Amelia:
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What if executive functioning and executive dysfunction isn't actually real? As someone who works in the neurodiverse, ADHD, audio HD, and autistic spaces, I hear a lot of talk around executive functioning and dysfunctioning. The idea that there is this disobedient controller that stops people from doing the things that they want to do. Although the issues and the problems and the struggles are real, is the controller real? I'm not entirely sure it is. Today, I'm going to talk about why and how actually this idea seems to be doing more harm than good, and what we can do about the struggles that really do exist instead. Now, executive dysfunction stems from a model of the brain that assumes we have a mental CEO, a central executive system, calling the shots accept, even as early as 1996, cognitive scientists called it a conceptual ragbag. A placeholder term for something we didn't, and even now, still don't fully understand; especially As the ideas that we're talking about so much now are all still based on one idea of how things work. So, this raises a big question if executive dysfunction is based on a placeholder, is there a better way to understand what the heck is actually going on for us? The simple answer, yes, it is called Ecological Psychology. You'll find a link in the description, which takes you to a page where I talk a little bit more and dive in. It's not about an internal controller telling you how to act it's a signal, that disconnect between the information that you're perceiving and the action that you're trying to take. Now, let's take a look at some common problems that are normally attributed to executive dysfunction and see how we can Maybe reframe or shift or move it away from a naughty mental CEO to something that we can do something about with as few mental gymnastics as possible because goodness me, there are so many mental gymnastics that we have to do as it is. Doing the laundry You're staring at a pile of laundry knowing it needs to be done, but it feels absolutely impossible You don't know where to begin, it's just piling up, it's overwhelming, so it just sits there. Eventually, after a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, you get around to it. How? This is such a common issue and thing that I experience. Did the conceptual ragbag suddenly decide to give you a moment of respite? Why then? And not when you wanted to do it or felt you needed to do it? Was it sheer willpower? But if it is sheer willpower. Why does it work sometimes and not others? Let's rewind. As you look at that massive pile of laundry: do you even know where to begin? No. But when you managed to do it, did you find a way to start? Yes. So what's changed? For me, it is usually groaning and saying I don't care how I get this done, I just need to get this basket of washing out of my way so I can do something else something I actually care about. If I take the dry laundry upstairs, I'll be able to walk through my kitchen without tripping. Also, I won't have to come downstairs in the freezing cold in the morning to find clothes to put on. I see possibilities for action, things I actually cared about doing, and I did it. Let's look at another example. Too many hobbies that you don't do anymore. When I work with clients, they often mention their hobby bin, a collection of hobbies or variations or different bits and pieces they were once excited about but quickly abandoned for something new. If you're a business owner, that might also extend to tech tools. AppSumo is the hobby bin of tech tools. The ones you might eagerly adopt, then drop. It's quite easy to blame the conceptual ragbag for stopping you, forgetting about it, or even just killing your joy. However, my first question, when this topic comes up is: Do you actually want to do this hobby The responses usually fall into two camps. Either: Yes, but I completely forget about it and then I feel guilty, etc, etc. Or: No, but I spent so much money on it, time on it, X on it, Y on it, that I feel like I have to keep doing it. So let's start with Camp 2. If you don't want to do it anymore, don't. Unlike laundry, a hobby is something you do that you enjoy. It doesn't have to be something that you don't really want to do. Okay, I hear you say, but what about sunk cost? That one is something that happens and I can experience it too. Here's a question to help: What opportunities did you gain from this experience? At the very least, if nothing else, you've learned something you don't enjoy. That insight matters. It deepens your understanding of how you actually work, what energizes you, and what doesn't. This knowledge can ripple into other areas of your life or business, and can even be used to help you do other things. So, what about camp one? If you started a hobby and you love the hobby, but you forget it exists, It's a visibility problem. Perception and action are coupled. You see, hear, experience something, you re act. As you do something, you perceive something new. You see, for example, a crochet hook tied to a ball of yarn and you see an opportunity to crochet. Now you can choose to do that or you can choose to not. If you see a crochet hook and you don't see yarn, the opportunity for action isn't crochet. It's find this ball of yarn. That means you end up jumping between tasks or things that you're doing because you keep seeing different affordances or opportunities for action. Visibility works both ways. You can constrain visibility so you see less options or you can change the environment around you to give more visibility so you perceive more opportunities. For example, if you want to do more crochet, put the hook and the yarn together and put it somewhere you can always see it. So when you're walking past, you see it and go I want