120. Executive Functioning and Productivity - What Every SLP Needs to Know

Executive functioning (EF) isn’t just something you teach your students or talk about in CEUs—it’s the invisible set of skills running your day. When those skills aren’t supported, everything feels harder: tasks pile up, priorities blur, and energy tanks fast. The good news? These skills can be strengthened, and small shifts can make a big difference in both work and home life.

What You’ll Learn

• 10 essential executive functioning skills (plus one bonus) and how they actually show up in daily life
• Real-world examples of how weak spots in EF skills impact productivity, energy, and focus
• Simple ways to identify where to start if everything feels overwhelming

If This Resonates…

Executive functioning challenges don’t mean you’re lazy or broken—they mean your brain needs support. That’s what coaching is for. If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and finally feel more in control of your days, book a free consult. No pressure, just clarity.

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Progress over perfection, always.

Keywords:

executive functioning skills, ADHD and SLPs, overwhelmed SLP, productivity coaching, ADHD time management, work-life balance, emotional regulation, task initiation

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Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

 Hello, so I'm digging right in. You've sat through the CEUs, you've written the IEP goals, and you know what executive functioning is when it comes to your students or your patients or your clients, whatever you refer to them as, but. When it comes to your own life, your own tasks, your own to-do list, it's probably feeling a bit chaotic.

Am I right? If so, you are in the right place because here's the thing, when your executive functioning skills are supported. Everything shifts. You stop spinning your wheels, you protect your energy and your emotional regulation, and you actually feel in control of your day, not just like you're reacting to it and playing whack-a-mole.

And here's the truth. Most of us who are listening have a pretty solid foundation of what executive functioning skills are because we were trained to various degrees. In that information. Right. But when it comes to a personal relationship with it, a personal level, that's where the disconnect often lies.

We often think of executive functioning skills as something that we treat, or something that kids with A DHD struggle with or something that adults with brain injuries struggle with. We're not thinking of executive functioning skills as something that we live. That's the reality. Okay. And here's the thing.

Before you turn, you turn this off or tune out and think to yourself, well, I don't have a DHD, so my executive functioning skills are just fine. And this doesn't apply to me, not so fast because executive functioning. It's not just an A DHD thing. Sure. People with a DHD have more struggles, more frequent struggles, more significant struggles with a, uh, executive functioning right?

But if you have ever procrastinated, if you've ever struggled with prioritizing, if you've ever been completely wiped out when it comes to making decisions. And starting tasks that's executive functioning at work, or maybe not at work, but you get the idea, right? So this episode, consider it a permission slip, if you will, to take the knowledge that you have about executive functioning skills.

And we're gonna amplify it and we're gonna turn it inward, okay? Because your brain, if you are a human, your brain deserves support. Two, it's not just for our clients, this is also for us. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk you through 10 executive functioning skills. Probably ones that you already know, but.

Probably ones that you're not always optimizing, and we're gonna talk through how to support yourself with those skills the same way that you support your clients. Okay? So that's the plan for today's episode. And I know I'm like just jumping right in, but I want to give you a couple of. You know, a couple of disclaimers and an announcement, and then we're gonna get right into those 10 skills.

Okay? So number one, this episode, episode one 20, is a kickoff to a four-part series that I'm running in the month of October. That's all about executive functioning and A DHD as it relates to us. Human SLPs women, most of us, I would imagine, right? No matter how you identify, whether you identify as having a DHD or not.

This month of October is a DHD awareness month, and with A DHD comes executive functioning. That's what it's all about. And with the human brain comes executive functioning. So. If you're a human, if you have a brain tune in, tune into these episodes because it's going to give you information that's gonna help you level up what you're doing at work and level up what you're doing at home.

Okay? Secondly, I wanna acknowledge. I, I believe, I hope that this goes without saying, I hate even having to say it, but I'm gonna choose to say it. I don't have to say it. I'm gonna choose to say, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a licensed counselor or social worker.

