Simple Executive Function Tools To Manage Life Effectively
Stop trying so hard!
If you have ADHD or struggle with Executive Dysfunction, you already know the ugly truth: every complex planner, every shiny productivity app, and every intricate system eventually fails. You’re left feeling frustrated, like you’re constantly starting over and beating your head against a wall.
But here is the most important thing you need to hear today: It’s not your fault.
The vast majority of conventional productivity systems are broken because they are too tedious, too confusing, and they all demand the one thing you don't have available consistently: willpower and motivation.
Hi, I’m Scott Treas, a Clinical Therapist and ADHD Coach with LifeSketch Counseling and Coaching. We’re dedicated to helping neurodivergent folks—the thinkers, the dreamers, and the intensely creative—build happy, healthy, wealthy lives by understanding how their unique brains work.
I’m here to tell you that the solution isn’t another expensive course or complex software. It’s a return to fundamentals.
Today, I’m giving you the three foundational Executive Function tools I use myself and teach all my clients—tools that work without relying on constant motivation. They are simple, virtually free, and they are the immediate antidote to the chronic start-stop cycle that plagues so many of us.
Let’s dive into why your current approach is failing and how we can start building reliable, sustainable habits today.
Part 1: The Broken Promise of Willpower
Before we get to the solutions, we have to understand the core problem. The mainstream world sells us a "bill of goods" based on two damaging concepts: discipline and grit.
If you struggle with follow-through, you are often told you need more discipline. That you just need to want it more. But for the neurodivergent brain, this is a toxic message. The struggle isn't a lack of desire; it’s a difference in brain function.
What is Executive Function (EF)?
Think of Executive Functioning as the brain's air traffic controller or orchestra conductor. It's a set of mental skills that reside primarily in the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)—that area right behind your forehead.
The PFC is responsible for goal-directed behavior. It’s the manager that helps you:
Plan and Organize: Setting steps to reach a goal.
Prioritize: Deciding what’s important right now.
Time Management: Perceiving and budgeting time (a huge one for ADHD).
Inhibition: Controlling impulses, not interrupting, and resisting distractions.
Initiation: The ability to start a task.
The Executive Function system is what allows you to override an impulse ("I know you want that cookie, but don't eat it") or to maintain focus on a multi-step task ("I need to finish this report before I watch that show").
What is Executive Dysfunction (ED)?
When people refer to Executive Dysfunction, they are describing a challenge in the structure and function of the PFC. This isn't laziness; it’s a difference in wiring.
Signs and Symptoms of Executive Dysfunction
Chronic Procrastination: Not just delaying, but the inability to initiate even desired tasks.
Time Blindness: Difficulty accurately estimating how long a task will take or how much time has passed.
Difficulty Prioritizing: Everything feels equally urgent or equally unimportant.
Impulse Control Issues: Interrupting, emotional dysregulation, or acting without thinking.
Inconsistent Follow-Through: Starting a project strong and then losing all momentum.
For the ADHD brain, this is a neurodevelopmental difference. We have some influence through neuroplasticity—we can learn and adapt—but our fundamental brain structure is different. If we try to rely on motivation alone to compensate for a structural difference, we are guaranteed to fail.
The good news? If you can't rely on an internal source (willpower), you must build reliable external tools to support, compensate, or complement the skills you lack.
Part 2: The Three Foundational Tools
My approach to building productivity systems for ADHD is simple: use external aids to hold the information, manage the capacity, and trigger the action. You already have these three tools in your pocket, on your desk, or on your screen.
Tool 1: The Notebook (Your Externalized Brain)
The function of the Notebook is to Capture.
The Notebook is the single easiest and most essential tool. It can be physical—like my preferred dot-grid journal—or digital, such as your phone’s notes app or Google Keep. The physical act of writing, however, often provides better retention and a more immediate grounding effect for many ADHD individuals.
The Goal: The purpose of the notebook is to create and maintain an externalized brain.
David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, famously said: “The brain is a fantastic place to come up with ideas, but a terrible place to store them.”
If your brain is constantly cluttered with open loops—a deadline, a great idea for a side hustle, a worry about your friend, a reminder to buy milk—that clutter paralyzes your ability to focus on the task at hand. This is known as working memory overload.
Tactical Uses for Your Externalized Brain:
The Brain Dump (Anxiety Management): When you feel overwhelmed, stop, open your notebook, and dump every single thought onto the page. This practice decreases rumination and anxiety because you have transferred the responsibility of remembering from your burdened working memory to a reliable, external system (the paper).
Organizing Chaos: The notebook is where disorganized thoughts get sorted. Use it to build quick mind maps, organize complex ideas, or simply list the next three steps for a large project. It’s where your tasks live, separated from your mental to-do list.
The Single Source Rule: I coach clients to have a single notebook (or a single notes app file) for general life management. If you have one for work, one for journaling, and one for tasks, you’ll never use any of them reliably. Consistency comes from one place.
The Pleasure Principle: Make your notebook and pen setup enjoyable. Invest in a pen you love, paper that feels good, or a notes app interface that sparks dopamine. This small pleasure makes the act of using the tool less reliant on pure discipline.
Quick Tip: Use Voice Memos or Dictation as an urgent backup. If you’re driving or mid-conversation and a thought hits, speak it into your phone. Later, transfer that entry into your notebook during your daily review.
Tool 2: The Calendar (Your Capacity Budget)
The function of the Calendar is to Commit and Budget.
