speaker-0: Having a routine can be really helpful and healthy in getting you forward. And having a rigid routine can give you structure so that you can build forwards. But having a rigid mindset about how you do things is actually going to hinder your cognitive flexibility.
speaker-1: Natalie, as always, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You and I have spoken before that we think cognitive flexibility is an executive function term that gets almost no love. And it really is the skill of the future. The world's gonna change quickly. And so I'd like to focus on cognitive flexibility. So first of all, what is it?
speaker-0: Yeah, so cognitive flexibility is really one of the pentultimate executive functioning skills because it's a it's a combination of a lot of other things that we've talked about previously. But today I'll kind of stick with one definition for it. And it's the ability to identify a problem, propose a way to solve that problem, and try that solution out to see if it works.
speaker-1: What does it look like day to day when a child or a young adult is is developing these skills?
speaker-0: It's a it's a hard process to learn because cognitive flexibility, a lot of times we talk about that there's different skills that you can learn in different ways. And I think a lot of times people think of cognitive flexibility as something that's inherent, that's almost like a personality trait. But it's not a personality trait, it's something that you can learn and you can develop. But in the day to day, cognitive flexibility might be identifying an area perhaps in school that you're struggling and being able to propose a way to fix that problem, even if it doesn't fix it a hundred percent. Just a way to move forward through it.
speaker-1: So w when you said like one of the penultimate skills, right? Yeah. Why do you refer it to it like that?
speaker-0: It's because cognitive flexibility is really comes as a culmination of a lot of different skills. So for instance, we talk about metacognition a lot. Metacognition is one of the really core elements of executive function and executive function deficits. And it's the ability to reflect on yourself and see areas where you may need to improve. And that's just the first step of cognitive flexibility. And then the second step of cognitive flexibility is being able to actually apply something to that skill. And that might bring in skills like being able to advocate for yourself, being able to ask for things, being able to change the way that you interact with the world. So there you have at least two major executive function skills. And then you have to be able to implement that skill and stick with it long term, which we know is also something that people with executive function skills struggle with is continuing things long term. And then at the end of all that, being able to go back and reflect again on how is this new implementation going? And do I need to change it in any way to be able to improve more. That's why it's really this overarching skill is that it's it's not one thing. It's metacognition and advocacy and planning and being organized enough to implement something and then being able to metacognate again and see how it's going. So it's really this like encompassing skill.
speaker-1: set. It makes so much sense the way you just explained it because I work with so many young adults getting stuck right now. And finding a job or finding an internship with college graduates or people about ready to leave college is something I've been doing a lot recently. And the typical days of send out your resume, send out a cover letter are done. And we have to be very flexible. And it's so hard for a lot of for a lot of these students to do that. So it makes sense when you talk about all these different skills being turned being pulled into it.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I feel like I'm seeing that a lot firsthand too, just that I'm a couple of years post undergrad and I have a lot of friends that are going into their first like jobs after graduating and they're applying to all these positions. And I do see kind of like two approaches that people are taking. And one is I'm going to send out my resume and I'm going to send out my cover letter and I'm going to apply to as many jobs as I can and I'm going to live on LinkedIn and just apply, apply, apply. And I'm gonna get 500 rejections and I'm just gonna keep doing it. And then I do see other people that are trying all these alternate methods, that they're reaching out to people that they know personally, or they're doing ⁓ cold outreach a different way, and they're just trying all these different like methods. And even though they might be getting similar amounts of rejection, I do think the flexibility to try new methods does seem to be more successful for people that are trying to get into their first.
speaker-1: jobs. Yeah, well, and we've we've told everybody there's one way. And then when that way doesn't work anymore, a lot of people get stuck. And like you said, they just double down on what's working. So let's get in how to teach it in a second. But even before then, what's going on in the brain when someone is getting stuck and can't switch gears?
speaker-0: think especially with people with executive function deficits, ADHD, habits have a big role in this. And habitual behaviors are things that are comfortable for us and that our brain can fall back on when we're in times of stress. And a lot of times that can be a great thing. I think untapped is one of the resources that helps you learn how to build healthy habits and use habits to create a a good workspace or be able to get through your workload in a productive way and plan consistently. But also habits of how to do things or just like how you behave in the world consistently becomes habituated. And it's really hard to break out of that.
speaker-1: Yeah. I w you know, you and I have discussed routines so much before. And the way we look at routines, you know, we'll take a student who's a hot mess, like I was, right? And routines helps calm down the anxiety. But do we get to a point where routines can hinder this flexibility if you get too routine based?
speaker-0: depends on what the routine is. ⁓ I do think that yes, routines and cognitive flexibility can go like in synchrony, but they do eventually start to conflict with each other. And I think it's it's not so much a routine, but it's all about having a rigid mindset about something. I think a routine is is a way of doing things, and the mindset is more a way of thinking about things. The routine I don't think is going to stop you from being cognitively flexible. But if you can only think in that one linear way, that is what's preventing you from being flexible.
speaker-1: Did you say what you just said again about routines and reflecting? I think that's such an important point.
speaker-0: Yeah. So having a routine can be really helpful and healthy in getting you forward. And having a rigid routine can cause can give you structure so that you can build forwards. But having a rigid mindset about how you do things is actually going to hinder your cognitive flexibility.
speaker-1: Yeah, the reason I I wanted to emphasize that is I get this question a lot from parents with certain students, like students on the spectrum, where they have a morning routine that took a long time to work and then they go on vacation. And when that routine doesn't exist, the student's not flexible enough and and and they ⁓ melt down. So I think that's a it it's just it's just a great insight on how to think about the routine versus the mindset.
speaker-0: There's also a a lot of research that's actually gone into that, which is that cognitive flexibility is very often situationally dependent. I always think that sports is a great way to learn cognitive flexibility because you might get thrown into a different position, things happen, you're playing a different team, you don't know what's gonna go on. You kind of have learned cognitive flexibility that's just built into the sport versus at home or homework might not be as cognitively flexible. And I think that's what you're seeing when somebody who has a routine that they can fall back on as their structure collapses when they go on vacation, is that it's situationally dependent, that their flexibility and their cognitive strength is dependent on the situation that they're in and they can't transfer it.