to do that. For me right now, I have my crochet hook and my yarn all ready, ready to go, literally outside of my door. So as I walk back into my house, I can see it and go: I kind of want to do that right now. Or yeah, I'm too tired now. Sometimes it's strong enough that you'll go straight to it. Other times it won't. If something keeps drawing your attention too much, maybe move it to a less visible place. If you want to do multiple hobbies, then put them in two separate but equally visible places. These strategies, like placing hobbies where you'll want to see them, work because they turn the problem into a solvable puzzle, not a broken system you have to force yourself to fix and that right there is the issue with the term executive dysfunction. Now, let me be very clear. These things that you're struggling with are real. These are real struggles that we experience every single day. The problem I have with using executive dysfunction as the reason is we risk accepting a narrative about ourselves. That there is something wrong with how we work within the world. And honestly, that just sucks. There is no solution here. There is no way that we can move forward if it's just a mental CEO in our brain that we have to juggle over, find a way around. We spend an awful lot of time having to find our way around life as it is. Why do we do it with ourselves? Well, what if we didn't have to!? What if the information we need to act and do the thing we want to do is already around waiting for us to notice or perceive it? What if those struggles are signals? Instead, as failures of a central executive, a thing that we can't even control. It doesn't dismiss the real issues. It doesn't say, you just can't be bothered, you are just lazy. I have never met one lazy Quote unquote, neurodiverse person in my life. It allows us to get curious about the way we actually work. Instead of assuming that we work wrong and trying to fix how we exist in the world that doesn't make much sense. It allows us to take back that control over how we operate in the world. It allows us to find reasons to do the damn thing that we want to actually do; to create our own solutions so we can do, or not do, as many activities or hobbies and things as we like and we can feel incredibly confident that what we're actually doing isn't the result of some faulty programming, but just part of who we are. And frankly, as someone who's blind in one eye, hard of hearing in the other, autistic, a little bit ADHD and navigating life as a trans person in possibly the most challenging time I could, I've learned one thing. There's always a solution. I've not met a neurodiverse person who isn't good at solving problems. But often, The solution being given to us is we aren't able to do it. Instead of waiting for a conceptual ragbag to magically allow us to do things, it's about seeing what's possible and making it easier for ourselves, something we often neglect.
00:00:00
What if executive functioning and executive dysfunction isn't actually real? As someone who works in the neurodiverse, ADHD, audio HD, and autistic spaces, I hear a lot of talk around executive functioning and dysfunctioning. The idea that there is this disobedient controller that stops people from doing the things that they want to do. Although the issues and the problems and the struggles are real, is the controller real? I'm not entirely sure it is. Today, I'm going to talk about why and how actually this idea seems to be doing more harm than good, and what we can do about the struggles that really do exist instead. Now, executive dysfunction stems from a model of the brain that assumes we have a mental CEO, a central executive system, calling the shots accept, even as early as 1996, cognitive scientists called it a conceptual ragbag. A placeholder term for something we didn't, and even now, still don't fully understand; especially As the ideas that we're talking about so much now are all still based on one idea of how things work. So, this raises a big question if executive dysfunction is based on a placeholder, is there a better way to understand what the heck is actually going on for us? The simple answer, yes, it is called Ecological Psychology. You'll find a link in the description, which takes you to a page where I talk a little bit more and dive in. It's not about an internal controller telling you how to act it's a signal, that disconnect between the information that you're perceiving and the action that you're trying to take. Now, let's take a look at some common problems that are normally attributed to executive dysfunction and see how we can Maybe reframe or shift or move it away from a naughty mental CEO to something that we can do something about with as few mental gymnastics as possible because goodness me, there are so many mental gymnastics that we have to do as it is. Doing the laundry You're staring at a pile of laundry knowing it needs to be done, but it feels absolutely impossible You don't know where to begin, it's just piling up, it's overwhelming, so it just sits there. Eventually, after a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, you get around to it. How? This is such a common issue and thing that I experience. Did the conceptual ragbag suddenly decide to give you a moment of respite? Why then? And not when you wanted to do it or felt you needed to do it? Was it sheer willpower? But if it is sheer willpower. Why does it work sometimes and not others? Let's rewind. As you look at that massive pile of laundry: do you even know where to begin? No. But when you managed to do it, did you find a way to start? Yes. So what's changed? For me, it is usually groaning and saying I don't care how I get this done, I just need to get this basket of washing out of my way so I can do something else something I actually care