What Are Executive Functions?

 Executive function involves the brain's ability to initiate, organize, integrate, and oversee various mental processes. It helps individuals anticipate both short and long-term consequences of their actions and create effective plans to achieve desired outcomes. Additionally, executive function enables ongoing assessment of these actions, allowing for timely adjustments when necessary to stay aligned with goals.

 According to Tom Brown, PhD, executive functions can be clustered into six groups:

1. Organizing, prioritizing and activating for tasks
2. Focusing, sustaining and shifting attention between tasks
3. Regulating alertness, sustaining effort, and processing new information
4. Managing frustration and modulating emotions
5. Utilizing working memory and recalling information
6. Monitoring and self-regulating our actions

For individuals without ADHD or other conditions that impact executive functioning, these six groups exist in harmony and help them navigate their way through daily living in a mostly successful fashion. However, individuals with ADHD often experience impairments in multiple areas, and as a result, these individuals continuously struggle to organize tasks, initiate activities, stay engaged, remain alert, regulate emotions, apply working memory, and monitor their actions. These impairments also make it significantly harder to initiate and complete tasks.