This simple question actually opens up an overwhelming rabbit hole. There are lots of different theories and models, with many commonalities, but no single consensus. Many of the models that view EF as sioled skills miss the real-life nuances of how all the different components are interacting and working together.

My personal, introductory definition:

”The cognitive skills that allow present you to take intentional actions that benefit your future self.”

Some of major categories of EF are:

• Self-Awareness: “What’s going on in me and around me?”

  • Self-monitoring

• Self-Regulation: “Am I in the driver’s seat?”

  • Self-adjusting in response to self/task awareness

  • Car analogy: Using steering, gas, brakes, mirrors, gauges

• Emotional Regulation:

  • Identifying emotions and self-calming

  • Calm under pressure, frustration tolerance

• Problem solving: analyzing, strategizing, adapting

• Planning: prioritizing, chunking, sequencing, adjusting

• Time:

  • Awareness, estimation, felt sense, management

  • Time horizon/mental time travel

  • Visualizing time and the space it takes up

• Attention: Your “focus flashlight”

  • Activating, sustaining, shifting/adjusting, following

• Action/activation: “DOING what serves me”

  • Starting things

  • Staying on task

  • Following through to completion

• Impulse control: “NOT DOING what doesn’t serve me”

• Metacognition: “Thinking about thinking”

  • Taking a birds-eye view of my thoughts

  • Self-narrating and monitoring

  • Self-evaluating my thoughts and actions

  • Cognitive flexibility: “Could there be another explanation?”

• Energy: modulating, pacing, resting/recharging

• Organization: Thoughts, physical materials, digital “objects”

• Memory:

  • Working memory (holding/manipulating)

  • Non-verbal WM: visualizing and playing in the future

  • Long-term: encoding and retrieving

  • Remembering to remember

See? There’s a lot going on. Building your EF toolbox is a lifetime process of experimentation, reflection, and iteration.

My other favorite definition of executive function:

“Your brain’s mission control center. Lots of teams and sub-teams collaborating to keep you on the big-picture mission (goals, values, purpose), while handling all the side-quests that pop up (everyday life, practical day to day).”

Executive function skills develop until about age 25. For people with ADHD and other conditions, this development can take even longer and could require explicit teaching, practice, reflection, and fine-tuning.

Under-developed EF skills can cause major quality of life issues with work, relationships, daily living, health, stress, and meeting potential.

This can look like:

✓ Trouble regulating strong emotions, overwhelm, acting impulsively

✓ Challenges with self-care, exercise, sleep, nutrition, “adulting”

✓ Struggling with procrastination, prioritization, follow-through, completion

✓ Never having enough time, busy but unproductive, time-blindness

✓ Frequently rushing at the last minute, forgetting things, constant “fires”

✓ Languishing, feeling adrift, under-performing, underachieving

✓ Getting stuck, rigid thinking, negative self-talk

The good news: You don’t have to suffer forever. Coaching can help you learn these skills.