Understanding Executive Functioning in Adults With ADHD
Executive functioning is one of those terms that gets used a lot in ADHD circles.
You might hear people say things like, “My executive functioning is terrible,” or “I’m struggling with my executive function.”
But what exactly is executive functioning, and how can you determine whether yours is good or not?
While there are many definitions, let’s start with the following one so we have a shared understanding, and then we can look at the characteristics.
What Is Executive Functioning in ADHD Adults?
The late psychiatrist and ADHD researcher Dr. Thomas Brown created the model above, which shows six separate clusters.
However, as he pointed out when he created this model:
These functions continually work together, usually rapidly and unconsciously, to help each individual manage many tasks of daily life.
Activation is the ability to organize tasks and materials, prioritize what needs to be done, estimate how long things will take, and get started on tasks.
The executive function known as focus helps you direct your attention to what is important, sustain your attention over time, and shift your attention when circumstances require it.
With effort, you regulate alertness, sustain mental energy, and process information efficiently. This executive function helps you stay engaged long enough to complete tasks, especially those that require ongoing effort.
Emotion refers to your ability to manage frustration and regulate emotional responses so that emotions do not completely take over your thinking or interfere with what you need to do.
The executive function of memory involves both working memory and recall. Working memory allows you to hold information in mind for a short period while using it, such as keeping track of several ideas during a conversation or remembering the next step in a process. Recall allows you to retrieve information from memory when you need it, whether it is something you learned recently or information stored long ago.
Through action, you monitor and regulate your behavior. This includes thinking before acting, adjusting your behavior based on what is happening around you, and regulating the pace of your actions to fit the demands of a situation.
Let’s take a closer look at how ADHD can affect each of these executive function areas.
How Does ADHD Affect Executive Functioning For Adults?
Why Is It So Hard for ADHD Adults to Get Started on Tasks?
You need to prepare a presentation for an important meeting in two weeks. And you know it matters, but you’re not sure where to begin.
Or you have trouble organizing your ideas, deciding which tasks should come first, estimating how long each step will take, and creating a realistic plan.
As the days pass, you keep telling yourself you’ll start tomorrow. Eventually, the deadline feels urgent enough that you’re able to jump into action.
How Does ADHD Affect Focus and Attention?
You’re working on a report when an email notification appears on your screen. After responding, it takes time to get back into the report.
Once you do, your attention drifts several times to unrelated thoughts, messages, and other tasks.
By the end of the afternoon, you’ve spent hours working but have made much less progress than you expected.
What Makes Sustaining Effort So Difficult for ADHD Adults?
You begin a long-term project feeling motivated and optimistic. The first few days go well, but as the novelty wears off, it becomes harder to stay engaged. You find yourself losing steam, putting off work sessions, and struggling to maintain the consistent effort needed to finish the project on time.
At the same time, you may feel mentally exhausted even though the project is still incomplete.
When Do Emotions Become Hard to Manage for ADHD Adults?
You receive constructive feedback from your supervisor on a project.
Although the feedback is relatively minor, you find yourself replaying the conversation for hours. Frustration, disappointment, or worry begin to dominate your attention, making it difficult to focus on other responsibilities.
Instead of moving forward with revisions, you remain stuck thinking about the feedback itself.
How Does ADHD Affect Working Memory and Recall?
During a meeting, several topics are being discussed at once.
While listening, you think of an important point you want to contribute. By the time there is an opportunity to speak, you’ve forgotten what you wanted to say.
Later, you remember agreeing to complete a task but can’t recall the details. You know the information is somewhere in your memory, but you have difficulty retrieving it when you need it.
What Challenges Do ADHD Adults Face with Self-Monitoring and Self-Regulation?
During a conversation, you become excited about an idea and jump in before the other person has finished speaking.
Later, you realize you missed important information because you were already thinking about your response.
In other situations, you may rush through a task and make avoidable mistakes, or move so slowly that you struggle to complete the task within the available time.