speaker-1: Yeah. So what what advice would you give to parents, educators, and and those of us who get stuck? Like how how how do we start to transfer that flexibility?
speaker-0: So the whole thing that's really hard about cognitive flexibility is it's all about trying new tactics and trying new ways of doing things. So the thing is that you're not going to know the problem exists until you run into it headfirst. So you're going on vacation and you realize this routine that works well at home isn't working anymore. And the problem is, is then you've already hit the problem. it's all about identifying what the the root problem is and seeing if you can try new small tactics in a safe way. So we've talked about previously a lot of students have a lot of missing assignments, and they might be able to identify that that's their like pitch point, but then they might need to try different tactics to try and get more of their assignments turned in. And the point of cognitive flexibility isn't going from more missing assignments to less missing assignments. It's trying the different methods to see how you could potentially have Less missing assignments. So the student might stay up really late. They're like, I'm just gonna stay up all night, every night, all week, and try and get all these missing assignments done. It's probably not gonna go very well. But that is cognitive flexibility, being able to realize I have something that I want to work on, intrinsically motivated. That's a big thing. Second is that they are actually trying a new tactic. So they stayed up all night, didn't work out so well. And then they're coming back and they're being like, okay, it didn't work out so well. And that's the metacognition at the end. And then they have to try another tactic. So as parents, it's a lot harder because a big piece of cognitive flexibility is intrinsic motivation. So it's does the person want to instill this change? And it's all about how to structure micro changes and seeing the cause and effects of them so that you can apply them in a larger scale.
speaker-1: Yeah, i i going back to the previous example, ⁓ with what you said, it's it's almost like the fact that the child is melting down on vacation almost is the opportunity. We treat it like a dead end and it seems like that's a great opportunity. We broke the routine and now we get a chance to work on it, as uncomfortable as it may be.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think a lot about cognitive flexibility is sitting in the uncomfortableness. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's i it's it's almost like procrastination. The the the the amount of emotional just just turmoil you feel is sometimes sitting in that's the best way the best way through.
speaker-0: And I think right now a lot of students are struggling to sit in that uncomfortableness. I see this with a lot of students using more AI. They don't sit in struggle as much as maybe we used to when we were in school and we didn't have the option to not sit in struggle.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. You're sounding you're sounding like me in my forties, even though you're still in your twenties. Bad back in my day stuff. well and and and it's so easy to blame students, but it's not their fault. We've made we've made a lot of things frictionless, right? We've made content. We've made ⁓ you know, we've made a homework. It it's just become frictionless. And so when we do hit something that hits a lot of friction, it's just a skill like any other skill.
speaker-0: So this was the thing that I was actually meaning to talk to you about. Someone that I just bumped into at the climbing gym and what I we were talking about what we do for work. And he's a math professor at the University of Toronto. And I'm a PhD student. So we both work with undergrads fairly frequently. And he was saying that he was like, I have the nicest cohort of students that I've ever had. And I was like, ⁓ the nicest cohort. He was like, they don't fight back. They don't ask for half credits on things. They don't contest. when they think that I marked their tests wrong. If they fail a test, they roll over and they say, ⁓ I must have done poorly. I'll better luck next time. And he's like, the students don't fight anymore. They don't hunt for points. And he was like, if they knew how much their like previous years of students were able to get back, like people were getting half credits back all the time. They were going, getting extra credit for things. They were redoing full tests. And students aren't even asking anymore. And so now I'm realizing that cognitive flexibility might be learning to be creative enough to ask for what you need.
speaker-1: That is such a unique insight. I've I I've I I I've always placed it differently. But the fact that that professor had that insight, I don't think I've heard that before.
speaker-0: Yeah, I hadn't either. This was just in the last last week I talked to this person and I was realizing these students aren't willing to sit with their tests that they failed and look at the questions that they got wrong. They're not willing to sit there with their friends and be like, ⁓ I got marked off a half point for this, but you didn't get marked off a half point for this. I can go and contest this. Because I remember like when I was in first year of university, we would all get our physics tests back together. And I remember like my first year of physics class, the best anyone got was like a sixty percent on any exam. And you better bet the next office hours, we were all in there with our tests, being like she got a half point off, but I didn't and we deserve a curve and all these sort of things. And apparently office hours are silent and no one's fighting back right now.
speaker-1: The w the one thing I hear from college students and professors all the time is you look at our students, if they're hungry, they door dash something, right? If there's this big long paper that was so overwhelming to start pre-AI, that started. Now you're just kind of editing. A lot of that friction's been taken out. Even things like, ⁓ every college student now is on dating apps if if they want to date and that friction's been taken out. And then what happens is people call it resilience, people call it different things, but when they get to a a wall that hasn't been automated yet, they they they do throw their hands up. Right. And they can't figure out alternative ways to get dinner, to get the date, to do whatever. Right. And and and that's the process we've taken away from a lot of students. And again, it's not their fault.
speaker-0: It's the system that exists for them, but I think it's what's going to differentiate the students that excel from the students that just pass.
speaker-1: Or or even or even get that first job, right? Or get or or or get that first internship. So you you answered a few of these, but how do we teach this flexibility? ⁓ you know, you you mentioned sports and a couple of other things, but does anything else come to mind?
speaker-0: There's these studies that come out that say that cognitive flexibility isn't transferable between different disciplines. But I think that a lot of lived experience goes against that. You can be more cognitively flexible in one area of your life. You can at least reflect on the fact that you were and be able to translate it to something else. That's why I always think that having something else going on besides your primary pursuit is really important to building all these different skills. So If you're playing a sport, you have a hobby, you're into music, those are really good areas to be more flexible because in a lot of instances they feel more forgiving. It feels like I can fail here and there's no real consequences. And I think the problem with cognitive flexibility in academics is that failure feels too extreme, that it feels like there's too many real world outcomes of it, even though w pushing those boundaries and trying new tactics is actually. what's going to cause success, but the fear of failure is so strong that they don't think they can try things out.
