executive function and dysfunction? Help please

Post Reply New Topic

HI, I have Aspergers and was diagnosed at 35. I am now 48. I struggle every day with motivation and am better when i have a set thing to do that involves other peeps like going out to my cleaning work or my teaching.

if I am alone in my house with a list i have written for the weekend I drift and go off in a dream and procrastinate. I would say my organization skills can be good but other times I waste so much time. Please could you tell me if this is an executive function problem or am i just lazy???

I struggled through school but got good grades later on and did a degree and masters and a teaching qualification all of these i excelled at but left on my own in this crazy big world without these structures I am lost.

Any ideas, thoughts advice would be very gratefully received as I am unclear how to approach my difficulties. I am an ambitous person and want to do well and earn well before it is too late for me.

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

No advice, but I can relate. Seems to be an Asperger's thing. I work better with a deadline set by someone else. They say to try and set deadlines for yourself, but I can never convince myself that those deadlines are real. So it doesn't do anything for my motivation.

That is exactly it. I dont fully understand what executive function and dysfunction is. I think it would help if i had atleast a better understanding of that. All of the stuff i have read on it is very dense official language and not that easy to translate into ordinary life. Thanks for commenting!

Deadlines and checklists can help, especially if you use computers and smartphones to reinforce them.

Chunking -- segmenting a large, seemingly intractable problem into smaller components -- is generally a good strategy. Break the big ugly thing you don't want to do until it is small enough that you can do it relatively easily and then do those small chunks one by one until the big ugly thing is done.

The disturbing thing about motivation is that it really does end up looking like laziness: you have no energy for things that are not interesting but huge reserves of energy for the things that energize and excite you. (if you have no energy for anything it's probably either depression or a serious metabolic or other medical condition.) But this is something you have to deal with.

I know I can't do a damn thing if I am not internally motivated, so I have to go through a process of convincing myself that I am choosing to do it an therefore do care. This often involves projections of negative consequences for not doing it and benefits of doing it. As soon as I feel that it is something I have really chosen, rather than something someone has foisted on me, I can start to do it--though I will probably need those reminders and chunking strategies!

Good luck! EF issues are a nightmare--at least they have been in my life.

Thanks Adamantium. What you say certainly rings true for me too. I just like to hear the experience of others and how they deal with it. Also what their understanding of executive function is and what its like when it goes wrong.

I end up simply pondering for days or weeks the small things in every detail and planning every necessary step over and over in my had rather than doing them. This actually makes it more difficult for me.



I have no energy for anything anymore. Apparently it's called an autistic middle-age burnout.



Can't do that. I know when I'm lying to myself.



Someone else foisting things on me removes the need for self-motivation.

I find also that if i am interested in the subject then i have boundless energy but that hasnt yet translated into working and making money that is what i need to have boundless energy for.......

I can pretty much always create a chain of reasoning that leads to an externally imposed need to act.

The ultimate cause may be entropy in action, or the potential loss of my marriage, or the mechanical failure of something I need (house, car, major appliance... etc.) but somewhere I can follow the causal chain from my not doing what needs to be done today, to some undesirable outcome in the future and that is my goad to action.

If it don't do that, I will not act unless it is in pursuit of an interest.

Adamantium I agree with you completely. This is what i am doing to myself I am thinking of all of the consequences of not doing the list of things that have far reaching repercussions into the future. I am trying to use that to galvanize me into action and make things different from the past. I really cant think of any other way if I want to be self motivating. Its good to hear that it works for someone else.

Condition yourself using rewards for doing what you set out to do. Just make sure the rewards are proportional to the task.

yes that is a possiblity it will take some discipline though as I tend to have the reward without doing the time. lol.

I chunk things, too, which helps me to accomplish my goals. Also, if I lump similar things I don't like together (like phone calls), then getting them done all at once is like swallowing one big pill.

There is a book called "Smart but Scattered." about executive dysfunction. I didn't find it particularly helpful myself because it was geared towards parents and children in helping the children develop their EF skills, and I am already an adult. The book wasn't going to help me get my own skills better.

But I bring it up because the book splits EF into different subcategories. We can be good at certain EF skills, but lousy at others. For example, I am good at planning out a project and getting it done, but I am horrible at organizing my space, lacking in emotional control, and not great at keeping track of time. (I have to set a timer to remember to take medicine and such.)

Perhaps if you can discover what specific aspect of EF you're having trouble with, that might help you break through the problems.

Just found this, gives good, easy-to-comprehend overview of executive function components:
Musings of an Aspie blog post link
Sound like the OP struggles with inertia & initiation, so those would be areas to explore further...

To help me get things done, to edge my way into battle with procrastination & distraction, I try to make whatever it is easier to do.
Point is to do some tiny increment of the task, a step at a time, and one might actually make some progress in that very slow but steady way.

Something I might do, for example, is dragging the shredder out of the closet, if I need to do some paper shredding-and I may leave it dragged out for a little while, before I get around to doing the shredding.
That way, I'm more likely to be reminded that there is a task to be done (by seeing the shredder, which is usually tucked away out of sight)-and the object is closer to me, so it feels like less of an effort to do the thing (as I've already taken it out of the closet).

