Monday, October 14th, 2019
welcome to the leADDership brief
A weekly newsletter for creative and innovative people, like you, with ADHD who want timely, helpful, and interesting resources
for leading and living well with ADHD.
In previous editions of the leADDership brief I’ve mentioned executive function and linked you to articles and resources about it but I’ve never gone into any depth about it in the newsletter. Before I dig into the symptoms and realities for those of us with ADHD, coming in future editions, I thought it would be helpful to go into some more detail about executive function since it’s the reason why we are here.
Whether you’re an adult with ADHD, the spouse or parent of someone with ADHD, a colleague of someone with ADHD, the roommate of someone with ADHD, the boss of someone with ADHD, a friend of someone with ADHD, or maybe you’re just curious, I thought it might be helpful and insightful information to share more about executive function since it plays such a vital role in our every day existence as humans.
I’ve broken it down into four easy sections:
What is executive function?
Where is your executive function located in the brain?
What does executive function do for you?
What does this mean for an adult with ADHD?
Nerd alert and fair warning dear readers!
I love this kind of stuff. Researching and learning about the brain, how it works, what it means, how to improve it, etc., is my jam. I am fascinated by the human brain. We know so little and use so little of our actual brain capacity and there is so much yet to discover. It’s the final frontier!
I have gone down many an internet rabbit hole reading about the brain, watching videos, and listening to podcasts, TED talks, and lectures about the human brain. This is my great distraction. I can lose hours on this topic.
I’ve done my best to edit and wrangle this down to a hearty lunch rather than a seven course meal complete with wine pairings. I hope you find it helpful.
Here we go…
Who’s The Boss?
You might think of Executive function is the” boss” of the brain, it directs functions that activate, organize, integrate and manage other functions like self-regulation, organization, and impulsivity. It enables us to account for the short-term and long-term consequences of our actions and to plan for those results. It also enables us to make real-time evaluations of our actions and make the necessary adjustments if those actions are not achieving our desired result.
I like this metaphor from Harvard University:
Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.
Executive function and self-regulation skills depend on three types of brain function: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. These functions are interrelated, and the successful application of executive function skills requires them to operate in coordination with each other.
Each type of executive function skill draws on elements of the others.
WORKING MEMORY governs our ability to retain and manipulate distinct pieces of information over short periods of time. Think of it as our brain’s “temporary storage system or bucket” that holds four or five elements of new information at a time. It helps us to hold information long enough to use it in the short term, focus on a task, and remember what to do next. Unless it is actively attended to or rehearsed, information in our working memory has a short duration of around 10-15 seconds.
In short:
Working memory helps us hold on to information long enough to use it.
Working memory plays an important role in concentration and in following instructions
COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY helps us to sustain or shift attention in response to different demands or to apply different rules in different settings. It is the ability to switch one’s thinking or train of thought as an adaptation to the demands of stimuli. In neuroscience, the term is sometimes referred to as “attention switching,” “cognitive shifting,” “mental flexibility,” “set shifting,” and “task switching.” Cognitive Flexibility helps us to tolerate changes that may occur when problem solving or carrying out a task and it allows us to create alternative solutions.
SELF-CONTROL enables us to set priorities and resist impulsive actions or responses. Self-control may seem simple, but it’s really a complex skill that enables us to manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions so we can get things done.
There are three types of self-control:
Impulse control
Emotional control
Movement control
Executive functioning skills are controlled by an area of the brain called the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe of the brain is vital to our consciousness, as well as functions that are uniquely human like speech and empathy. It’s one of four paired lobes in the brain's cerebral cortex, and it plays a vital role in memory, attention, and motivation.
The amygdala is also vital to executive function. The amygdala is an almond-shaped section of nervous tissue located in the temporal lobe of the brain as is a part of the limbic system within the brain, which is responsible for emotions, survival instincts, and memory. The amygdala and frontal lobe work together and influence planning, sequencing, and strategic behaviors.
Executive function is typically divided into two functional categories:
Organization: the gathering of information and structuring it for evaluation and use
Regulation: noticing your surroundings and taking stock of it in order to adjust and flex your behavior
Executive function helps us to:
Manage time
Pay attention
Switch focus
Plan and organize
Remember details
Manage impulsivity by helping us to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing
Do things based on your experience because it is stored in our long term memory
Juggle tasks
Let’s review:
Executive function is the cognitive process that
Organizes thoughts and activities
Prioritizes tasks
Manages time efficiently
Makes decisions.
Helps us establish structures and strategies for managing projects and determine the actions required to move each project forward.
By now you are making the connection between executive function and how ADHD effects the primary role it has in our every day professional and personal lives. Because we have neuro-a-typical executive function we will struggle to analyze, plan, organize, schedule, and complete tasks on time or maybe at all.
Working Memory and ADHD: Researchers have found there are poor neural connections between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex (where our executive function lives) in people with ADHD and scientists speculate that this might account for problems with impulsivity, time management, distractability, and anxiety; primary ADHD symptoms and executive function skills.
It’s like our “short term storage bucket” has holes in it so that data leaks out before we even recognize it’s in the bucket.
Dr. Torkel Klingberg, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and a leading researcher on working memory, notes that working memory deficits in individuals with ADHD “can explain why they forget the ‘internal plan’ of what they are supposed to do next, or forget what they should focus their attention on.”
The great news is that Dr. Klingberg’s research paper, Computerized Training of Working Memory in Children with ADHD, indicates that working memory can be strengthened. Working memory is like plastic—flexible, moveable, and trainable, similar to our muscles. It can be improved with “exercise” and training.
