Executive function tips can help anyone increase their productivity. However, these tips are escpecially helpful if your executive function skills are weak. So you may be wondering what weak executive function skills may look like. Here are a few scenarios:
- Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there?
- Do you put off relatively simple tasks because getting started feels overwhelming?
- Have you bought something you already had because you couldn’t remember where you put it?
- You know exactly what needs to be done—you just can’t seem to make yourself get started.
These experiences can all involve executive functioning skills.
Executive functions are the mental skills we use to plan, organize, remember information, manage time, regulate attention, initiate tasks, and follow through. When these skills are strained, everyday responsibilities can require far more mental energy than they seem like they should.
This can affect children trying to remember their homework, college students managing an increasingly independent schedule, and adults juggling work, household responsibilities, appointments, and family life.
The good news is that productivity doesn’t always require more motivation or discipline. Often, the most effective strategy is to reduce how much executive functioning a task requires in the first place. Let’s talk more about that.
10 Practical Executive Function Tips
1. Offload Planning and Memory Through Simple Systems
Your brain doesn’t need to remember everything.
If you frequently forget something, find a way to move that information out of your head and into a system you can rely on.
That might mean:
- Setting recurring alarms or calendar reminders
- Keeping a grocery list on your phone
- Creating a spreadsheet to track a complicated project
- Using a packing checklist every time you travel
- Keeping a written morning or bedtime routine
- Setting reminders for bills, medications, assignments, or appointments
There is no prize for remembering everything without help.
The best system is usually the one that’s simple enough that you’ll actually use it consistently.
2. Remove Barriers Before It’s Time to Complete a Task
Sometimes the problem isn’t the task itself. It’s everything that has to happen before you can do it.
Imagine you plan to cook dinner at 5:30. You walk into the kitchen and discover that the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, the sink is full, the pan you need hasn’t been washed, and one ingredient is still frozen.
Suddenly, “make dinner” has become six tasks.
Look for these hidden barriers and address them ahead of time.
If you want to exercise in the morning, put your clothes and shoes out the night before. If homework tends to stall because supplies are scattered around the house, create a stocked homework station. If leaving the house on time is difficult, put bags and necessary items by the door beforehand.
Ask yourself: What usually prevents me from starting this task?
Then see if you can remove that obstacle before it has a chance to derail you.
3. Create Places for Things to Belong
Searching for things uses time, energy, and attention.
Create consistent homes for the things you use frequently.
Keys might always go in a bowl beside the door. Backpacks might hang on designated hooks. Important school papers might go into one basket. Chargers might stay in specific rooms rather than traveling around the house.
For children and teens, labels can make these systems even easier to follow.
The goal isn’t to have a perfectly organized home. It’s to eliminate unnecessary decisions.
When something has an obvious place where it belongs, putting it away—and finding it again—requires less executive functioning.
4. Work With an Executive Functioning Specialist
Sometimes it’s difficult to identify exactly where you’re getting stuck.
An executive functioning specialist can help a child, teen, college student, or adult identify challenges and develop strategies for planning, organization, time management, task initiation, and follow-through.
Importantly, executive functioning support shouldn’t simply consist of someone telling you to “get organized.”
A strategy that works beautifully for one person may not work at all for another. Effective coaching helps develop systems that fit the individual’s strengths, challenges, responsibilities, and environment.
Over time, the goal is to develop skills and strategies that can be used more independently.
5. Break Tasks Down Until the First Step Feels Easy
Large or vague tasks can create paralysis.
“Clean your room.”
“Study for the test.”
“Write the report.”
“Organize the garage.”
Each of these contains many smaller tasks. When your brain sees all of them at once, getting started can feel overwhelming.
Executive function tip #5 is shrink the task.
Rather than “clean the kitchen,” start with “put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.”
Instead of “write my paper,” start with “open a document and type the title.”
Instead of “study for the test,” start with “get out my notes.”
The first step can seem almost ridiculously small. That’s okay.
Starting is often the hardest part.
6. Use External Time Cues
Time management can be particularly difficult for people with executive functioning challenges.