speaker-1: I I I I love that. You know, you talked about the reflection piece of cognitive flexibility. That's the piece I see most students not take that next step on. It is the person who sends out five hundred resumes and lives on LinkedIn because they haven't reflected on what's working and what's not. Have you seen anything work in this reflection piece?
speaker-0: Well, I think there's kind of two sides to it. So first off, reflection itself is a success. It's the lack of reflection that's the problem. And I think there's two sides to people that don't want to reflect on their ⁓ struggles. And the first is the person who claims not to care. They're the person that gets their exam, they go, okay, I got a 60 and they shove it in their bag and they never think about it again. And then there's the person who gets their exam back expecting to get an A plus and got a B minus. And is so upset about the little points that they miss that they're not willing to go back and actually face the fact that they didn't do as well as they thought they would. So you've got the people that are apathetic and then you've got the perfectionists. And they're both the people that are not going to be willing to reflect because they're both scared in a way of that reflection process and what it might bring up. And cognitive flexibility really is so strongly in tie, like entwined with emotional regulation. So it really does bring in those anger and frustration feelings that are going to be on either side of that spectrum.
speaker-1: The more I I learn about reflection, it seems like one of the biggest unlocks to building these executive function skills. Like people talk about what helps emotional regulation. We're looking at reflection. And then if you're looking at a therapy side, cognitive behavioral therapy or some method like that, right? What helps flexibility, reflection? What helps you know, we we're looking at all the all all these things. It seems like reflection we keep coming back to over and over.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's because it's hard and it goes against our like natural instincts. It's hard to be a confident person and constantly reflect because then you have to admit your weaknesses. And it's hard to be someone who's struggling with your self-worth and reflects because it might bring you even lower. And so I think it's it's really hard to separate your sense of self and your self worth from your reflection process. And I think that is such a skill. That people do need to learn, but it's so hard to learn. And I think the more you do it and the more you're exposed to it, the better. Even if it's in small ways, like in sports, your coach is like, you need to put your thumb down when you swing instead of your pinky down when you swing if you want to get the ball. And this, you know, that kind of like feedback. That might just be like a small piece of feedback at the time, but you're learning to accept reflection. and learning how to change what you're doing based on the feedback from the world around you. And it's really hard to do that for really big things like a job application or realizing that you're not qualified for something that you want to do. But the more practice that you get doing it in smaller situations, the better it'll be when you're in the big situations because your self-worth will be less attached to it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well and I can think about an athlete or someone who's in a musical. We're getting constant feedback. We're getting constant reflection. Yeah. You've had a you've had a long academic career and I've worked in a lot of schools. I mean, how common is it for you to see structured reflection from teachers or professors?
speaker-0: I think it's increasing. ⁓ but I didn't really see it until my last year of university. I would say my fourth year seminar courses were bringing it in. There's a lot of peer evaluation. ⁓ but before that not
speaker-1: You I've I've worked in schools for a long time and I had a long academic career as well. And I don't I can count on one hand the number of times where a teacher stopped and said, Let's reflect over the last test ⁓ or a parent has talked over without attacking, right? Like a genuine what worked and what didn't. And so ⁓ for parents and educators, one of the things that I say, one of the biggest insights is to take the time to reflect, but also when you reflect like what part of this studying worked for you and what didn't. It's not the first question where you get the great insight. It's when you ask three or four follow-up questions underneath. That's where you really get to the good stuff.
speaker-0: And I think it's it's also being able to separate studying or the thing that you're learning from your who you are. Because people tend to have a hard time hearing negative comments. And that's that's the hardest piece of it is being able to actually hear.
speaker-1: Yeah. Besides reflection, anything else come to mind for that would be helpful for parents, coaches, educators to hear about building cognitive flexibility?
speaker-0: When we talk about cognitive flexibility, it's the opposite of rigidity, right? And when we think about goals, there's often a very black and white view of success. And so I like to think about New Year's resolutions. And we always like, you know, there's all these gym signups in January, and then people aren't coming back in February. And I think a lot of times that's because people have a very black and white view of success. And they think that I need to change myself a hundred percent. To be able to fulfill my goals. And the truth is, is that goals are gonna be achieved in smaller amounts, and that striving for a hundred percent of anything is never gonna be sustainable. So if like we're going back to the missing assignments, if you're working on getting less missing assignments and you had 15 one week and you're down to 10, that's a big win. And I think as a parent, it probably I'm not a parent, you would have to speak to this. It's probably a lot to think about to see all the notifications coming in and knowing they have all these missing assignments and it's still they still have 10 missing assignments. And the week before they had 15, it's hard to feel like you can celebrate something that still feels negative. But that actually that's the direction that you want to go. And they're trying something new. And that's what you need to be celebrating and supporting is the process. Here we come back again. It's the process, not the product.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I I think about some of the most amazing parents I've seen. Often I see parents with students on the spectrum. They're able to praise things that feel may feel mundane to others, but is is real growth. Right. Like you got out the door with both of your shoes this morning. Like it feels so mundane, but it's real growth. And if we look at the long game here, this flexibility is truly something that we see just not that many people are are coming out of school with. And so if you can start to build that. Even praising the monotonous will go a long way.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I think if you're in university, if you're in high school, it's going to be the conscious choice of not taking the easy path every time is what's going to give you that cognitive flexibility. And it's going to see your peers doing things faster and potentially better than you. And you're struggling a lot more than everybody else. Because at this point in time, you have to consciously choose to struggle. And that's what's going to be the thing that builds you the strength and the cognitive flexibility that will be great in your career. But if you don't choose to struggle, you're not going to struggle and you're not going to learn.
speaker-1: A big a big piece of pushback on our channel where people people DM us things that the w one of the big pieces of criticism is that we spend so much talking about parenting, kids and kids in college, right? Students at college. But it's often the 40 year old who's who's watching watching who struggles with this. Is there any different advice you would give to someone who's a little bit older who catches themselves getting stuck in these same just rigidity routines?
