By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you’re neurodivergent. I don’t have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
How to Sharpen Executive Functions: Activities to Hone Brain Skills
Here’s a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults with Autism
Resources on this aren’t great because they’re mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There’s worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
- Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
- Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
- Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
- Meditation
- Martial arts
- Sports in general
- Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
- Woodworking
- Cooking
- If you’re bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.