What Are Your Executive Function Challenges?
Now that you’ve learned about the six executive function areas, take a moment to reflect on how these challenges may be affecting your life.
You don’t need to identify challenges in every area.
And while, like most people, you probably have some challenges in all the areas, you may decide that the way you’re operating now is good enough and not something that you feel the need to work on improving.
Activation
Examples: putting off important tasks, difficulty getting started, trouble prioritizing, uncertainty about where to begin, difficulty creating a realistic plan
Impact on your life:
Focus
Examples: easily distracted, difficulty staying on task, trouble completing what you start, difficulty shifting attention from one task to another, becoming overly focused on details
Impact on your life:
Effort
Examples: difficulty sustaining effort over time, losing interest before a project is finished, mental fatigue, difficulty maintaining alertness, trouble completing long-term projects
Impact on your life:
Emotion
Examples: becoming easily frustrated, overwhelmed, discouraged, or worried, difficulty recovering from setbacks, emotions interfering with problem-solving or decision-making
Impact on your life:
Memory
Examples: forgetting appointments, commitments, or plans, losing track of what you were about to say, difficulty keeping multiple pieces of information in mind, trouble recalling information when needed
Impact on your life:
Action
Examples: interrupting others, acting or speaking impulsively, difficulty monitoring the effect of your behavior on others, rushing through tasks or moving too slowly to meet deadlines
Impact on your life:
Before thinking about specific strategies that might help you improve various executive functions like organizing, initiating and regulating your emotions, etc., it’s important to consider how well you cover the foundational aspects below that affect your executive functioning.
And I bet that doesn’t surprise you.
ADHD Adults Need Enough Sleep For Better Executive Functioning
Because you know, for example, that when you don’t get enough sleep, you’re just not as sharp.
When it comes to sleep and ADHD, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest a greater occurrence of sleep problems in adults with ADHD than the general population.
We also know that lack of sleep can make your ADHD symptoms (challenges with focus and attention) worse. So, if you have sleep issues, it is important that you address them if you want better executive functioning.
Good Nutrition Can Help ADHD Have Better Executive Functioning
The same is true for nutrition. So you might ask yourself to start with, “Am I getting enough of the macronutrients: protein, fats and carbs. Because without enough gas in the tank, you can’t go very far, right?”
You already know that nutrition, like sleep, has a direct impact on how well you operate and your overall well-being.
While most of what is known about the impact of nutrition on ADHD is not conclusive, there is some research that supports the claim that nutrition can impact your ADHD.
I think it is at least worthwhile to consider how you may want to alter your eating patterns to manage your ADHD symptoms.
And, as you experiment with your nutrition, you may also want to enlist the help of a nutritionist who can help you distill the information and make appropriate choices.
Exercise Results Its In Better Executive Functioning For ADHD Adults
And I can’t say enough about the benefits of exercise for adults with ADHD. Regular exercise is not only good for your overall health, as you already know. But it can also help you feel grounded, more clearheaded and able to better access and use your executive functioning skills.
Of particular interest to those with ADHD is that exercising leads to an immediate increase in the levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.
Thus, in the short term, exercise can have the same effect as the various stimulant medications, like Adderall and Ritalin, resulting in a temporary improvement in attention and mood.
Exercise also helps to wake up the executive function component of the frontal cortex, which is under-stimulated in those with ADHD. With this improved functioning, there is the potential for better decision-making. You may find that you are able to slow down,
evaluate your options and make better choices.
With an increased capacity to slow down, you can also curb your impulsivity and need for immediate gratification, both common ADHD symptoms. Being able to curb these symptoms gives you even more opportunities to make choices that work for you.
For Better Executive Functioning, ADHD Adults Need Stress Management
When it comes to stress management for adults with ADHD, there’s definitely not one right strategy. So in order to find out what might work for you, first be curious about the context that tends to lead you to feel stress.
As an adult with ADHD, you’ve probably heard plenty of variations of the saying, “don’t just sit there, do something.”
