Imagine you are a marketing manager working on a campaign launch for a client. The day before the deadline for graphic materials, you face an unanticipated challenge—your designer calls in sick and informs you that he will not be able to complete all the content before the deadline.

When confronted with a dilemma like this one, your executive functions kick in to ensure that you are able to successfully address the challenge. Instead of letting panic and anxiety set in, you take a deep breath and make a list of the content that still needs to be created and/or finalized. As you mentally review the list, you hold onto the key items, categorizing which are essential and which can wait. Next, you look through previous campaigns for the client to see if there are any assets that can be adapted or reused, which will allow you to spend time on the assets that must be created from scratch. You maintain your focus on the launch and adjust your plan when new obstacles emerge. By the end of the day, you’ve pulled enough together to satisfy the client and launch the campaign.^1,2 

In this scenario, you’ve leveraged high-level cognitive skills to address the problem, organizing your brainpower to complete complex tasks effectively, just as an executive would manage operations to lead an organization to success. Executive functioning is required when a task requires conscious thought to manage information, make decisions, and stay focused, all while self-regulating your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors so that the actions you take will contribute to your goals.³

There are three core executive functions:

• Inhibition: The ability to control your thoughts and emotions to stay calm and focused and take appropriate actions.
• Working memory: Transient storage and manipulation of information whilst working to solve a problem (like a mental notepad).
• Cognitive flexibility: The ability to address unanticipated challenges by thinking creatively and multitasking.⁴

These three core components of executive functioning allow us to reason, problem-solve, and plan, and are essential for success, whether it be in school, work, or everyday life!

Inhibitory Control: A core executive function that allows us to think before we act. Instead of being reactive, when we exhibit inhibitory control, we are able to regulate our emotions and thoughts and pause before responding. This executive function is what allows us to, say, bite our tongue when our boss says something we don’t agree with, resist the urge to scratch a mosquito bite, or stay focused on a task despite distractions.⁶

Working Memory: A core executive function that allows us to hold onto information briefly and use it to complete daily tasks, supporting our ability to progress towards our long-term goals. There are two domains of working memory: the visuo-spatial sketchpad, which involves remembering images and orientation information (like knowing how to get to our friend’s house because we recognize a tree at the end of their street), and the phonological loop, remembering verbal information like spoken or read words (such as remembering which tasks your boss says to prioritize as you jot down your to-do list).¹ 

Cognitive Flexibility: A core executive function that allows our brain to seamlessly shift from one topic or task to another, or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. Cognitive flexibility allows us to adapt our behavior based on the situation and requires us to think creatively to address challenges that arise. For example, if you are working on a product launch for a client and halfway through they tell you they want to change an aspect of the product, cognitive flexibility will allow you to shift your thinking and find ways to adjust instead of having to start over.⁴

Self-Regulation: The ability to manage our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to prevent them from interfering with our long-term goals. Thanks to self-regulation, we are able to remain motivated and keep our brains sharp, which is possible due to a combination of the three core executive functions. Inhibitory control allows us to resist impulses, working memory keeps goals in the forefront of our mind while we navigate tasks, and cognitive flexibility allows us to adapt our plans and responses in evolving environments.⁷ 
Executive Dysfunction: The inability to leverage our executive functions, which causes us to be easily distracted, have difficulty following through on a task, or be unable to control our emotional impulses and reactions. Mental health issues like ADHD, autism, and depression can contribute to executive dysfunction, as can addictions like alcohol or drug use disorder.⁸

In the 1950s, psychologists and neuroscientists began to take greater interest in the role the prefrontal cortex plays in intelligent behavior. In 1958, British experimental psychologist Donald Broadbent distinguished between “automatic” and “controlled” processes, developing a filter theory of attention. Every day, as we navigate the world, we are bombarded with information. While we can consciously decide to focus on one part of our environment (a controlled process), like watching for a red light to turn green, he suggested we also unconsciously filter the rest of the information for what is relevant to us (an automatic process), shutting out background noise and distractions. He suggested that sensory data is temporarily stored in our brains in a sensory register, which is then filtered to pass along relevant information to our short-term memory while we ignore the rest. Broadbent’s theory of attention laid the foundation for understanding how attention works, and thus executive functioning, which is all about attention management: selecting relevant information, suppressing distractions, and shifting our attention when necessary.⁹