So all of this information in this episode and. Any other episode that I release, it's never intended to serve as medical advice. It's never intended to lead you to a diagnosis. It's never intended to, you know, cross any ethical boundaries in any way. These are just my thoughts, my views that I'm sharing.

Take them or leave them. Okay? Secondly. Now we're kind of diving into these, this, you know, executive functioning stuff, if you will. Right? So secondly, or third, I forget what number we're on. Can you tell I have a, A DH, D. So next I want you to know this. This is something that actually, that I didn't realize, if I'm being honest, until I was.

Pretty far into my career as an SLP is that there are lots of different frameworks for the executive functioning skills. So many different experts, researchers, thought leaders describe and conceptualize the executive functioning skills in many different ways. If you research this, if you research these different executive functioning frameworks, you can, you don't have to, but if you do, instead of hyper focusing or going down rabbit holes of all the different models and what they mean, my suggestion would be to just choose a framework that makes sense to you and your brain.

There is no one right way to think of these skills to. Label them and describe them. Okay. So even though we're talking neuroscience essentially here, we're talking brain stuff, if you will, right? There is not just one way to think about this information. Okay, and then the last thing that I'll say before we dig in to these executive functioning skills, please keep in mind.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. I say this to my students, my grad students all the time. I say this to my coaching clients, often nothing happens in a vacuum, meaning these skills. They overlap, they're intertwined. They impact one another. They're happening simultaneously in many cases. So while I'm gonna give you a clear list of 10 executive functioning skills, and I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give you concrete examples of how this shows up in your personal life or in your work life, I just wanna acknowledge that these things are not happening.

Independent of one another, and that you can't always separate them out the way that I might be presenting them here in this episode. Okay. Bottom line though, everybody, everybody's got executive functioning skills. We all need them. They run your life. They're involved in every single thing you do. You can't get around it.

Okay? And the good news. Is that there is a lot that we can do to help those skills work better. Alright, so that's my spiel. That's all I have to say. I'm gonna take a little sip of water. Don't mind me. I don't know if you can tell, I've got this like, cold that's running through our house and you know, as a, as an SLP, as a.

Grad instructor As a coach, as a mom, I'm using my voice all day long. Probably when this one's over, I should go practice some vocal hygiene. Okay, so here are 10 skills. I'm gonna break this down into 10 executive functioning skills that I'm sure are on your radar to varying degrees, okay? And I'm gonna walk you through how they show up.

Okay? All right. So. And these are in no particular order, by the way. So first one, task initiation, as it sounds, as the name implies it, is the ability to begin something. Begin a task, start a task, even when you don't feel like it, especially when you don't feel like it, to be honest. Okay? It's to go from.

Rest to action, right? That's what task initiation is. So for example, maybe if your task initiation skills aren't firing on all cylinders, if you will, you might be staring at your computer and you might have five different documents open related to a client whose report you have to write. But you might be sitting there staring or scrolling or you know, I don't know, playing around with different things on your computer or putzing around with your hands for about 45 minutes before you actually begin typing a single word.

Right? Has anyone been there? I know it's not just me. Task initiation is a big one. Okay, so think about how this shows up in work and at home. This will affect so much of what we do task initiation, especially when it's something that we don't enjoy doing or that we feel like we aren't good at doing.

Okay. Task initiation. I can give you an example. Right now, the, there are two loads of laundry that are sitting upstairs in my living room, and I have walked by them many times and I have not started folding even when I've decided, okay, it's laundry time. I still have not brought myself to initiate that task.

Okay, so task initiation number two. Planning, which is, you all know, it's mapping out what the steps ahead are. Okay? Now planning is a big one, especially for those who have executive dysfunction. Those who have A DHD, those who are just struggling with putting those skills into action. When we think about planning many times, especially a neurodivergent brain, we'll, we will picture the end results or the big picture, like write an evaluation report.

Okay, so maybe we plan to write an evaluation report, but. We struggle with mapping out the steps to get there. Okay. Because an evaluation report isn't just the evaluation report, it's also finding the test protocol that have the scores in there. Right. It's also making sure that you have planned out a specific space and amount of time that you're gonna be able to work on this.