speaker-0: Great, you caught yourself being stuck. You identified a problem. And that's the starting point for anything, is that if you can identify the problem and be intrinsically motivated to change, because that's the first step, is being willing to change, then you can start the process. But I think you have to be willing to start the process and you have to be willing to fail. And if you can think of one method that you want to change something, like say, We we were talking about New Year's resolution. So say you want to go to the gym more. That's your cognitive flexibility task for the year. And you can only go to the gym for 30 minutes one day a week. Go. Like that's it. Just try something. If you can come up with one method to try something, and if you try it out for a week and you hate it, great. You hated it and you tried. Then you can try something else. It's just about continuously implementing new strategies. As hard as that is. Yeah.
speaker-1: Well, I I want to come back to something you said before. I know I asked for a new thing, but something you said before I think is so important for adults. One, having empathy with yourself, knowing that it's you are not broken. A lot of us had to come up through a system that didn't fit us. And we get really rigid and we have we hold a lot of resentments about that. And so ⁓ part of failing is just realizing that this is not who we are. It's not a character thing. And there's a lot of old, old junk to deal with there. And so that and going easy on yourself, having some empathy that We are where we are and let's just let's just try something even if it doesn't work and that's okay.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that's also the thing that's hitting all of these first job applicants is a lot of them, they aced their classes. They worked their butts off in university. They were promised that they would have these jobs when they got out. And they thought, okay, I have this plan of my life that is going to go from university to my first career job and then I'm gonna move on. And it's almost the hardest part isn't the applications, it's not the rejections. It's the idea of yourself that's changed, that your idea of who you are and your life trajectory has now deviated. And it's being able to sit in that uncomfortableness and understand that you are still a good person and you still are who you are, even though your path has changed. And I think that's the the biggest and hardest part of cognitive flexibility is separating your ego from your goals and not necessarily realizing that they are one and the same.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I I feel so bad for these young people coming out of college. Educators like me and adults like me were like, if you take A P classes, if you do all these things, if you bust your tail and go to these amazing universities, you're gonna come out and have this whole life set up for you. And it's not that way. And we have to stay flexible and I feel terrible and we are where we are.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I think more than ever right now is the time to pick up a hobby. Is the time to get back into a sport that you used to be into because that's a great place to practice cognitive flexibility. And it's also a great place to have positive reinforcement when there might be a lot of negative happening in other aspects of your life. So I think hobbies like I've been I w got back into sewing. That's been great. I love that. ⁓ and it's so hard. Because I put my scenes on wrong and I have to rip them all apart again and then I have to try again. But it's meaningless, right? It's just a little project. But it's building cognitive flexibility. And I think it's great for people to have things going on that don't feel so serious all the time.
speaker-1: I would have never thought that you would have gotten into sewing, knowing you for this many years. That's a wild thought to me. ⁓ I've had a so my goodness. I'm I'm learning so much. Well, in in in because cause one of the things I I you we we like to end this positive. This is the big opportunity too as well, right? Like again, the differentiator now isn't what university you went to. That may help, but the differentiator is can you try so many of these different paths and find one that fits?
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's tough. And I think that there's gonna be days where people are like, I can, you know, set out and I can try something really hard. And there's gonna be days where people are just overwhelmed. And I think at this point, cognitive flexibility is making a small amount of change every day. Doesn't ha you don't have to move a mountain every day.
speaker-1: To close this off, you know, we see a lot of students with executive function challenges, challenges struggle with cognitive flexibility. Is there a reason for that?
speaker-0: So a statistic that I don't remember the exact number, you're gonna have to fill it in for me, is that a lot of students with executive function deficits and ADHD receive a lot more negative comments growing up than other students do. What is I n I know that you know the exact stats.
speaker-1: for that. Yeah, yeah. It's ⁓ Dr. Dr. Dotson, who's actually one of our close friends in in on this channel, ⁓ twenty thousand more negative comments than positive comments just in school by third grade is a wild, wild the amount of negative feedback that all these students with executive function challenges seem to get.
speaker-0: Yeah. And we've talked about how cognitive flexibility is so closely entwined with emotional regulation. And emotional regulation, there's really like two main ways that people respond to negative comments or negative interactions. And that's either going to be to suppress that negative emotion or to reflect on that negative emotion. And obviously the reflection is going to cause more growth and more development over time. But like you said, they're getting an exorbitant Amount of negative comments at a very young age. And most students are not going to be able to reflect on every single comment that they're getting throughout the day. So eventually they're going to reach a point where they need to be suppressing these negative emotions just as a coping mechanism to get to 3 p.m. when the bell rings. And if you're doing that habitually year after year, you're going to be learning to suppress and not reflect. And when you're getting to high school and you're getting to university, And you're needing to be more cognitively flexible, it's going to be habitually difficult for you because you're going to need to break this mold that was literally a survival skill for you to get through until this point to be able to develop more flexibility. And that's why people that have executive function deficits and ADHD should be giving themselves a good amount of grace about their growth that they need to achieve. because they had to take on these different coping mechanisms just to get to where they are now. So that's kind of one of the reasons that we might be seeing more of this inflexibility in older adults and ⁓ adolescents with executive function deficit.
speaker-1: Yeah, giving yourself grace seems like something we talk about every single time because I I I think back to when I helped when I taught middle school math. We would punish kids essentially for being cognitively flexible. Unless you did the algebra problem in a certain way with the equal signs lined up. If you thought about a new way to do it, that's wrong, right? You get half the points wrong if your work is wrong. We're actively punishing for being flexible. So if you're a college junior adult and you're just beating yourself up, there's probably a reason for that.
speaker-0: Yeah. And sometimes like we were talking about with routines, frameworks like learning algebra a certain way can be a tool to that you can then use later to be more flexible, but it can also pigeonhole.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your expertise. And where can people learn more about you and your work?
speaker-0: So you can find things that I've made previously on here on YouTube under the Simple Neuroscience series. ⁓ it was a collection of videos that we did together with Untapped, examining how neuroscience plays a role in different executive function conditions and deficits and different symptoms that might come out from that. I also have worked with Untapped to publish a paper examining the process of untapped learning and students that were in the program. How they reflected on their growth during their time in the program. That was published in Frontiers in Psychology. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn.
speaker-1: Natalie, tell we do it again. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the Executive Function for All podcast. If today's episode brought you any value, please rate us five stars and share it with someone who may benefit. And remember, every small step you take builds towards your success. For resources and guidance, visit untappedlearning.com. Keep growing, keep learning, and we'll see you next time.