Later, this attention theory provided the basis for System 1 and System 2 thinking, a dual-process model of cognition introduced by psychologists Michael Posner and Charles Snyder. System 1 thinking is an automatic process, describing how our brain quickly and unconsciously reacts to stimuli, like putting our foot on the brakes when we see a stop sign. System 2 thinking is a slower, more selective process that requires greater effort, which we use when we need to solve a more complex problem. For example, if there’s a closure on the route you usually drive to work, System 2 thinking will help you find an alternate route (that is, if you don’t just turn to Google Maps!). Much of executive functioning relies on System 2 thinking. 

Inhibition requires suppressing your System 1 thinking (like holding back the urge to yell at someone when you are angry), working memory requires you to use System 2 thinking to hold information in your mind and understand its relevance to your tasks or goals, and cognitive flexibility requires you to shift easily between System 1 and System 2 thinking (like paying attention to your boss while still keeping in mind what tasks you must complete). Although Posner and Snyder developed the dual-process model of the mind in the 1970s, it was behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman who used the terms System 1 and 2 in his popular 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow, taking the concepts mainstream.¹⁰

American cognitive psychologist Karl Pribram coined the term “executive function” in 1973, linking it to our prefrontal cortex. He suggested that when we can’t rely on automatic, unconscious thinking to complete tasks, we use our prefrontal cortex for executive functioning. Since then, many researchers have tried to define what exactly our executive functions are. Neuroscientist Adele Diamond developed the theory that executive functioning is built from three core skills, which we’ve previously outlined, through her research with children, which showed how we come to develop executive functioning over time. 

Throughout her career, Diamond has used the Dimensional Change Card Sort experiment, widely used in developmental psychology,  to show how young children gradually develop cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory as they mature and learn to switch between tasks, inhibit automatic responses, and hold information in mind.¹¹ In this experiment, children are given a set of cards and asked to sort them based on one rule (for example, into different colors). Halfway through the task, they are asked to change the rule that dictates the sorting (for example, based on whether the cards feature rabbits or boats). Young children will usually continue to sort according to the first criterion, as they are unable to suppress their instinct, hold the new criteria in their short-term memory, or shift their cognition to the new task.¹² 

Today, it is widely accepted that executive functioning plays a central role in success, whether it be for children in school or adults in the workplace. Executive functions are a critical and valuable skill in our fast-paced and constantly evolving world, which is why there are many interventions aimed at improving these cognitive abilities. Executive functioning is also a major focus in diagnosing and supporting conditions like ADHD, autism, and traumatic brain injuries, where impairments in working memory, inhibition, or flexibility can cause daily challenges.⁸

Donald Broadbent

A British cognitive psychologist who developed a filter theory of attention, which he used to distinguish between automatic and controlled cognitive processes. Broadbent suggested that as we move through the world, the sensory information we receive is held temporarily in our minds, which our brains then unconsciously filter to retain relevant information and ignore the rest. This is necessary because our brain has limited cognitive capacity. He used dichotic listening tasks, where participants receive different messages in each of their ears, to show that people are able to concentrate on the message they have been instructed to attend to while ignoring the other.⁹ 

Michael Posner

An American psychologist who, in collaboration with his colleague Charles Snyder, developed the first dual-process model of the mind. He is considered one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century for his contributions to understanding and modeling brain function,¹³ as he was one of the first to combine psychology with brain imaging techniques. Later in his career, Posner’s research explored how meditation could help train the adult brain and improve executive function.¹⁴

Charles Snyder

An American psychologist who developed the first dual-process model of the mind with Michael Posner. Snyder specialized in positive psychology, a branch that focuses on the positive aspects of human existence.¹⁵ He is best known for his exploration of hope, developing a theory that to hope, people must have focused thoughts about their goals, develop strategies to achieve them, and be motivated enough to reach them.¹⁶ 

Adele Diamond

An American developmental cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist who developed the theory that executive functioning is governed by three core components: inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. She has spent her career researching executive functions, understanding how both biological factors and environmental factors impact them, and showing how interventions can improve executive functioning in young children. She has been named one of the most outstanding women of the 20th century and is currently a professor of neuroscience at the University of British Columbia.¹⁷

Strong executive functioning is essential for success across many areas of life. From the classroom to the workplace to mental health interventions, the ability to regulate thoughts and behaviors can shape both short-term performance and long-term outcomes.