It's making sure you have all of the other necessary. You know, pieces of the puzzle or information, whether it's on your personal computer, your home, your office, computer work computer, your hard drive, you're in your office, right? You have to plan out so many little things just to get that evaluation report written.

So it's no wonder so many of us struggle. Okay? And by the way, I've got an episode planned for later this month that is about exactly this topic. So if this resonates with you, make sure that you, uh, tune back in for that episode. I'm not sure which week it's gonna be released or what number it is, but it will be coming out sometime during the month of October, 2025.

Number three, time management. This one is near and dear to my heart. It's how I got started in this whole productivity coaching realm. Time management involves a whole lot of pieces, but essentially knowing how much time you have in comparison to how much time something will take, being able to keep track of and notice how much time is passing.

Versus how much time you're actually taking, being able to manage all of that, right? So for example, someone who struggles in this area, you might think that you can write an entire IEP in 20 minutes, which is maybe funny, but um. I know that many of us have thought that before, right? Oh, that's fine. I know this kid.

I can get it done really quick. Okay. Or on the contrary, some people might think, oh my gosh, it's an evaluation report. It's gonna take me five hours to get it done. When in reality, it's actually a pretty simple, straightforward case that's in your wheelhouse of clinical skills and you could get it done.

Ligety, split, rickety dick, right? So time management. Number four. This one is my Achilles heel for sure. Working memory, working memory, taking information, holding it in your head while you are doing something else, focusing on something else and then being able to retrieve said information after a short amount of time has passed my working memory.

Is garbage. My working memory, I shouldn't talk that way about myself. If I was co, if I was a coach and my client just said that, I would've challenged it. But relatively speaking, my working memory skills are pretty poor compared to some of these other skills Now. That's not a problem per se. It's just a circumstance, it's an observation, it's information.

So with that information, I make sure that I am utilizing strategies that are supporting me in that area. And that's exactly what I help coaching clients do, by the way, is like we work through these different executive functioning skills. What are your strengths? What are your challenges? What are the executive functioning skills that are needed or most needed for said task?

And how are we gonna tackle it? What strategies are we gonna do? Okay, so with working memory. Which we used to refer to as short-term memory, but working memory is holding that information in your head for a short period of time and being able to retrieve it. So maybe you are. Finishing up a report and as you're finishing it up, you remember that you forgot to take out the chicken that you're gonna make for dinner when you get home, but you don't wanna, you don't wanna get distracted, so you focus on your report and forget all about the chicken until you get all the way home and open the fridge and realize you don't have anything for dinner.

Okay? Anyone? No. If it's just me, maybe it's just me, but I have been there many times. Number five, metacognition. Essentially lots of different ways of referring to this self-monitoring, self-awareness. Again, refer to my earlier comment about lots of different ways or frameworks to describe and explain these executive functioning skills, but this is the metacognition, meta awareness, self-awareness, where you are observing and noticing what you are doing.

What you are thinking, you're an observer of yourself, for example. Noticing that you have to use the bathroom. That you have to use the bathroom, and you've been in back-to-back sessions and you maybe have been so focused on your clients that you may have noticed it early on, but then three hours went by and next thing you know you're about to have an accident.

You're really crabby. You still haven't used the bathroom, right? And it's like, okay, I gotta go now. That's a different type of self-awareness. That's more of interoceptive. But I'm not gonna get into all of that. It, it's beyond the, the meaning or the purpose of this episode. But this can be physical, this can be mental, this can be emotional.

So recognizing what you are doing, how it compares to what you intended to do, um, when you're maybe. Blowing past your energy limits. Right. I, I'll give you this quick little story. I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but there was one time with my, one of my kids who was really struggling. It was the end of the day and they were really struggling with like getting their teeth brushed.

I'm really struggling with having patience at that point with emotional regulation at that point. Okay. Executive functioning skills, and that's a preview of our next one, by the way. Anyway, so I was like really trying to get them to brush their teeth and they were really just doing anything, but, and finally they looked at me and they were like.

