Internally Organized

Executive Functioning's Heart-Space Counterpart

Above is a guided meditation for Executive Functioning Support

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The Productive Brain

When I was 23 years old, I became both a mother and a graduate student, and three years later a single mother. From that point on, there was no stopping. While I worked on getting my therapy license, I also worked on potty-training my child. While I started a private practice, my son was home from closed schools during the pandemic.

I’m really good at executive functioning. My friend told me once I had an “efficiency gremlin” inside me. Always on the lookout for what needs doing, I’ll pick up every task I can between the other tasks already in motion.

I can do a lot.

It’s not a me thing. Modern life spins on the axis of productivity. We are all enfolded into the matrix of busting ass. The grind.

Even though I can manage my complex and demanding life, with the help of calendars, timers, binders, lists, and routines, the expense to my brain is enormous. There are days when I feel like a frayed wire about to snap. Am I good at executive functioning, or am I actually really bad at it — straining every nerve ending in my brain to make it work? Ironically, it’s a quick toggle from executing well to hanging on for dear life.

Even brains that are highly organized struggle in an executive-functioning obsessed world.

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Meant to Be Human

Sometimes juggling tasks feels exciting and fun, but what more does it mean to be human?

Life’s truest moments are not about organizing and thinking. They are about being with life and loved ones. A baby is born, a grandparent dies, a tragedy happens, or a contest is won — these are the events that call us to presence, to the real, juicy essence of life.

Even in more benign moments, like walking from your car into the office, does the crisp cloudy sky catch your attention? Do you feel the sun’s warmth on your skin?

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Manager Identity

The truth is that many brains don’t organize well at all. For those with executive functioning difficulties, life can feel like a cruel joke — one long list with shifting expectations. Sadly, starting in elementary school, children are measured by their working memory, time management, task initiation, and attention-switching. These values come before play, exploration, and creativity.

Cultural executive functioning values pit humanity against productivity.

If an open mind is portrayed as a blank canvas with room for beautiful marks and spontaneous joy, a mind driven by organization is a painting with little empty space.

Too much executive functioning begins to define a person by tasks and obligations. Internally, a running dialogue of “What do I need to get done” dominates. One thought after the other leads to a day of thinking and organization — a brain that is a management machine and a life that feels fragile and forlorn, a capitalist venture.

We were not born to manage tasks.

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Your Inherent Worth

“To free yourself from suffering is possible,” the Buddha said. And it doesn’t happen by erasing society and getting rid of all tasks and expectations. It happens anyway — right inside the belly of the beast, while you have a million things on your plate.

Organizing yourself internally collects your energy back in the heart.

You don’t need to stop thinking, planning, or managing. You need to remember to also have moments of joy, quiet, and wonder. Sorrow, grief, and rage are also human moments beyond executive functioning.

That’s the catch, isn’t it? Executive functioning, organizing, and planning can feel tidy. Control is delicious — one might say addicting. You’ll certainly be rewarded by society, whether in words of affirmation or in money.

But what feeds your soul?

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I’ve always been a dreamer, wanting to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life” (Henry David Thoreau).

You too?

It’s not an easy path, but I wouldn’t have it any other way