Education

Teaching children how to use their executive functions is crucial to help them succeed. Executive functions allow us to regulate our emotions and actions and organize and prioritize tasks. It allows us to manage our time effectively, sustain attention on a task, and work towards our longer-term goals. These skills not only need to be developed in school, but are crucial to maintaining a productive school environment. Children who are unable to regulate their emotions may yell at another student, distract the class through their lack of focus, and find it hard to move from subject to subject. Research has shown that children typically begin to develop executive functioning between the ages of 3 and 5, and has linked executive function to academic ability.¹⁸

There are many simple ways that teachers can promote the use of executive functions. Even asking children to raise their hand and wait to be called on is a way of teaching them to self-regulate, and promoting the idea of “stop-pause-think” can help get their working memory activated.¹⁹ Teaching executive functions may sound boring, but it can be fun too! In a game like musical chairs, children dance and move around all while keeping in mind the goal at hand: when the music stops, find a chair to sit in before all the seats are taken!

Workplace

Without strong executive skills, at work, you may find it difficult to start a task or complete a project, miss deadlines, have a hard time understanding others’ points of view, or fail to pay attention in meetings. Essentially, you would struggle to be a good employee.²⁰

If you manage someone who is struggling with executive functioning, there are a few ways that you can help them to improve. You can give clear expectations for workplace conduct so they understand how to behave professionally, you can assist with time management by letting them know which tasks are critical and which can wait, and you can encourage breaks to prevent them from getting overwhelmed.²¹ 

A 2017 study showed that interventions in the form of cognitive training can improve executive functions. The study put 57 middle-aged workers who were involved in repetitive and unchallenging work in a three-month training aimed at improving executive functions. The researchers found that the training improved their response rates and decreased error rates, which in turn, improved their job performance.²²

Mental Health

Executive dysfunction has been shown to correlate with various learning disabilities and mental health disorders, particularly with ADHD. A meta-analysis of 83 studies that explored the relationship between ADHD and executive functions showed that individuals with ADHD exhibited significant impairment on tasks requiring executive function, showing a stronger correlation between the disorder and executive function than with intelligence or academic achievement.²³ 

Research into what happens in the brains of individuals diagnosed with ADHD suggests that the culprit may be impaired functioning of the basal ganglia, a part of our brain primarily involved in motor control. If our basal ganglia signals to our prefrontal cortex too often and in inappropriate situations, we may become distracted or find it difficult to focus. This “noisy” basal ganglia is common in individuals with ADHD. A 2010 study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants completed a working memory task to see the difference in brain activity when teens with ADHD were on and off their medication. The results showed that when on their medication, there was less communication between the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex, which enabled the teens to perform better on the task.²⁴ 

Although executive functioning is critical for everyday life, it's far from a settled science. Researchers continue to debate what shapes it, how best to measure it, and whether we’re even interpreting executive function differences accurately across different contexts and populations.

Nature Versus Nurture

Like most cognitive functions, there’s a debate about whether nature (our biological makeup) or nurture ( our environment and interventions) plays a bigger role in executive functioning. 