I'll do the same for other chores, like taking down the trash-I put the bag by the door, so that I don't forget to take it outside.
Leave a sponge out along with some spray cleaner and maybe one will feel briefly inspired to wipe down even a single surface in kitchen.
It may be messy to leave items out like that, but if it helps one get over the hurdle of switching from doing one task to another, or making a dent in a long-standing chore, then it seems worthwhile.

I find that on weekends I am absolutely at my worst. I get nothing done, I feel totally frazzled and confused as to what I should exactly do with my time and then on Mondays I wake up feeling like I totally wasted the weekend and do it all over again. The rigid structure of the work week actually works better for me as I know what to do pretty much when. But, if I have to plan my time just in of itself I do an awful, awful job.

I work for myself. Some of my projects/deadline are set by others if I am doing some sort of contracted freelance work. Other projects are self-directed and I have to make my own deadlines. In these cases, it is helpful to have someone I can be accountable to. It is often my husband, but could also be a trusted friend (if you have one) who will give me some gentle harassment to help me keep on top of things. I often make promises to people to have something done, and I feel very bad if I don't keep those promises, so it helps keep me motivated.

I am thrown off when there are changes in my regular schedule, too, especially when I have been "go go go" and all of a sudden there is a lull. I find myself meandering around totally clueless on what I am supposed to be doing. It seems that I become overwhelmed at those moments by the sheer number of choices. I have some time to work on something - what is the best thing to be doing right now? uh, uh, uh...

I think being overwhelmed by too many choices is an Aspie thing (someone correct me if I'm wrong.) I have trouble with the executive functioning skill of prioritizing tasks. I have gotten better, but they all seem equally, extremely important some times, and that becomes overwhelming.

My money's on it being an executive function problem, not laziness. I'm regularly appalled at myself for not simply cracking on with my task list. I've read that Aspies frequently have trouble starting a task, and just as much trouble stopping. I certainly have both of those problems. To some extent I counter it by choosing one goal at a time. That way, once I've made a start, the momentum usually carries me through. I know that it's not simple laziness because once I've got my teeth into a job, I give it everything I've got, without even noticing the effort I'm making.

I've also noticed that if nobody else is involved in my work, I'll be less likely to take it seriously, so I guess that social pressure (actual or anticipated) is helpful. So it's often useful to tell other people what you intend to do - that way you'll increase your motivation because you won't want the embarrassment of them finding out that you didn't meet the challenge.

Often it's a matter of the relative importance of the task I've set myself. If I can live reasonably happily without doing the task, I'm not very likely to do it. If I'm afraid of the consequences of not doing it, I'll step up to the plate and crack on, albeit with a certain amount of anxiety.

It's sometimes worth looking at the nature of the tasks. I've often been guilty of setting myself impossible goals (e.g. memo to self: write lots of beautiful new songs) without even realising the de-motivating effect that might have on me. To set a task for myself, I'm going to do a lot better if I know the kind of things I do well and the kind of things I don't do so well. Not that I have trouble getting on with things I find difficult - just that if I've mistakenly assumed a task would be easy and then I find out that it isn't, I can quickly become daunted. Ditto for things I enjoy or don't enjoy doing, I'm often surprised at how I forget to think about that. I think I'd make a lousy boss, if I treated my workers like I treat myself, i.e. totally oblivious to the feelings of the person who has to do the work, as if the worker was just a machine.

It's worth looking around for emotional blocks to certain activities too. I love trailblazing, finding out how to do things I've never been able to do before, but once I've worked out how it's done, I often can't be bothered to do it any more, it's just not interesting enough to get me off my butt. I also think that I have some kind of emotional block about doing the tasks I set myself, almost as if I were acting out some kind of rebellion, though I don't fully understand that yet.

Another biggie for me is that, in common with many other Aspies, I get stuck in the detail of things and find it very hard to pull myself away from that and look at the big picture. So I tend to waste a lot of time because I find it so hard to abandon anything and switch to more productive activities, and I think that after all these years I tend to sense that whatever I intend to do is likely to be rather a waste of time. I have a morbid fear of overlooking something really important while I'm locked up in the fine detail of some trivial activity, and that inhibits me from committing properly to the task in hand. Presumably that fear has come from experience - I've too often been hyperfocussed on a pretty much randomly chosen task to the detriment of the rest of my life. Perhaps the solution is to have a session deliberately studying the big picture to make sure that the work being allocated really is a reasonable use of the time.

Perfectionism also comes into it. My results are never perfect but I have difficulty coming to terms with that. If I can't do a job perfectly, I don't want to do it at all. The only help I have for that is to try to keep telling myself, "this doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough." Even so, I still beat myself up for the tiniest flaws in my work, though I usually manage to forgive myself in time. I guess the take-home message is that there's a higher form of perfection than trying to get every detail exactly right - it's the perfection of optimising the use of my time to get the most out of it, although even there I have to be careful to avoid spending hours trying to tweak that optimum to the absolute maximum.

I hope these thoughts will be helpful. It's no mean feat to improve executive function. It's said to be hard-wired into Aspies. Perhaps that's why I've traditionally found these things difficult to think about coherently. When I was younger I could tell something was wrong, but every time I tried to think about it, I got absolutely nowhere. It's taken me decades to understand it as well as I do now, and I sense that there's much more that remains hidden to me.