speaker-1: Natalie, as always, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You and I have spoken before that we think cognitive flexibility is an executive function term that gets almost no love. And it really is the skill of the future. The world's gonna change quickly. And so I'd like to focus on cognitive flexibility. So first of all, what is it?
speaker-0: Yeah, so cognitive flexibility is really one of the pentultimate executive functioning skills because it's a it's a combination of a lot of other things that we've talked about previously. But today I'll kind of stick with one definition for it. And it's the ability to identify a problem, propose a way to solve that problem, and try that solution out to see if it works.
speaker-1: What does it look like day to day when a child or a young adult is is developing these skills?
speaker-0: It's a it's a hard process to learn because cognitive flexibility, a lot of times we talk about that there's different skills that you can learn in different ways. And I think a lot of times people think of cognitive flexibility as something that's inherent, that's almost like a personality trait. But it's not a personality trait, it's something that you can learn and you can develop. But in the day to day, cognitive flexibility might be identifying an area perhaps in school that you're struggling and being able to propose a way to fix that problem, even if it doesn't fix it a hundred percent. Just a way to move forward through it.
speaker-1: So w when you said like one of the penultimate skills, right? Yeah. Why do you refer it to it like that?
speaker-0: It's because cognitive flexibility is really comes as a culmination of a lot of different skills. So for instance, we talk about metacognition a lot. Metacognition is one of the really core elements of executive function and executive function deficits. And it's the ability to reflect on yourself and see areas where you may need to improve. And that's just the first step of cognitive flexibility. And then the second step of cognitive flexibility is being able to actually apply something to that skill. And that might bring in skills like being able to advocate for yourself, being able to ask for things, being able to change the way that you interact with the world. So there you have at least two major executive function skills. And then you have to be able to implement that skill and stick with it long term, which we know is also something that people with executive function skills struggle with is continuing things long term. And then at the end of all that, being able to go back and reflect again on how is this new implementation going? And do I need to change it in any way to be able to improve more. That's why it's really this overarching skill is that it's it's not one thing. It's metacognition and advocacy and planning and being organized enough to implement something and then being able to metacognate again and see how it's going. So it's really this like encompassing skill.
speaker-1: set. It makes so much sense the way you just explained it because I work with so many young adults getting stuck right now. And finding a job or finding an internship with college graduates or people about ready to leave college is something I've been doing a lot recently. And the typical days of send out your resume, send out a cover letter are done. And we have to be very flexible. And it's so hard for a lot of for a lot of these students to do that. So it makes sense when you talk about all these different skills being turned being pulled into it.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I feel like I'm seeing that a lot firsthand too, just that I'm a couple of years post undergrad and I have a lot of friends that are going into their first like jobs after graduating and they're applying to all these positions. And I do see kind of like two approaches that people are taking. And one is I'm going to send out my resume and I'm going to send out my cover letter and I'm going to apply to as many jobs as I can and I'm going to live on LinkedIn and just apply, apply, apply. And I'm gonna get 500 rejections and I'm just gonna keep doing it. And then I do see other people that are trying all these alternate methods, that they're reaching out to people that they know personally, or they're doing ⁓ cold outreach a different way, and they're just trying all these different like methods. And even though they might be getting similar amounts of rejection, I do think the flexibility to try new methods does seem to be more successful for people that are trying to get into their first.
speaker-1: jobs. Yeah, well, and we've we've told everybody there's one way. And then when that way doesn't work anymore, a lot of people get stuck. And like you said, they just double down on what's working. So let's get in how to teach it in a second. But even before then, what's going on in the brain when someone is getting stuck and can't switch gears?
speaker-0: think especially with people with executive function deficits, ADHD, habits have a big role in this. And habitual behaviors are things that are comfortable for us and that our brain can fall back on when we're in times of stress. And a lot of times that can be a great thing. I think untapped is one of the resources that helps you learn how to build healthy habits and use habits to create a a good workspace or be able to get through your workload in a productive way and plan consistently. But also habits of how to do things or just like how you behave in the world consistently becomes habituated. And it's really hard to break out of that.
speaker-1: Yeah. I w you know, you and I have discussed routines so much before. And the way we look at routines, you know, we'll take a student who's a hot mess, like I was, right? And routines helps calm down the anxiety. But do we get to a point where routines can hinder this flexibility if you get too routine based?
speaker-0: depends on what the routine is. ⁓ I do think that yes, routines and cognitive flexibility can go like in synchrony, but they do eventually start to conflict with each other. And I think it's it's not so much a routine, but it's all about having a rigid mindset about something. I think a routine is is a way of doing things, and the mindset is more a way of thinking about things. The routine I don't think is going to stop you from being cognitively flexible. But if you can only think in that one linear way, that is what's preventing you from being flexible.
speaker-1: Did you say what you just said again about routines and reflecting? I think that's such an important point.
speaker-0: Yeah. So having a routine can be really helpful and healthy in getting you forward. And having a rigid routine can cause can give you structure so that you can build forwards. But having a rigid mindset about how you do things is actually going to hinder your cognitive flexibility.
speaker-1: Yeah, the reason I I wanted to emphasize that is I get this question a lot from parents with certain students, like students on the spectrum, where they have a morning routine that took a long time to work and then they go on vacation. And when that routine doesn't exist, the student's not flexible enough and and and they ⁓ melt down. So I think that's a it it's just it's just a great insight on how to think about the routine versus the mindset.
speaker-0: There's also a a lot of research that's actually gone into that, which is that cognitive flexibility is very often situationally dependent. I always think that sports is a great way to learn cognitive flexibility because you might get thrown into a different position, things happen, you're playing a different team, you don't know what's gonna go on. You kind of have learned cognitive flexibility that's just built into the sport versus at home or homework might not be as cognitively flexible. And I think that's what you're seeing when somebody who has a routine that they can fall back on as their structure collapses when they go on vacation, is that it's situationally dependent, that their flexibility and their cognitive strength is dependent on the situation that they're in and they can't transfer it.
speaker-1: Yeah. So what what advice would you give to parents, educators, and and those of us who get stuck? Like how how how do we start to transfer that flexibility?
