Executive functioning skills checklist for adults
Most executive functioning lists are written for kids in school. This one is for adults living adult lives, with rent and email and parents getting older and a calendar nobody helps you maintain. Twelve skills, what each looks like when it's working (and when it's not), and one quick win for each.
The 12 skills
1. Working memory
Working when: you can hold a phone number long enough to dial it, follow a 3-step recipe without re-reading, remember why you walked into the kitchen.
Failing when: "I just had a thought, what was it?" "Wait, what did you ask me?"
Quick win: Externalize. The moment a thought lands, put it somewhere. A note app, a text to yourself, a sticky. Stop trying to hold it.
2. Task initiation
Working when: you start the dishes within 5 minutes of deciding to do them.
Failing when: you've decided to do the dishes 6 times this morning. They're still there.
Quick win: Make the first physical motion absurdly small. Stand up. Walk to the kitchen. That's it. The rest follows from physical proximity, not willpower.
3. Sustained attention
Working when: you can stay in a single task for 20-40 minutes without phone-checking.
Failing when: 90 seconds in, you're checking email, then Twitter, then back to the task, then your phone again.
Quick win: Put your phone in another room when you start. Not face-down on the desk. Different room.
4. Task switching / cognitive flexibility
Working when: you can leave one task and re-enter it 30 minutes later without rebuilding context from scratch.
Failing when: being interrupted feels like the world ending. Every context switch costs 20 minutes of recovery.
Quick win: Before stopping a task, write the next 3 actions on a sticky. When you come back, you skip the "what was I doing?" tax.
5. Planning and prioritization
Working when: on Sunday night, you have a sense of what matters this week.
Failing when: Wednesday at 2pm, you realize the most important thing was due Tuesday.
Quick win: Pick three things on Monday morning, write them on paper, and don't look at email until two of them are done.
6. Organization (physical and digital)
Working when: you can find the document, the receipt, the email when you need them.
Failing when: the search box is your filing system, and even that fails when you can't remember the keyword.
Quick win: One place per category. All work papers in one folder. All medical in another. Don't optimize the system, just commit to any system.
7. Time management
Working when: you can estimate "this'll take 30 minutes" and be roughly right.
Failing when: "this'll take 30 minutes" turns into 4 hours. Every time. Never learning.
Quick win: Track honest time on three tasks this week. Don't change anything yet. Just observe what reality looks like vs your estimate.
8. Self-monitoring
Working when: mid-task, you can step back and assess "is this still the most important thing?"
Failing when: you spent 4 hours on a task that didn't matter, didn't notice, and feel both wired and empty afterward.
Quick win: Hourly check-in. Phone alarm at the top of the hour. The single question: "is this still the right thing?"
9. Emotional regulation
Working when: a small frustration stays small.
Failing when: a small frustration eats the next two hours of your day.
Quick win: Name the feeling out loud. "I'm frustrated about X." Naming reduces amygdala activation. There's actual fMRI research behind this; it's not woo.
10. Goal-directed persistence
Working when: you can stay on a project for weeks without losing the thread, even when it's boring.
Failing when: every project gets 80% done and abandoned for the next shiny thing.
Quick win: Define "done" upfront, in writing. Most abandoned projects have no definition of done, so the goalposts keep moving and you never feel finished.
11. Response inhibition
Working when: you can wait 60 seconds before responding to an email that made you angry.
Failing when: you've sent the email. You regret it. You can't un-send it.
Quick win: Draft → save → walk away → come back. Make "send" a separate decision from "write."
12. Metacognition (thinking about thinking)
Working when: you can notice your own patterns: "I always procrastinate on Thursdays after the standup."
Failing when: the same problem keeps happening, and every time it feels random.
Quick win: Friday journal. 5 minutes. "What worked this week? What didn't? What pattern do I notice?" That's it.
If you read this and thought "yeah, that's me"
The skills above aren't fixed traits. They're trainable. But the irony of executive functioning is that the skill needed to build the skill is the skill that's broken: you'd need working memory and task initiation and self-monitoring to systematically improve those very things.
The workaround most people land on isn't "try harder." It's "outsource the load." Externalize working memory into a tool. Get reminders so task initiation isn't your problem. Have something else hold the list of priorities so prioritization isn't running entirely on your own bandwidth.
That's what Ezra is. An external memory and reminder system you can text. The same iMessage thread you already check 80 times a day. More on Ezra for adults with ADHD →
Or just text Ezra and let him hold what your brain can't.
Free, lives in your iMessage, no app to install.