executive functioning- can it be improved?

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a list with bullet points on it is my brains on paper. without it i'm like a boat on the water sans rudder and motor, at the mercy of the tides and winds.

Seems to be a core processing feature, ie. hard wired.. so I suspect whilst some minor gains might be made, this is more about coping strategies (/symptom management)..

I tend to make lists of things to do.. then another list to remind me to look at the other list (among other things).. my brain then forgets to look at these, and I'll forget to do a task that was on the list, so I make another list of IMPORTANT stuff and so on... ultimately I often simply forget to look, although the idea is to check the list(s) daily...

I'm pretty good at detail, and, sometimes, seeing the bigger "gestalt" picture, AND, even seeing a "system".. the struggle is turning these observations into a structured plan... and that, as I understand it, is executive functioning problems at work..

Embarrassing example, needed a belt.. walked around for two years pulling my trousers up.. it was a REAL hassle every time I went out. Why didn't I just buy a belt? It was on a list somewhere..

Same when I look around the room I'm sitting in.. it's CHAOS... not by design, not because I'm lazy, it's always been this way.. I mark up a drawer to put certain things in, the one below for other things.. then I'll find something and I can't decide which drawer it should go in, so rather than stand there forever thinking.. I'll plunge on using one or the other, or put it elsewhere.. Then those drawers then become mixed up, and next time it's like, well it doesn't seem to matter now.. and in time every drawer/shelf/surface area becomes a jumble of stuff and so it goes..

My life history is the same too..

My ASD clinic recommends using technology.. so I'm going to write a post about that. I find the diary the most helpful tool I have atm it gives me a little bit of structure.. I occasinally use mneumonics, but I really need an organiser.. something to 'project manage' daily tasks and provide some sort of structure to life

^^^ hiya MM welcome to our club

I guess I should be thankful I am a bit systematic in terms of categorization of things, so my drawers are generally pretty logical. a big thing about living in a tin can, however, is a lack of 1] space, and 2] storage. so every flat surface including the floor has stuff on it in search of a cubby. this is where my brain struggles. also keeping things tidy, I just can't seem to do that. it takes me forever to clean something and remove rubbish, I struggle to figure out whether to toss or donate or keep, always second-guessing meself and retrieving stuff from the trash, and keeping up the tidiness before it gets out of hand again.

Around grade three, I started carrying a folded sheet of paper in my back pocket with current notes. All my subsequent notebooks have been self-organized - I never seem to fit into standard planners. I have not always kept one, because life got very simple with major depression, but such things seem necessary to higher functioning. I recently started using a check list for trips to the city, and my anxiety has dropped dramatically.
Overall, I'm not a good time manager except when extremely busy, partly because I am always looking for things that need extra time to see. Recently I've started to buckle down more just because it looks like I have a finite time left.

in general, cities have too much complexity for me to comfortably manage for long. I live in a small town of less than 10k population, and even that is too intense at times, especially during rush hour. I useta live in Tacoma [WA] about a decade back, and when I was younger it was about the limit of what I could take, forget about Seattle which is a living nightmare of complexity and crowding. now even Tacoma has grown beyond what I can comfortably manage.

Have you tried just living in a neighborhood, and ignoring the rest of the city? I'm currently pondering a return to cities the way I used to enjoy them.

had to retreat to the woods, I live about 40 minutes outside the nearest city. cost of living forced me to move out here. Tacoma just got too expensive, too high taxed, too high-trafficked. between where I useta live and the city limits, there useta just be one traffic light, now there are 5, they call such "traffic calming" but AFAIC it is traffic-enraging.

Aha. Living in a neighborhood, you don't use a car. That's how to stay calm. I'd have to give up the workshop, but a quiet room with a hotplate and ethernet is all I really need. From here, it is an hour to the nearest traffic light, and on thee points of the compass, the next one is in Russia or Europe. A friend of mine says there's still a beach not far from Seattle that is only accessible by kayak or canoe where he squatted for many months.

if I lived in the nearest little sub 10k population town, I would not often need a car. as it is, I only go into town [only drive at all] once every Saturday afternoon for grocery-getting.

Do executive functioning difficulties and slow processing speed go together, as I have both?
I have taken the test at http://www.brainfitnesscentersofflorida ... tness.html with scores for EF ranging from 1-18 (equivalent of 65-86 IQ) with an average of 7(78 IQ).
Obviously I am not that unintelligent or I'd struggle to post here. I wonder how many of us with ASD or severe mental illness ,who are reasonably intelligent, have a difficulty with executive functioning and score much lower for that.

IQ tests tend to be exhausting, and ultimately depressing.

I dunno..... I'm thinking it's the consistency of our work-arounds that MIGHT improve----versus, our actual EF, improving----at least, that's the way it seems to be, in MY case; for instance, I'm a total pig (slob) as well, and my short-term memory is next to non-existent, and if I didn't have my "tricks", I would still have bad EF; my tricks just make it APPEAR that my EF has improved.

^^^^ am curious as to what your tricks are, if they could benefit the rest of us. and if you are a slob, how did you get by in the military so long?