The next essential tool is your Calendar—not as a simple schedule, but as a dynamic capacity budget. For those of us with time blindness, the calendar transforms time from an abstract concept into a visually perceived, physical block of committed capacity.
The Core Rule: Concrete Time & Location
The number one mistake I see people make is turning their calendar into a wish list or a to-do list. This breaks trust with the tool immediately.
If you tell me a date, a deadline, or a meeting time and it’s not in my calendar, I will 100% forget it. It doesn't matter how important it is. Your calendar must be a reliable, trustworthy commitment device.
Therefore, an entry must always have a concrete time AND a physical or virtual location.
Bad Calendar Entry: "Apply for Passport" (Vague, lacks time/location, looks like a to-do list).
Good Calendar Entry: "Passport Appt @ DMV - 7:30 AM" (Specific time, specific location).
Good Calendar Entry: "Deep Work: Finalize Q3 Report at Coffee Shop - 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM" (Specific task, time duration, and location).
Tactical Uses for Your Capacity Budget:
Fighting Time Blindness with Time Blocking: Time Blocking is the practice of allocating specific blocks of time for specific activities. This helps you see where your capacity is going.
Time Mapping by Role: Time Mapping is more effective than simple time blocking. Instead of just blocking "work," I coach clients to chunk their time according to the particular life role they are operating in.
Block 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM as "Parent Role". During this time, the internal rule is: I am an active, present father. I am not a business owner. This allows you to naturally be without the constant mental pull of other roles, avoiding overloading our system.
Block 9:00 AM - 11:30 AM as "Creative Deep Work". During this time, the rule is: No email, no slack, no phone calls. This block is non-negotiable capacity for high-value tasks.
The Capacity Test: If you look at your calendar and every single block is filled from 8 AM to 6 PM, your capacity budget is overstuffed. We must budget for downtime, transitions, and the inevitable distractions of life. If you can’t commit to the entry with almost certainty, take it off the calendar. You must be able to trust this tool.
Tool 3: The Timer (The Key to Starting)
The function of the Timer is to Execute and Initiate.
We've captured our thoughts (Notebook) and committed our capacity (Calendar). Now, how do we actually start the work? This is where the simple Timer becomes the single most powerful tool for defeating procrastination.
Why do we procrastinate? Often, it’s not laziness; it’s being flooded by perfectionism and fatalism. The task feels too big, the goal feels too vague, and the brain defaults to "it's too much, I can't do it, so I won't even start."
The Timer bypasses this entire emotional flood. It provides an external, objective constraint that your brain can easily latch onto.
The Magic of Constraint:
Instead of the overwhelming, open-ended goal of "Clean My Room," which leads to fatalism, you replace it with a constrained task: "20-Minute Room Reset."
The objective is not to finish—it's to simply work until the timer goes off. This shifts the focus from the impossible outcome to the manageable process. The constraint makes the task approachable and instantly beatable.
Tactical Uses for Your "Start" Button:
Breaking Down Overwhelm (The 20-Minute Sprint): For any task that feels too big (e.g., job search, cleaning the garage, working on a complex report), set a 15- to 20-minute timer. When the alarm sounds, you are free to stop. Most people find that the simple act of initiation breaks the inertia, and they naturally want to continue. But knowing you can stop after 20 minutes is the key that unlocks the start button.
The Habit Cue: Alarms and timers are fantastic external habit cues. You can use them to trigger a needed transition:
Set an alarm for 9:00 PM: "Start Bedtime Routine."
Set a timer for 5 minutes: "Kitchen Reset." (This is great for repetitive maintenance tasks that never truly finish).
The Capacity Check (Energy Budgeting): Remember the capacity budget (Calendar)? Use the Timer to enforce it. In grad school, I learned I could only write for about a maximum of three hours before I hit "mushy brain." Instead of pushing through, I honored my capacity budget. Use the timer to be productive within your cognitive limits, not beyond them.
The Pomodoro Principle (Simplified): The famous Pomodoro Technique (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break) is built on this principle. You don't need the exact technique; you just need the external constraint to force initiation. Use your phone timer, a simple kitchen timer, or even a browser extension—the simpler, the better.
Part 3: Building a Sustainable Ecosystem
The goal is not to have three separate tools; the goal is to create an ecosystem where they work together to compensate for your Executive Dysfunction.
Here is a quick summary of how these three tools work together:
Notebook (Capture): Compensates for Working Memory overload and Disorganization.
Calendar (Commit): Compensates for Time Blindness and Capacity Management.
Timer (Execute): Compensates for Procrastination and Initiation barriers.
This system allows you to externalize the heavy lifting of organization and planning so that your magnificent, creative brain can focus on what it does best: generating ideas and solving complex problems.
You are no longer relying on the flimsy resource of motivation; you are relying on reliable external aids that are ready when you need them.
If you can consistently implement these three simple tools, you have the foundation for every other advanced productivity technique. If these three fail, nothing else will stick.
Your Next Step
Moving beyond wishing you had discipline to actually building systems that work for your brain requires a comprehensive, step-by-step roadmap and accountability.
If you found these tools helpful and are ready to take the next step, I encourage you to check out my 9 Executive Function Skills Life Coaching Program. This program provides the full framework, the individualized strategies, and the support you need to make these habits stick permanently.
Remember, you don't need more willpower; you just need better tools. Let's start building a life that works for you.