speaker-0: So the whole thing that's really hard about cognitive flexibility is it's all about trying new tactics and trying new ways of doing things. So the thing is that you're not going to know the problem exists until you run into it headfirst. So you're going on vacation and you realize this routine that works well at home isn't working anymore. And the problem is, is then you've already hit the problem. it's all about identifying what the the root problem is and seeing if you can try new small tactics in a safe way. So we've talked about previously a lot of students have a lot of missing assignments, and they might be able to identify that that's their like pitch point, but then they might need to try different tactics to try and get more of their assignments turned in. And the point of cognitive flexibility isn't going from more missing assignments to less missing assignments. It's trying the different methods to see how you could potentially have Less missing assignments. So the student might stay up really late. They're like, I'm just gonna stay up all night, every night, all week, and try and get all these missing assignments done. It's probably not gonna go very well. But that is cognitive flexibility, being able to realize I have something that I want to work on, intrinsically motivated. That's a big thing. Second is that they are actually trying a new tactic. So they stayed up all night, didn't work out so well. And then they're coming back and they're being like, okay, it didn't work out so well. And that's the metacognition at the end. And then they have to try another tactic. So as parents, it's a lot harder because a big piece of cognitive flexibility is intrinsic motivation. So it's does the person want to instill this change? And it's all about how to structure micro changes and seeing the cause and effects of them so that you can apply them in a larger scale.
speaker-1: Yeah, i i going back to the previous example, ⁓ with what you said, it's it's almost like the fact that the child is melting down on vacation almost is the opportunity. We treat it like a dead end and it seems like that's a great opportunity. We broke the routine and now we get a chance to work on it, as uncomfortable as it may be.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think a lot about cognitive flexibility is sitting in the uncomfortableness. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's i it's it's almost like procrastination. The the the the amount of emotional just just turmoil you feel is sometimes sitting in that's the best way the best way through.
speaker-0: And I think right now a lot of students are struggling to sit in that uncomfortableness. I see this with a lot of students using more AI. They don't sit in struggle as much as maybe we used to when we were in school and we didn't have the option to not sit in struggle.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. You're sounding you're sounding like me in my forties, even though you're still in your twenties. Bad back in my day stuff. well and and and it's so easy to blame students, but it's not their fault. We've made we've made a lot of things frictionless, right? We've made content. We've made ⁓ you know, we've made a homework. It it's just become frictionless. And so when we do hit something that hits a lot of friction, it's just a skill like any other skill.
speaker-0: So this was the thing that I was actually meaning to talk to you about. Someone that I just bumped into at the climbing gym and what I we were talking about what we do for work. And he's a math professor at the University of Toronto. And I'm a PhD student. So we both work with undergrads fairly frequently. And he was saying that he was like, I have the nicest cohort of students that I've ever had. And I was like, ⁓ the nicest cohort. He was like, they don't fight back. They don't ask for half credits on things. They don't contest. when they think that I marked their tests wrong. If they fail a test, they roll over and they say, ⁓ I must have done poorly. I'll better luck next time. And he's like, the students don't fight anymore. They don't hunt for points. And he was like, if they knew how much their like previous years of students were able to get back, like people were getting half credits back all the time. They were going, getting extra credit for things. They were redoing full tests. And students aren't even asking anymore. And so now I'm realizing that cognitive flexibility might be learning to be creative enough to ask for what you need.
speaker-1: That is such a unique insight. I've I I've I I I've always placed it differently. But the fact that that professor had that insight, I don't think I've heard that before.
speaker-0: Yeah, I hadn't either. This was just in the last last week I talked to this person and I was realizing these students aren't willing to sit with their tests that they failed and look at the questions that they got wrong. They're not willing to sit there with their friends and be like, ⁓ I got marked off a half point for this, but you didn't get marked off a half point for this. I can go and contest this. Because I remember like when I was in first year of university, we would all get our physics tests back together. And I remember like my first year of physics class, the best anyone got was like a sixty percent on any exam. And you better bet the next office hours, we were all in there with our tests, being like she got a half point off, but I didn't and we deserve a curve and all these sort of things. And apparently office hours are silent and no one's fighting back right now.
speaker-1: The w the one thing I hear from college students and professors all the time is you look at our students, if they're hungry, they door dash something, right? If there's this big long paper that was so overwhelming to start pre-AI, that started. Now you're just kind of editing. A lot of that friction's been taken out. Even things like, ⁓ every college student now is on dating apps if if they want to date and that friction's been taken out. And then what happens is people call it resilience, people call it different things, but when they get to a a wall that hasn't been automated yet, they they they do throw their hands up. Right. And they can't figure out alternative ways to get dinner, to get the date, to do whatever. Right. And and and that's the process we've taken away from a lot of students. And again, it's not their fault.
speaker-0: It's the system that exists for them, but I think it's what's going to differentiate the students that excel from the students that just pass.
speaker-1: Or or even or even get that first job, right? Or get or or or get that first internship. So you you answered a few of these, but how do we teach this flexibility? ⁓ you know, you you mentioned sports and a couple of other things, but does anything else come to mind?
speaker-0: There's these studies that come out that say that cognitive flexibility isn't transferable between different disciplines. But I think that a lot of lived experience goes against that. You can be more cognitively flexible in one area of your life. You can at least reflect on the fact that you were and be able to translate it to something else. That's why I always think that having something else going on besides your primary pursuit is really important to building all these different skills. So If you're playing a sport, you have a hobby, you're into music, those are really good areas to be more flexible because in a lot of instances they feel more forgiving. It feels like I can fail here and there's no real consequences. And I think the problem with cognitive flexibility in academics is that failure feels too extreme, that it feels like there's too many real world outcomes of it, even though w pushing those boundaries and trying new tactics is actually. what's going to cause success, but the fear of failure is so strong that they don't think they can try things out.
speaker-1: I I I I love that. You know, you talked about the reflection piece of cognitive flexibility. That's the piece I see most students not take that next step on. It is the person who sends out five hundred resumes and lives on LinkedIn because they haven't reflected on what's working and what's not. Have you seen anything work in this reflection piece?