You may underestimate how long something will take, become absorbed in an activity and lose track of time, or know that you need to leave at 8:00 without accounting for everything that needs to happen beforehand.
External cues can help.
Try using timers for work periods, visual timers for children, calendar alerts, or multiple reminders leading up to an important transition.
For example, instead of setting one alarm for the time you need to leave, you might have one that says:
“Start getting ready.”
And another that says:
“Shoes, coat, bag.”
And finally:
“Leave now.”
The goal is to make time more visible and actionable.
7. Make Important Things Visible
Sometimes a beautifully organized system can actually make executive functioning harder.
Why?
Because once something is put away, you may forget it exists.
If you regularly experience “out of sight, out of mind,” consider whether important information or objects need to be more visible.
Keep the permission slip beside the keys. Put tomorrow’s backpack by the door. Use an open basket for items that need to go upstairs. Keep a family calendar somewhere everyone regularly sees it.
This doesn’t mean your entire home or workspace needs to be covered in reminders. Too much visual information can become distracting, too.
Instead, be strategic about what deserves to stay visible.
8. Pair Difficult Tasks with Something Enjoyable
Weak executive functioning can make tasks with delayed rewards particularly difficult to initiate.
Sometimes adding a small, immediate reward makes getting started easier.
Listen to a favorite podcast while folding laundry. Play music while cleaning. Sip a favorite drink when tackling paperwork. Choose an enjoyable study location.
This doesn’t make the task disappear, but it can reduce the resistance associated with starting it.
For children and teens, the same principle can be used thoughtfully: pair a less-preferred responsibility with something pleasant or build a predictable enjoyable activity after the task is complete.
9. Create Routines Around Transitions
Transitions require a surprising amount of executive functioning.
Think about everything a child has to remember after getting home from school: shoes, backpack, lunchbox, papers, homework, snack, activities, and tomorrow’s schedule.
Without a routine, each afternoon requires dozens of little decisions.
Instead, create a predictable sequence.
For example:
Come home → shoes away → empty backpack → put lunchbox in kitchen → snack → short break → homework.
Adults can benefit from similar routines.
You might have a five-minute routine when you arrive at work, an end-of-workday routine that prepares you for tomorrow, or an evening reset that makes the next morning easier.
When a sequence becomes habitual, you don’t have to consciously decide what comes next every time.
10. Plan According to Your Energy, Not Just Your Time
An empty space on your calendar doesn’t necessarily mean you have the capacity for your most demanding task.
Pay attention to when you tend to have the strongest concentration and mental energy.
If you focus best in the morning, that may be the wrong time to answer routine emails—and the perfect time to work on a complicated project.
If your child is mentally exhausted immediately after school, beginning with the most difficult homework assignment the moment they walk through the door may not be effective.
Whenever your schedule allows, match demanding tasks with periods of stronger attention and save routine or lower-effort tasks for lower-energy periods.
Productivity Isn’t Always About Trying Harder
When someone struggles with executive functioning, it’s easy to assume the answer is more discipline:
Try harder.
Pay attention.
Stop procrastinating.
Just get organized.
But these instructions don’t teach someone how to do those things. Instead, look at the environment and the systems surrounding the task.
Can you make the next step more obvious?
Can you remove an obstacle?
Can you automate a reminder?
Can you reduce the number of decisions required?
Can you make something important easier to see?
Sometimes the best executive functioning strategy isn’t improving your ability to remember 15 things. It’s creating a system, so you only have to remember one.
When Executive Functioning Challenges Are Getting in the Way
Everyone forgets things, procrastinates, loses track of time, or feels overwhelmed occasionally.
But when difficulties with organization, planning, attention, time management, or task initiation regularly interfere with school, work, relationships, or everyday responsibilities, executive function tips may not be enough.
Executive functioning coaching can help individuals better understand their own patterns and develop practical strategies that work with their brains and their daily lives.
For some individuals, persistent executive functioning difficulties may also be associated with ADHD or other learning and attention challenges. When appropriate, an educational evaluation can help provide a clearer understanding of an individual’s strengths, weaknesses, and support needs.
If executive functioning challenges are making school or everyday responsibilities harder than they need to be, please reach out to learn more about available support.