about. If I take the dry laundry upstairs, I'll be able to walk through my kitchen without tripping. Also, I won't have to come downstairs in the freezing cold in the morning to find clothes to put on. I see possibilities for action, things I actually cared about doing, and I did it. Let's look at another example. Too many hobbies that you don't do anymore. When I work with clients, they often mention their hobby bin, a collection of hobbies or variations or different bits and pieces they were once excited about but quickly abandoned for something new. If you're a business owner, that might also extend to tech tools. AppSumo is the hobby bin of tech tools. The ones you might eagerly adopt, then drop. It's quite easy to blame the conceptual ragbag for stopping you, forgetting about it, or even just killing your joy. However, my first question, when this topic comes up is: Do you actually want to do this hobby The responses usually fall into two camps. Either: Yes, but I completely forget about it and then I feel guilty, etc, etc. Or: No, but I spent so much money on it, time on it, X on it, Y on it, that I feel like I have to keep doing it. So let's start with Camp 2. If you don't want to do it anymore, don't. Unlike laundry, a hobby is something you do that you enjoy. It doesn't have to be something that you don't really want to do. Okay, I hear you say, but what about sunk cost? That one is something that happens and I can experience it too. Here's a question to help: What opportunities did you gain from this experience? At the very least, if nothing else, you've learned something you don't enjoy. That insight matters. It deepens your understanding of how you actually work, what energizes you, and what doesn't. This knowledge can ripple into other areas of your life or business, and can even be used to help you do other things. So, what about camp one? If you started a hobby and you love the hobby, but you forget it exists, It's a visibility problem. Perception and action are coupled. You see, hear, experience something, you re act. As you do something, you perceive something new. You see, for example, a crochet hook tied to a ball of yarn and you see an opportunity to crochet. Now you can choose to do that or you can choose to not. If you see a crochet hook and you don't see yarn, the opportunity for action isn't crochet. It's find this ball of yarn. That means you end up jumping between tasks or things that you're doing because you keep seeing different affordances or opportunities for action. Visibility works both ways. You can constrain visibility so you see less options or you can change the environment around you to give more visibility so you perceive more opportunities. For example, if you want to do more crochet, put the hook and the yarn together and put it somewhere you can always see it. So when you're walking past, you see it and go I want to do that. For me right now, I have my crochet hook and my yarn all ready, ready to go, literally outside of my door. So as I walk back into my house, I can see it and go: I kind of want to do that right now. Or yeah, I'm too tired now. Sometimes it's strong enough that you'll go straight to it. Other times it won't. If something keeps drawing your attention too much, maybe move it to a less visible place. If you want to do multiple hobbies, then put them in two separate but equally visible places. These strategies, like placing hobbies where you'll want to see them, work because they turn the problem into a solvable puzzle, not a broken system you have to force yourself to fix and that right there is the issue with the term executive dysfunction. Now, let me be very clear. These things that you're struggling with are real. These are real struggles that we experience every single day. The problem I have with using executive dysfunction as the reason is we risk accepting a narrative about ourselves. That there is something wrong with how we work within the world. And honestly, that just sucks. There is no solution here. There is no way that we can move forward if it's just a mental CEO in our brain that we have to juggle over, find a way around. We spend an awful lot of time having to find our way around life as it is. Why do we do it with ourselves? Well, what if we didn't have to!? What if the information we need to act and do the thing we want to do is already around waiting for us to notice or perceive it? What if those struggles are signals? Instead, as failures of a central executive, a thing that we can't even control. It doesn't dismiss the real issues. It doesn't say, you just can't be bothered, you are just lazy. I have never met one lazy Quote unquote, neurodiverse person in my life. It allows us to get curious about the way we actually work. Instead of assuming that we work wrong and trying to fix how we exist in the world that doesn't make much sense. It allows us to take back that control over how we operate in the world. It allows us to find reasons to do the damn thing that we want to actually do; to create our own solutions so we can do, or not do, as many activities or hobbies and things as we like and we can feel incredibly confident that what we're actually doing isn't the result of some faulty programming, but just part of who we are. And frankly, as someone who's blind in one eye, hard of hearing in the other, autistic, a little bit ADHD and navigating life as a trans person in possibly the most challenging time I could, I've learned one thing. There's always a solution. I've not met a neurodiverse person who isn't good at solving problems. But often, The solution being given to us is we aren't able to do it. Instead of waiting for a conceptual ragbag to magically allow us to do things, it's about seeing what's possible and making it easier for ourselves, something we often neglect.