speaker-0: Well, I think there's kind of two sides to it. So first off, reflection itself is a success. It's the lack of reflection that's the problem. And I think there's two sides to people that don't want to reflect on their ⁓ struggles. And the first is the person who claims not to care. They're the person that gets their exam, they go, okay, I got a 60 and they shove it in their bag and they never think about it again. And then there's the person who gets their exam back expecting to get an A plus and got a B minus. And is so upset about the little points that they miss that they're not willing to go back and actually face the fact that they didn't do as well as they thought they would. So you've got the people that are apathetic and then you've got the perfectionists. And they're both the people that are not going to be willing to reflect because they're both scared in a way of that reflection process and what it might bring up. And cognitive flexibility really is so strongly in tie, like entwined with emotional regulation. So it really does bring in those anger and frustration feelings that are going to be on either side of that spectrum.
speaker-1: The more I I learn about reflection, it seems like one of the biggest unlocks to building these executive function skills. Like people talk about what helps emotional regulation. We're looking at reflection. And then if you're looking at a therapy side, cognitive behavioral therapy or some method like that, right? What helps flexibility, reflection? What helps you know, we we're looking at all the all all these things. It seems like reflection we keep coming back to over and over.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's because it's hard and it goes against our like natural instincts. It's hard to be a confident person and constantly reflect because then you have to admit your weaknesses. And it's hard to be someone who's struggling with your self-worth and reflects because it might bring you even lower. And so I think it's it's really hard to separate your sense of self and your self worth from your reflection process. And I think that is such a skill. That people do need to learn, but it's so hard to learn. And I think the more you do it and the more you're exposed to it, the better. Even if it's in small ways, like in sports, your coach is like, you need to put your thumb down when you swing instead of your pinky down when you swing if you want to get the ball. And this, you know, that kind of like feedback. That might just be like a small piece of feedback at the time, but you're learning to accept reflection. and learning how to change what you're doing based on the feedback from the world around you. And it's really hard to do that for really big things like a job application or realizing that you're not qualified for something that you want to do. But the more practice that you get doing it in smaller situations, the better it'll be when you're in the big situations because your self-worth will be less attached to it.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well and I can think about an athlete or someone who's in a musical. We're getting constant feedback. We're getting constant reflection. Yeah. You've had a you've had a long academic career and I've worked in a lot of schools. I mean, how common is it for you to see structured reflection from teachers or professors?
speaker-0: I think it's increasing. ⁓ but I didn't really see it until my last year of university. I would say my fourth year seminar courses were bringing it in. There's a lot of peer evaluation. ⁓ but before that not
speaker-1: You I've I've worked in schools for a long time and I had a long academic career as well. And I don't I can count on one hand the number of times where a teacher stopped and said, Let's reflect over the last test ⁓ or a parent has talked over without attacking, right? Like a genuine what worked and what didn't. And so ⁓ for parents and educators, one of the things that I say, one of the biggest insights is to take the time to reflect, but also when you reflect like what part of this studying worked for you and what didn't. It's not the first question where you get the great insight. It's when you ask three or four follow-up questions underneath. That's where you really get to the good stuff.
speaker-0: And I think it's it's also being able to separate studying or the thing that you're learning from your who you are. Because people tend to have a hard time hearing negative comments. And that's that's the hardest piece of it is being able to actually hear.
speaker-1: Yeah. Besides reflection, anything else come to mind for that would be helpful for parents, coaches, educators to hear about building cognitive flexibility?
speaker-0: When we talk about cognitive flexibility, it's the opposite of rigidity, right? And when we think about goals, there's often a very black and white view of success. And so I like to think about New Year's resolutions. And we always like, you know, there's all these gym signups in January, and then people aren't coming back in February. And I think a lot of times that's because people have a very black and white view of success. And they think that I need to change myself a hundred percent. To be able to fulfill my goals. And the truth is, is that goals are gonna be achieved in smaller amounts, and that striving for a hundred percent of anything is never gonna be sustainable. So if like we're going back to the missing assignments, if you're working on getting less missing assignments and you had 15 one week and you're down to 10, that's a big win. And I think as a parent, it probably I'm not a parent, you would have to speak to this. It's probably a lot to think about to see all the notifications coming in and knowing they have all these missing assignments and it's still they still have 10 missing assignments. And the week before they had 15, it's hard to feel like you can celebrate something that still feels negative. But that actually that's the direction that you want to go. And they're trying something new. And that's what you need to be celebrating and supporting is the process. Here we come back again. It's the process, not the product.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. I I think about some of the most amazing parents I've seen. Often I see parents with students on the spectrum. They're able to praise things that feel may feel mundane to others, but is is real growth. Right. Like you got out the door with both of your shoes this morning. Like it feels so mundane, but it's real growth. And if we look at the long game here, this flexibility is truly something that we see just not that many people are are coming out of school with. And so if you can start to build that. Even praising the monotonous will go a long way.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I think if you're in university, if you're in high school, it's going to be the conscious choice of not taking the easy path every time is what's going to give you that cognitive flexibility. And it's going to see your peers doing things faster and potentially better than you. And you're struggling a lot more than everybody else. Because at this point in time, you have to consciously choose to struggle. And that's what's going to be the thing that builds you the strength and the cognitive flexibility that will be great in your career. But if you don't choose to struggle, you're not going to struggle and you're not going to learn.
speaker-1: A big a big piece of pushback on our channel where people people DM us things that the w one of the big pieces of criticism is that we spend so much talking about parenting, kids and kids in college, right? Students at college. But it's often the 40 year old who's who's watching watching who struggles with this. Is there any different advice you would give to someone who's a little bit older who catches themselves getting stuck in these same just rigidity routines?
speaker-0: Great, you caught yourself being stuck. You identified a problem. And that's the starting point for anything, is that if you can identify the problem and be intrinsically motivated to change, because that's the first step, is being willing to change, then you can start the process. But I think you have to be willing to start the process and you have to be willing to fail. And if you can think of one method that you want to change something, like say, We we were talking about New Year's resolution. So say you want to go to the gym more. That's your cognitive flexibility task for the year. And you can only go to the gym for 30 minutes one day a week. Go. Like that's it. Just try something. If you can come up with one method to try something, and if you try it out for a week and you hate it, great. You hated it and you tried. Then you can try something else. It's just about continuously implementing new strategies. As hard as that is. Yeah.
