggests three pages of free writing first thing in the morning every day.
“We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.” — Julia Cameron
True. And the morning pages are a way to let the Censor have a moment to vent where those illusions of ruin can be left behind. Cameron tells us that, “the pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self.” I’ve found this to be both true and powerfully helpful. When I’m actively engaging in this habit, I’m more focused throughout my day and pick up on underlying challenges which helps me adapt sooner and more effectively.
I don’t personally do three pages every day, my current routine is a page every other day. My day starts with coffee while I look over my bullet journal (more about that in a second) and snuggle my sleepy-sweet toddler before he becomes the fully alert miniature kaiju he is during the day, then if I don’t have something to immediately attend to, I’ll do my morning writing. Sometimes I can’t get to it till before bed. Sometimes I can’t get to it at all. If I miss a day, I don’t fret, I pick it up again as soon as I am able.
The Bullet Journal
My BUJO has been my MOST successful tool, by far, in tackling my ED. The act of physically creating each page and checklist helps combat my memory issues and I get a childlike joy in checking off actual boxes. It also helps me track my mood, energy level, fitness, hydration, and life goals in a super simple way.
How a BUJO Keeps Me Organized and On Track
The most important part of my BUJO is my weekly layout. It takes little time for me to set up. The grid on the top left tracks my current daily goals. The daily log is for things I need to do, a reflection on how the day went, and my hydration tracker. I check it in the morning and before I go to bed and add, subtract, or shift accordingly. It’s flexible. If something doesn’t get done, I move it to the next day.
I also have a mood tracker, yearly and monthly overview pages, a tracker for media consumed, goal planning checklists, fitness logs, weight loss trackers, and other project planning pages that help me manage my personal goals. I steal ideas heavily. Google BUJO + anything and you will find dozens of lovely ideas to steal or modify to make your BUJO work for you.
Do you have executive dysfunction? Please share any tricks you’ve learned to combat your own challenges with this disorder.