My feet are yelling at me, mom. My feet are yelling at me, and I paused and I was like, oh, your feet are tired. You've been standing for a really long time. That's a really, a really good observation. Let's sit down. Let's take a break. So having that awareness in the moment of what's happening in your body, what's happening in your environment, and being able to use that information to guide your actions.

Okay. All right. Number six. I mentioned it a second ago. Emotional regulation. Ah, deep breath. This is probably right up there along with working memory. For me, one of my biggest challenges in terms of executive functioning skills, and I will say too little sidebar, but while currently emotional regulation is not listed, and I, I.

I'm fairly certain that I'm accurate on this, but, uh, emotional regulation is not part of, you know, the, in the DSM when it comes to the A DHD an A DHD diagnosis. I wouldn't be surprised if it, if that changes at some point in the future, but many, many, many people with A DHD will describe challenges with emotional regulation.

Now, the, this could be. Hypo arousal. This could be hyper arousal. This might be You are, well, I'm getting into task initiation. Let me stay on, let me stay on track. Okay. So emotional regulation, being able to manage the many different emotions that are showing up in your body. Okay. For example, handling frustration without spiraling.

So. Not crying when the Medicaid portal crashes again, and you were almost done with submitting your billing, right? Not losing your mind when you're on the phone with an insurance company for the millionth time trying to resolve a billing issue. Okay? Emotional regulation, tricky one. Number seven, sustained attention, which is.

As it sounds, being able to stay on task, maintain focus or return focus, I should say. 'cause it's not just maintaining focus, but it's really shifting your focus back, redirecting your focus to where it needs to go. So this could be maybe you sit down and you are task copying from filling out a session note, um, answering your email, checking your phone, cleaning up for the next client, and trying to get a head start on an evaluation report, right?

And you're just going from one to the next without actually accomplishing anything. Sustained attention. Maybe you sit down, you try to start with just one thing, okay? I'm focused. I'm gonna get this evaluation report done, and then maybe five minutes in, you are off into your email inbox or doom scrolling and you catch yourself and you try to bring it back, right?

Or maybe you don't catch yourself until a lot of time has passed, right? So sustained attention, number eight. Organization. So keeping your materials, your information in some sense of an organized manner. Now that term is relative or organized, but sort of knowing what. Information or what materials are accessible and where to go to access them.

Here's an example of how this shows up at work. So let's say. Um, along the lines of my earlier example, that you are sitting down to write an evaluation report and you have to go and find all the different components of that client's file in lots of different areas. Maybe you have information saved on your computer in like a million different folders, even though they're all related to evaluations.

So. The organization can be tricky in two ways. Well, lots of ways, but two ways that the organization can be tricky is number one, in you setting yourself up for success. You know, storing things in a way that makes sense for you. But then number two, it can slow you down when you go to execute a task because you don't know where things are because you aren't able to figure out.

Where to go or how you've organized yourself to get the task done. All right. I've got two more. I hope you're still with me. Number nine, this is one that a hundred percent comes up all the time in coaching sessions, and I find. This is one that tends to be the hardest for SLPs. This might be a generalization here, but at least for my coaching clients, this tends to be really, really challenging.

Are you ready? I should have made this one last, but oh, well, prioritization, choosing what has to happen now. So this could be very obvious, for example. If you have a, let's say an email signature that you need to update and you have progress notes that are due, this could be very, very obvious, obviously.

In most cases, people would say that the progress report is the biggest priority or the bigger priority than the email signature. So start there, right? But not always the case. What if you have a really important email that you need to send to somebody and your email signature contains your old contact info?

Your old website address for your private practice or your old logo, or your old phone number, and you need to get that email out and you wanna make sure that it's going to have the right information for the, for the recipient. So maybe in that case, the email signature actually is the bigger prior. Okay.

Here's my point, and this is what I say to coaching clients so many times. There is not one right way to prioritize. There is not one right way. There are many ways to prioritize, and that is both a blessing and a curse because it makes prioritization challenging. I think many people want to know that they're prioritizing the right things.

