5 Tips to Build Better Focus with Executive Function Skills
Ever feel like it’s difficult to keep up with daily responsibilities and tasks, or just hard to plan and coordinate your day? If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or like you can never quite stay on top of your to-do list, you might be struggling with your executive function skills.
Executive function skills are the cognitive skills we use to plan, organize, prioritize, and daily complete tasks. These skills are essential for your success across your personal and professional life–they’re particularly important for achieving long-term goals, and part of the foundation of mental wellness.
The good news is that executive function can be improved with a combination of awareness, strategy, and practice. In this blog post, we’ll explore what executive function is, why it’s important, and provide tips and techniques to improve it.
What are executive function skills?
Executive function skills help us to regulate our behavior, control impulses, and manage our time and resources. They are critical for decision-making, problem-solving, and making progress toward our long-term goals.
Here are the main executive function skills:
- Time management
- Flexibility
- Planning
- Organization
- Task initiation
- Goal-directed persistence
Whether we recognize them or not, these skills play a role in our lives every day. Individuals with strong executive function skills are able to focus their attention, organize their thoughts, and plan their actions in healthy and beneficial ways.
And when these skills aren’t working well, it may prompt or worsen anxiety, overwhelm, stress, depression, and other mental wellness challenges. If you’re struggling with executive function, there are practical steps you can take to build up your capabilities. Let’s dive in.
5 practical tips to boost your executive function skills
Executive function skills might sound dry and abstract, but they don’t have to be. In this post we’ll be focusing on how to.make these skills–from time management to planning and organization–a part of your everyday life, and most importantly, how to do it in ways that fit for you.
Here are some tips to help improve your executive function skills.
- Externalize your to-do list: Keeping tasks in mind can quickly get overwhelming. Write down all your appointments, deadlines, and tasks in a planner or calendar. This will help remember what’s important as you track your progress.
- Break tasks into smaller steps: Large tasks can easily become overwhelming, so breaking them down into smaller steps helps to make them more manageable. If you notice any hint of anxiety or fear around a task, breaking it down into tiny, manageable chunks can help you feel less stressed and more in control.
- Create routines: Establishing a routine is a powerful way to help you manage your time and be more productive. You might try waking up and going to bed at the same time every day, or scheduling specific activities at the same time each day. There are lots of different possible routines, experiment with what works best for you.
- Go low tech: Our lives have become increasingly digital, but fully-digital processes might not be the most productive for your cognitive style. Some people find that physical tasks improve their focus and organization, by making them easier to visualize. You might try sticky notes, using highlighters, reading from paper, or
- Create healthy digital boundaries: Digital tools can absorb a lot of our time, so it’s important to set up healthy boundaries around how we use them. It can be helpful to break up tasks over more than one computer. For example, you could set up one laptop for work only, and one laptop for personal and entertainment uses. App limiting and blocking tools can help you set boundaries around your best use of time.
Mix and match these tips as you experiment to find the ones that fit your individual needs. Executive function skills grow over time, and as you begin to make healthy changes, your progress will add up.
How Frankly can help
Executive function skills are crucial for planning, organizing, prioritizing, and completing tasks. With the right strategies and lifestyle changes, you can improve these core skills. Frankly’s Care Guides can work with you to hone in on the techniques and strategies to develop strong executive function skills that work best for you, and set you up for success.