I think about this a lot, because I have to. In my own life, as a parent who struggles with executive dysfunction and yet has to teach a child basic life skills, it’s important to know my blind spots and learn to function around them. He’s watching me and learning from my example, so I have to do my best to explain what I can’t always do, and try to do it anyway.
Executive function is such a fundamental and yet hidden trait. It is in charge of reasoning, flexibility, problem solving, planning, and execution/prioritization of necessary steps in any action.
Each task is never one task. Take changing the lightbulb - from beginning to end, it’s a series of steps that must be put in proper order:
Notice light bulb is burnt out.
Recognize that it can be fixed by putting in a new light bulb
Remember where new light bulbs are stored
Go to light bulb storage area
Find stool or chair to stand on
Take out old bulb, put in new one
Replace chair or stool to previous spot
That’s not even all of them, but it’s a good enough summary for now. There are hidden stumbling blocks in every single step.
A burnt out bulb may go unrecognized as a problem - there’s two other bulbs in the room, it’s a little dimmer, so what? It might take all three burning out before you see it as a problem.
Maybe you forgot where the bulbs are, because it’s been a while. Searching the house is a task you put off, because it’s messy/disorganized/big/you have other more pressing matters. The bulb can wait.
You find the bulb storage, but you’re out of new ones. You have to shop. You’re busy, you put it off until the next time you shop, by which time you’ve forgotten you need a light bulb. Repeat cycle.
You’ve been depressed for a while, or maybe you’re just a messy person. A stack of important documents is on the chair you’d use to stand on to get to the bulb. You know if you move those documents you’ll forget where they are, and it’s tax stuff/homework/your mom’s birthday card, and you can’t forget that. The bulb gets put aside until you deal with those things. But you don’t want to deal with them now, so the bulb waits.
Throwing out the bulb requires safe disposal so that you don’t break it and accidentally cut yourself, or someone else in your home. You have no idea how to safely dispose of it. You put off changing the bulb until you figure out what to do with the old one.
On and on and on. Each step requires problem solving, prioritization, and reasoning. These are the hidden processes that go on in our minds every single moment of every day. Difficult tasks build up, compounding the problem of completing others, until each action requires ten more before you can solve the minor problem you started with. Changing a light bulb ends in a night of doing your taxes. Doing the dishes ends in standing in the dish soap aisle at the grocery story for a half hour trying to figure out which soap to buy for the dishwasher.
When a simple action requires the same effort from you as the most complex, abstract problem-solving…. to put it mildly, you’re fucked. Every day tasks require exhausting mental gymnastics.
So, be kind to the person who can’t seem to change a light bulb. There’s a lot that can stand in the way.
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