Air quotes here, so they get stuck in analysis paralysis. But here's the, the silver lining. If it's true that there is no one right way to prioritize, then congratulations. You get to prioritize in whatever way. Is right for you, and that's what I help coaching clients figure out is what is the right way for you?

What is the best way for you? Okay, prioritization. Last but not least, is cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility. The ability to pivot when hit, wait. I was trying to say this without cursing when fit hits the Shan, did I get it? Yeah. I just can't. I, I, that was hard for me. But anyway, cognitive flexibility when things don't go according to plan, let's say you really, really optimize your, your skills in that planning department.

That we were talking about earlier, but then it comes to cognitive flexibility. And guess what? You have a new client that's starting on your caseload today and you didn't know you have a new evaluation that just got booked. So that plan that you had when you were gonna sit down and knock out a bunch of progress notes, guess what?

You have to pivot. Cognitive flexibility is a skill. It's not a personality trait. Certainly, yes, people can be overall in general, more flexible than others in different ways, but cognitive flexibility is an executive functioning skill, which means it can be strengthened, and that's something that we work on in coaching.

Whew. All right. So lots of. Lots of skills there, and these are not all of them. I feel like right now I feel compelled to share an 11th one, and I'm going to, because it just so relates to A DHD, I feel like I would be remiss to ignore it. So I'll share this one and then I promise I'm stopping the last one.

Bonus response, inhibition. Response inhibition. You ever like go and do something impulsively, kind of like this. Like, oh, I cannot inhibit my, my desire to share more information. It's so meta, isn't it? But response inhibition. This is me not inhibiting my desire to share this strategy with you, this executive functioning skill with you.

So the response inhibition, essentially referring to the ability to. Control your actions and stop yourself from taking action when you don't want to or when it won't serve you. Okay. Um, this is somewhat like task initiation. It's kind of the opposite, but an example here would be you are working on an evaluation report and your phone dings with a new text message or a new alert.

You have to inhibit. The impulse to check it and stay on task. Sustained attention, stay on task prioritization to finish that evaluation report and then enter working memory where you have to remember later on that you got that text message. So to go back and look at that alert, right? So you see how all of these are interwoven, how they overlap, how it's really not.

Possible or even necessary to separate all of these out as individual skills, even though I just did. But even though these are executive, these executive functioning skills are things that people with A DHD struggle with. They're all things that we can strengthen. So here is my little challenge for you.

Which of those. 11 executive functioning skills felt just a little too, uh, spicy for you, sensitive for you, hit you a little closer to home, right? Which are the ones that felt like, Ooh, yeah, that's not a strength of mine. Or maybe you were listening to this and you're like, oh, I'm killing it in this area.

Okay, we definitely wanna notice that. Notice that. But where are the ones that could be stronger? I want you to pick one, one to focus on what would it look like to support yourself in that one area. Just the same way that you support your clients, the same way that you work with your students, and this is the, this is the.

The irony here is that we do this, whether we realize it or not, even if we're not overtly targeting, directly targeting executive functioning skills, we are working on these with our clients all the time. It's impossible not to. So we do it for our clients. We can also do it for ourselves. And if this is something that you want help with.

Reach out. Executive functioning is not just for our patients, it's not just for our clients, it's for humans. And if your executive functioning skills are struggling, it's not because you're lazy. It's not because you're broken. It's just that you, your brain needs a little scaffolding. Your brain needs a little bit of prompting and queuing, and guess what?

We can do that. That's what I do in coaching. So. If one of these hit home and you're not sure where to start or you want help figuring it out so you don't have to do it alone, book a consult. I always offer free consults. The link's always in the show notes. There's no pressure, just clarity. Click the link in the show notes.

You have absolutely nothing to lose. Alright, that's it for today's episode. Next three episodes are all about executive functioning and the work that we do as SLPs and humans, so make sure you come back and check those out. I'm telling you, they're gonna be awesome. Nice and spicy. All right. Juicy, I should say, or maybe neuros spicy.

Okay, sorry. Focus Theresa. Okay, I'm out. Bye guys.