Unlocking Executive Dysfunction Part 2: Actionable Tips

January 17, 2025

Holston Academy recently hosted another Coffee & Connections webinar, an opportunity for everyone in the Holston community–and beyond–to get together and discuss today’s most relevant topics in the world of education. This session is part two of a two-part series that covers Executive Disfunction insights and tips and tools.

Holston Academy recently hosted another Coffee & Connections webinar, an opportunity for everyone in the Holston community–and beyond–to get together and discuss today’s most relevant topics in the world of education. In this session, Unlocking Executive Dysfunction: Essential Insights & Actionable Tips, Rose Saluti, Outreach Coordinator for Beyond BookSmart (the largest executive function coaching company), led a discussion about executive function (EF), the challenges students face regarding EF, and how they can best manage it.

During her presentation, Rose took a deep dive into these topics and proposed some very helpful solutions and tools along the way. In the first article on the topic, we looked at essential executive function insights. In this installment, we’ll dive into actionable tips that can help students improve their EF skills.

Mindset Matters

Growth mindset is critical when it comes to students (and adults) improving their executive function skills. “We teach them to say ‘I can’t do that yet, or I won’t do this yet,’” said Rose. “We need them to have their mindset open enough so they can accept that, ‘yes, we can help with these things.’ There is actual help.”

One challenge, however, is that some students simply don’t want to hear this advice–or any advice. That requires parents and other adults to send the message in a different way.

• Explore and collaborate to encourage self-reflection and empowerment: One example provided during the webinar was, say your child is always late or running behind. Rather than telling them they need to stop being late all the time, explore ways to rephrase the message, such as, “What do you think the benefit would be to arriving on time?” Then collaborate on a solution by asking, for example, if you can share your calendar app and show them how to use it to keep them on time.
• Small wins add up and build confidence: Celebrate the win if they do perform the tasks you were encouraging them to try. Look for even the smallest wins, call them out, and enjoy them. All the small wins eventually add up to big wins.

EF Challenges and Tools

According to Rose’s presentation, the top four EF challenges are:

1. Time management
2. Planning and prioritizing
3. Cognitive flexibility
4. Organization

This is where self-regulation comes into play. Many people experiencing these types of challenges grow frustrated, overwhelmed, and even panicked. This results in task avoidance, poor planning, and hesitancy in decision making. How can these feelings and behaviors be avoided? Here are a few tools that can help with self-regulation and even anxiety.

• Five-finger breathing: Extend all five fingers on one hand, then breathe in and out, sliding the fingers of your other hand up and down each finger as you take a breath in and a breath out for each one. Do this until you’ve finished all five fingers. This will help regulate your emotions and reduce your anxiety. And it can be done very discreetly, with no one even knowing you’re self-regulating.
• Four-square breathing: Similar in concept, four-square breathing involves you breathing in and holding the breath for four seconds, then exhaling. Do that a total of four times to calm yourself when you feel your emotions getting the better of you.
• HALT (Hungry, Angry/Anxious, Lonely, Tired): These are needs that must be met before anyone can truly focus on the task at hand. This tool is a discussion starter on how to best prioritize meals and sleep, how to regulate anger or anxiety, and how to become less lonely. And those discussions should occur before these needs happen.

As far as addressing the issues of time management, planning, and prioritizing, Rose alluded to a variety of other tools, which include:

• Covey Quadrants: Each quadrant represents a particular mode–Crisis, Prevention, Distraction, and Slacker. “Some of us get stuck in Distraction or Slacker mode, which can lead us to operate more in Crisis mode instead of Prevention mode,” explained Rose. “So we need to prioritize what we’re doing in terms of urgency and importance.” The idea is to avoid the Crisis quadrant if possible and try to operate in Prevention mode, which allows us to put the right amount of time and effort into what we’re doing. With this time, tasks can be accomplished before they enter Crisis mode and need to be completed urgently.
• Budget vs. Actual (BVA): Rose notably pointed out in this session that many people struggle with time management simply because they don’t know how long a particular task might take. And that results in not knowing the right amount of time to budget. With this tool, you would make a chart that lists a variety of tasks, how long you think the task will take, and how long the task actually does take once it’s completed. In the last column, you would fill out why you thought the task took longer or not as long as you anticipated it would. The goal is to make people more aware of how time passes and how long tasks actually take. This knowledge can help students better budget their time for homework, studying, and other tasks.
• Fast Break Plan: This activity uses a chart to break down tasks into smaller time increments while building in breaks. So, rather than stare at a chart that says “60 Minutes for Homework,” which can be very overwhelming for students, students can break things down into smaller tasks: Math Homework, 20 minutes; History Studying, 15 minutes; BREAK, 10 minutes; Science Homework, 15 minutes; Spanish Studying, 10 minutes.
• Calendar Planning: Rose strongly recommends using any type of calendar to help with planning–whether it’s a paper calendar, Google Calendar, or iCal. Doing so allows you to visualize what your days look like, how you need to manage your time, and when you have free time.
• Use Alerting Signals: Whether it’s an alarm, a Siri or Alexa reminder, or a written sign, alerting signals are very important when it comes to getting started on a task, refocusing, or transitioning from one task to another. 
• Practice Flexible Thinking: For those who need work on their cognitive flexibility, games are a wonderful resource. These may include Jenga, illusion puzzles, riddles and logic problems, escape room games, board games, and others that exercise the mind and put you in a position to think of different ideas simultaneously.
• Circles of Control, Influence, and Concern: Where students sometimes run into difficulties is when they’re trying to control things that they simply can’t. That’s where these circles come into play. The Circle of Concern comprises the challenges and concerns we have, the Circle of Influence involves the things that we can do for ourselves instead of waiting for something to happen, and the Circle of Control includes things that we actually can control.

• Chunking: For students struggling with organization skills, chunking is an awesome–and simple–tool to use. Chunking can actually be used beyond organization–it’s perfect for helping with time management, memory, and task initiation. Chunking involves breaking down larger lists into smaller, more specific lists of related items/topics. A major benefit for students, especially ones who might be struggling, is that chunking allows them to break things down into smaller, doable tasks.
• What? So What? Now What? This system helps students not only identify a problem but also think about the problem and what its impact is–and then figure out a solution.

By better understanding what executive function is and what skills are involved, you as a parent are in a much better place to provide the tools shared in this webinar and article to help your student thrive. If you’re interested in executive function coaching for your child, visit https://www.beyondbooksmart.com/ to learn more.

You can watch the entire webinar recording here, and be sure to join us for our next Coffee & Connections presentation!