speaker-1: Well, I I want to come back to something you said before. I know I asked for a new thing, but something you said before I think is so important for adults. One, having empathy with yourself, knowing that it's you are not broken. A lot of us had to come up through a system that didn't fit us. And we get really rigid and we have we hold a lot of resentments about that. And so ⁓ part of failing is just realizing that this is not who we are. It's not a character thing. And there's a lot of old, old junk to deal with there. And so that and going easy on yourself, having some empathy that We are where we are and let's just let's just try something even if it doesn't work and that's okay.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I think that's also the thing that's hitting all of these first job applicants is a lot of them, they aced their classes. They worked their butts off in university. They were promised that they would have these jobs when they got out. And they thought, okay, I have this plan of my life that is going to go from university to my first career job and then I'm gonna move on. And it's almost the hardest part isn't the applications, it's not the rejections. It's the idea of yourself that's changed, that your idea of who you are and your life trajectory has now deviated. And it's being able to sit in that uncomfortableness and understand that you are still a good person and you still are who you are, even though your path has changed. And I think that's the the biggest and hardest part of cognitive flexibility is separating your ego from your goals and not necessarily realizing that they are one and the same.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I I feel so bad for these young people coming out of college. Educators like me and adults like me were like, if you take A P classes, if you do all these things, if you bust your tail and go to these amazing universities, you're gonna come out and have this whole life set up for you. And it's not that way. And we have to stay flexible and I feel terrible and we are where we are.
speaker-0: Yeah. And I think more than ever right now is the time to pick up a hobby. Is the time to get back into a sport that you used to be into because that's a great place to practice cognitive flexibility. And it's also a great place to have positive reinforcement when there might be a lot of negative happening in other aspects of your life. So I think hobbies like I've been I w got back into sewing. That's been great. I love that. ⁓ and it's so hard. Because I put my scenes on wrong and I have to rip them all apart again and then I have to try again. But it's meaningless, right? It's just a little project. But it's building cognitive flexibility. And I think it's great for people to have things going on that don't feel so serious all the time.
speaker-1: I would have never thought that you would have gotten into sewing, knowing you for this many years. That's a wild thought to me. ⁓ I've had a so my goodness. I'm I'm learning so much. Well, in in in because cause one of the things I I you we we like to end this positive. This is the big opportunity too as well, right? Like again, the differentiator now isn't what university you went to. That may help, but the differentiator is can you try so many of these different paths and find one that fits?
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's tough. And I think that there's gonna be days where people are like, I can, you know, set out and I can try something really hard. And there's gonna be days where people are just overwhelmed. And I think at this point, cognitive flexibility is making a small amount of change every day. Doesn't ha you don't have to move a mountain every day.
speaker-1: To close this off, you know, we see a lot of students with executive function challenges, challenges struggle with cognitive flexibility. Is there a reason for that?
speaker-0: So a statistic that I don't remember the exact number, you're gonna have to fill it in for me, is that a lot of students with executive function deficits and ADHD receive a lot more negative comments growing up than other students do. What is I n I know that you know the exact stats.
speaker-1: for that. Yeah, yeah. It's ⁓ Dr. Dr. Dotson, who's actually one of our close friends in in on this channel, ⁓ twenty thousand more negative comments than positive comments just in school by third grade is a wild, wild the amount of negative feedback that all these students with executive function challenges seem to get.
speaker-0: Yeah. And we've talked about how cognitive flexibility is so closely entwined with emotional regulation. And emotional regulation, there's really like two main ways that people respond to negative comments or negative interactions. And that's either going to be to suppress that negative emotion or to reflect on that negative emotion. And obviously the reflection is going to cause more growth and more development over time. But like you said, they're getting an exorbitant Amount of negative comments at a very young age. And most students are not going to be able to reflect on every single comment that they're getting throughout the day. So eventually they're going to reach a point where they need to be suppressing these negative emotions just as a coping mechanism to get to 3 p.m. when the bell rings. And if you're doing that habitually year after year, you're going to be learning to suppress and not reflect. And when you're getting to high school and you're getting to university, And you're needing to be more cognitively flexible, it's going to be habitually difficult for you because you're going to need to break this mold that was literally a survival skill for you to get through until this point to be able to develop more flexibility. And that's why people that have executive function deficits and ADHD should be giving themselves a good amount of grace about their growth that they need to achieve. because they had to take on these different coping mechanisms just to get to where they are now. So that's kind of one of the reasons that we might be seeing more of this inflexibility in older adults and ⁓ adolescents with executive function deficit.
speaker-1: Yeah, giving yourself grace seems like something we talk about every single time because I I I think back to when I helped when I taught middle school math. We would punish kids essentially for being cognitively flexible. Unless you did the algebra problem in a certain way with the equal signs lined up. If you thought about a new way to do it, that's wrong, right? You get half the points wrong if your work is wrong. We're actively punishing for being flexible. So if you're a college junior adult and you're just beating yourself up, there's probably a reason for that.
speaker-0: Yeah. And sometimes like we were talking about with routines, frameworks like learning algebra a certain way can be a tool to that you can then use later to be more flexible, but it can also pigeonhole.
speaker-1: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your expertise. And where can people learn more about you and your work?
speaker-0: So you can find things that I've made previously on here on YouTube under the Simple Neuroscience series. ⁓ it was a collection of videos that we did together with Untapped, examining how neuroscience plays a role in different executive function conditions and deficits and different symptoms that might come out from that. I also have worked with Untapped to publish a paper examining the process of untapped learning and students that were in the program. How they reflected on their growth during their time in the program. That was published in Frontiers in Psychology. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn.
speaker-1: Natalie, tell we do it again. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the Executive Function for All podcast. If today's episode brought you any value, please rate us five stars and share it with someone who may benefit. And remember, every small step you take builds towards your success. For resources and guidance, visit untappedlearning.com. Keep growing, keep learning, and we'll see you next time.