Here just a few of the ways our neuro-a-typical executive functioning brain’s working memory affects our daily lives:
You want to join in a conversation, but, by the time the other person stops talking, you forget what you wanted to say.
You lose things easily and regularly: keys, cell phones, and wallets disappear mysteriously. (I secretly believe there’s a storage unit somewhere holding all the millions of lost keys and phones). I’ve driven my very organized and deliberative husband a tiny bit nuts with this through the years. I’ve solved it “mostly” by creating landing pads and strict organization in areas of our home.
You get lost easily, even when you were just given directions. We’ve lived in 9 different cities and I got lost in every one multiple times. Thank God for google maps! Cedar Rapids, where we currently live, is on a river and one of the most confusing cities I’ve ever lived in. I might never have found my way home without google.
You have trouble following a conversation because you forget what the other person has just said. Or the file of information you want to share is there in your brain but it is spinning, spinning, spinning and won’t open up. Until it suddenly does and you’re impulsively interrupting the conversation with all the information now downloading into your brain.
You have many unfinished projects because you become distracted and forget about the first project. Look out world if we ever get our act together and finish all of the innovative, creative, and world changing ideas we have never acted on or completed!
You plan to do some work at home, but you forget to bring needed items with you. Or you plan to work offsite and do the same. How many times have I gotten to the coffee shop only to discover I’d forgotten something.
You have to re-read a paragraph, re-listen to some part of the talk, or re-watch the video several times to retain the information.
You miss deadlines at work because of your disorganization and inability to follow through on projects.
We prioritize the wrong things or experience great anxiety around determining what’s important.
We get overwhelmed by the onslaught of stimuli demanding our attention and don’t know where to place our attention.
Cognitive Flexibility and ADHD: as a reminder, this is where attention switching happens and our brains with ADHD have a very difficult time switching our attention or knowing what to pay attention to. We tend towards cognitive inflexibility. Because of this we can present as rigid, argumentative, flighty, or spacey. The differently wired connection between our amygdala and frontal lobe means we aren’t always aware that we should switch our attention or focus.
The amygdala works like gears in our brains, shifting us from first to second gear. In our neuro-a-typical brains these gears seize up, grind to a halt, and get stuck in whatever gear (emotion, thought, opinion, or focus) we found ourselves in. Our engine may be revving but we are paralyzed to move.
We may seem fearful of change or easily frustrated by challenges that come our way because we tend to get “stuck” in one activity, feeling, thought, focus, or in one way of perceiving things. We may also have a hard time coming up with alternative solutions or we have a million alternatives and ideas and don’t know how to choose the best one.
Here just a few of the ways our neuro-a-typical executive functioning brain’s cognitive inflexibility affects our daily lives:
It’s time to get ready for work and we are resistant to it. Cognitive inflexibility may mean we find it intolerable to switch from drinking coffee and enjoying the morning mode to work mode. We may even feel internal anxiety and frustration and resent work finding it difficult to consider other options such as creating a morning routine we stick to or using a Time Timer to signal it’s time to switch gears or that we actually like the work we do.
Our workplace has announced they are implementing a new protocol or software program. ADHD makes it harder to shift from the old to the new, see the benefits of the new, and resists the changes. Feeling overwhelmed by all that we will have to learn and the changes we will have to make. Unable, in the moment, to break it down into bite sized and doable step, we already feel behind the eight-ball and are seeking to avoid the failure. It’s as if the existing software program is the gear we are now stuck in and we believe we have no way of shifting out of that gear into the next gear.
We have multiple projects we’re responsible for at work. Switching from project focus to project focus is frustrating and paralyzing. We may find it difficult to shift gears and consider the skills and resources needed as we switch between projects. Maybe our gears shift into the wrong gear and we speed into a project missing important details and have to redo or start over.
Friends are talking about the latest Netflix or Hulu binge at lunch one day and we have an opinion about the latest plot twist, which we share. When a colleague has a different view of what happens, we keep restating our point, annoying our friends and colleagues. Inflexible thinking can make it difficult to consider the perspective of others.
Self Control and ADHD: this is a complex skill that enables us to manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions so we can get things done. People with ADHD often act before we think, often unable to control our initial response to a situation. Our ability to “self-regulate” is compromised; we find it difficult to modify our behavior with future consequences in mind.
This is again an issue that has it’s origins in the frontal lobe-amygdala connection. This is where our emotions and impulse controls are located and it functions differently in our brains with ADHD than in brains without ADHD. Research shows that people with ADHD may lack the brain chemicals necessary to shift out of gear and to manage impulse control, meaning this is quite literally, out of our control at times.
The way our brains experience self-control has a direct effect on our working memory and especially our cognitive flexibility.
Some of the ways we may experience ADHD self-control are:
We may find we interrupt conversations
Blurt out answers in meetings
Regularly run late
Find ourselves repeating the same behaviors over and over again
Impulse purchases
Extreme sensitivity
Easily startled
Clutter gets the best of us
This may all sound like not great news if you are an adult with ADHD or in close relationship to someone with ADHD.
I cannot say it firmly enough, all is not lost and it’s not all bad news.
Our brains aren’t defective or lacking. We are just, quite literally, wired differently, and we are attempting to live in a world built by and designed for people with “normal” executive function.
It takes extraordinary creativity and innovation to adapt to and thrive in this world, and that is the beauty and super-power of ADHD. We are some of the best creative and innovative problem solvers of the world!
In following editions we take a closer look at how to thrive in a world not designed for us.
Scroll down for some interesting videos on the brain and executive function.
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What Else Do You Need To Know?
Coach Pam