But when it comes to effectively using your executive functions, sometimes It’s actually better to subscribe to the maxim, “Don’t just do something, sit there.
And for adults with ADHD, being present in the moment may not entail just sitting; it may include:
- Exercising
- Talking to someone
- Writing
- Simply breathing or meditating
- Reading
- Watching a show
- Walking the dog
- Gardening
- Using therapeutic skills, like DBT
Medication Can Be The Cornerstone To Better Executive Functioning For ADHD Adults
While the medication is active in your system, it may help by minimizing the impact of your ADHD symptoms, even though the symptoms remain.
That is, medication can help you:
- be better able to more consistently use the skills and strategies you already know.
- make choices in the moment that are more in sync with your values and long-term goals.
- be better able to learn new skills, strategies and information related to your various professional and personal goals.
Yet, while medication can form the cornerstone of an effective treatment plan for many with ADHD, so you can improve your executive function skills, it will not help you upgrade your executive function skills.
Where Do You Want To Start Improving Your Executive Functioning Skills?
The good news is that executive function skills can be strengthened. While ADHD doesn’t disappear, many adults learn strategies, systems, and skills that help them function more effectively.
And, like many adults with ADHD who are on this path, there’s a lot that you probably want to improve right now. But you also know it’s a recipe for failure if you try to bite off more than you can chew.
So, to avoid this possibility, the next step is to choose the area that is most concerning to you right now and would give you the most pain for the buck at this season in your life if you could change it.
When working with new clients, after identifying all of the potential goals in our first session, people have decided to start with decision-making, follow-through, emotional regulation or any other number of options to start with.
ADHD Adults Need Support To Improve Their Executive Function Skills
Once you understand your executive function challenges and have identified where you want to start, the next step is to identify what kind of support(s) you need to help you close your current skill gap relevant to that area.
Therapists and coaches for ADHD adults are one type of support you might seek out. Though it may not be obvious to you which one you need.
A good number of my clients work with a therapist and me. On occasion, when we complete our work together or even in the course of our work together, we determine that it would be good for them to also work with a therapist, often around depression or anxiety, which are common comorbid conditions for ADHD adults
You might decide you don’t need/want intensive one-on-one support but would rather work with a group for support, accountability or as a sounding board for problem-solving. It could be a group related to your profession, a therapy group, an adult ADHD support group, a parenting group, a relationship group or some other type of group that can help you in whatever area you’re trying to improve in.
You might also decide to work with an accountability partner to work with 1-1. If you’re interested in finding out more about how to do this, check out this post, How to Create ADHD Friendly Accountability Partnerships.
There Is No Roadmap For ADHD Adults To Improve Their Executive Functioning Skills
I’m sure that makes sense that there’s not a blueprint you can use to improve your executive functioning skills.
If there’s anything that you take away from this post, I hope it’s that the path to upgrading your skills is really dependent on your specific needs.
But here are some questions that will help you take the first steps:
- What area of my life ( work, home, health, relationships, etc.) would I like to improve right now?
- What about the area is giving me the most challenge ( follow through, decision-making, emotional regulation etc.)?
- What could I do on my own to make improvements in this area vis-a-vis the challenges I’m experiencing?
- What kind of support do I need to make these improvements?
- What is the very next step I’m willing to take right now to start this process?
Be Willing To Experiment and Fail
Last, it will always be a matter of trial and error at every step of the way. Unless you’re staying in your comfort zone and never trying anything new you’re inevitably going to fail along the way. That’s okay. In fact, I think it’s good. Because that one thing doesn’t work you can rule that out and move on to the next thing to try.
You may even take what you think is the first step and realize there’s something else that you need to do before that step. But you could not have discovered that unless you took the leap and just tried.
You may reach out for support and find out it’s not the right support or you just don’t vibe with the person though it may be the right support .
And when you try something and it doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.
You just need to keep on going.
Originally published October 11, 2023. Updated June 14, 2026
