You did not, in fact, lose another week.
You'll do the laundry on Sunday. Then suddenly it's Wednesday and the laundry pile is taller than your dog and you can't find a single matching sock and you're standing in the middle of your bedroom in a towel, late for work, asking the universe how this keeps happening.
If you've been in this loop for years — or decades — and you're tired of being told to "just use a planner," I want to introduce you to executive function coaching. Not the cute productivity-influencer version. The real, evidence-informed, brain-respecting version that actually changes things.
And before we go any further: you're not lazy. You're not unmotivated. You're not "spoiled" or "uncommitted" or any of the other words that have been thrown at you. You have a brain that doesn't manage time, attention, or task initiation in the way a neurotypical brain does. That's it. That's the diagnosis. The good news is: it's workable.
WHAT EXECUTIVE FUNCTION ACTUALLY IS
Executive function is a fancy umbrella term for the mental skills your brain uses to plan, start, sustain, switch between, and finish tasks. It includes:
- Initiation (getting started)
- Working memory (holding information in mind while you use it)
- Planning and prioritisation (figuring out what to do first)
- Time management (knowing how long things take)
- Task switching (going from one thing to the next)
- Sustained attention (staying with something boring)
- Self-monitoring (noticing how it's going)
- Emotional regulation (not falling apart when things go sideways)
When executive function works well, you don't notice it. When it doesn't, you spend your life feeling like you're trying to run a marathon in flip-flops while everyone else has running shoes — and they keep telling you "just run faster."
WHY GENERIC PRODUCTIVITY ADVICE DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU
Most productivity advice was written by people whose executive function works fine. Their planners and "eat the frog" routines work because their brains do the structural lifting in the background. Yours doesn't.
So when someone says "just write down three priorities each morning," your brain hears: write three things on a piece of paper, lose the piece of paper before lunch, find it on Thursday, feel like a failure for not doing the things, decide you're constitutionally incapable of being a person, scroll TikTok for 90 minutes.
This is not a discipline issue. This is a tools-mismatch issue. Executive function coaching is about finding tools that work for the brain you actually have.
WHAT I MEAN BY "A BETTER SYSTEM"
The systems that actually work for executive-function-impaired brains tend to share a few features. Once you know what you're looking for, you can stop trying systems that were doomed for you from the start.
What works:
- External, visible cues. Things you can see without having to remember they exist. (Calendars on the wall, sticky notes in the moment, alarms with specific labels.)
- Friction reduction. The harder it is to start, the lower the chance you'll start. Make it absurdly easy to begin.
- Body doubling. Having another human present (in person or on video) while you do the boring thing. Sounds woo. Is real. Helps a lot.
- Time anchoring. Tying tasks to other things — "after I make coffee" instead of "at 9am" — because your brain doesn't track abstract time well.
- Built-in flexibility. Plans that survive contact with reality. Yours won't.
- Dopamine on the task itself. Music, novelty, gamification. Whatever it takes to get the brain to engage.
What doesn't:
- Generic productivity systems with a thousand rules.
- Anything requiring you to remember to check the system.
- Streaks. (Streaks work right up until you miss a day, then you spiral.)
- Willpower-based routines. Willpower is a finite, unreliable resource for an EF-impaired brain.
- Shame-based motivation. Even if it gets you moving, it costs more than it produces.
WHAT EXECUTIVE FUNCTION COACHING ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
In coaching with me, you can expect:
- A first session where we map your current life — what's working, what's burning, what's been tried, what's been abandoned, what you're avoiding, what you're hiding from yourself or your partner.
- A focus on ONE thing at a time. Not all of it. Not your "whole life." Just one nail-biting bottleneck.
- Real experiments. We try a thing, see what happens, adjust. We're not trying to find a Perfect System. We're finding the next workable thing.
- Honest conversation about why systems collapse. Sometimes the system fails. Sometimes there's an emotional reason underneath that needs therapy, not coaching.
- Accountability that doesn't slip into shame. Your coach is not your boss. I'm here to scaffold you, not surveil you.
Sessions are usually weekly or bi-weekly. Some clients come for a focused 8-12 week sprint around a specific goal (finishing the thesis, launching the business, surviving tax season). Others come longer-term, especially around big life transitions where the demands on executive function spike.
WHO BENEFITS MOST
Executive function coaching tends to be especially useful for:
- Adults with ADHD or AuDHD — diagnosed or strongly suspected.
- Late-diagnosed folks who finally have a name for it and are ready to build differently.
- Parents (especially the default parent in a household — which, statistically, is often the neurodivergent one even when both parents are neurodivergent).
- Entrepreneurs and small business owners whose brains are great at the creative parts and terrible at the admin.
- PhD candidates, graduate students, and academics drowning in self-directed work.
- Anyone in a major life transition who's noticing their old (already-shaky) systems aren't holding.
COACHING + THERAPY
A note: many of my clients do executive function coaching alongside therapy — sometimes with me, sometimes with another therapist. The two work well together. Coaching builds the external scaffolding. Therapy works on the internal patterns. Together they often produce changes that neither would alone.
YOU ARE NOT BROKEN
I want to say this explicitly because most of the people I work with have been told some version of "you're so capable, why can't you just…" for years. You can. You just need different tools. The tools exist. We can build them together.
We work with clients across Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and North Van — in person and online.