The nature argument is backed up by research that shows that damage to our prefrontal cortex, as we’ll see in the case of Phineas Gage, leads to diminished executive functioning, and individuals with mental health disorders that impact brain activity, like ADHD, struggle with executive functions, particularly working memory. A study exploring how twins with the same genetic makeup perform in tasks requiring executive function went so far as to say that executive function is 99% heritable, as researchers found that there was an underlying biological/genetic factor that correlated with high executive function.²⁵

If executive functioning all came down to genetics, then it’s difficult to explain why interventions are used and are shown to improve executive function. For example, a 2020 study showed that children who attended a nature preschool program, where there is an emphasis on unstructured outdoor play, showed improved executive function after the completion of the program. This suggests there’s more at play than just our genes when it comes to executive functioning, and that the environment that we’re in has an impact.²⁶

Executive Dysfunction or Burnout?

While many people believe that deficiencies in executive functioning are a sign of mental health conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or depression, if it is not a persistent issue, executive dysfunction may actually just be a sign of burnout, a form of exhaustion resulting from long-term stress. As Felecia Etienne, co-author of Overcoming Mediocrity: Limitless Women, writes, “Executive dysfunction isn’t distraction. It’s your brain’s defense mechanism kicking in to protect itself from overwhelm.”²⁷ Research has shown that individuals experiencing burnout have compromised executive functioning.²⁸ 

When you’ve been working too hard and feel stressed and overwhelmed, your brain suffers the consequences. Continued distress could have a significant impact on your mental health, so instead, the brain slows your executive functions to reduce the mental load you bear. This may prompt you to rest or take some time off work instead of just pushing through, which can make you a more productive and valuable employee, student, and person in the long run. If you notice that your executive functions are starting to dip, it might not be a sign that you have a mental or physical deficiency, but rather your brain’s way of notifying you that you need a break.²⁸ 

Cultural & Gender Bias in Executive Functioning Research

Most studies exploring executive functioning have been conducted with educated individuals from high socio-economic backgrounds living in Western society. Some scholars argue that this creates a bias—what we view as "good executive function" (like impulse control or planning) may not be universally valued or developed the same way across cultures.

A 2013 study explored executive functioning in children ages 6-11 in four different countries: Sweden, Spain, Iran, and China. Parents and teachers were asked to rate the executive functions of children, and the researchers found that children in China were perceived to have weaker executive functions. When comparing the ratings to academic achievement, there was no relationship between these factors for the children in China. Cultural differences may have contributed to the parents’ low ratings of their child’s executive function. In China, parents often have very high expectations for their children and value silence, compliance, and strict adherence to rules. If their child fell short of those expectations, they may have rated them low, despite their behavior being normal for a child of that age.²⁹

Additionally, when testing young children, girls tend to perform better, especially when it comes to their ability to focus their attention and control their impulses. However, when these same children are studied in their adolescence, researchers do not find significant differences between genders. This suggests that the reason young boys are less focused is because it is more socially accepted for boys to be rambunctious, rather than indicating that they have lower executive function.³⁰

The Curious Case of Phineas Gage

Although the term executive functioning wasn’t coined until the 1970s, way back in 1848, the story of foreman Phineas Gage provided an interesting case study for how brain damage can impact executive function.³¹ 

Phineas Gage was a 25-year-old male working in railroad construction in the U.S. who had been described as a pleasant, hardworking man before he suffered a workplace accident. While using an iron tamping rod to pack explosives into a hole, the powder detonated, causing the rod to penetrate his skull. The rod—which was 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter and weighed 13.25 lbs (6 kg)—pierced his left cheek, destroying his eye, and passed through the left frontal lobe of his brain. Thankfully, after a treacherous couple of weeks in medical care, Gage survived the accident with minimal long-term physical damage, but his behavior and personality had changed. Although his memory and other aspects of cognition functioned as normal, gone was his upstanding character.³² His friends and acquaintances now described him as “rude,” “disinhibited,” “hyperactive,” and “no longer Gage.” His changed personality caused him to get fired from multiple jobs, but little by little, Gage reverted back to his old self after approximately four years of being irritable and profane.^31,32,33 

Unfortunately, Gage died twelve years after the accident in 1861 due to an epileptic seizure likely related to his brain injury, after which his mother donated his skull and the infamous iron rod to medicine.³² When scientists were later able to recreate the accident using neuroimaging technology in 1994, they hypothesized that when the rod pierced Gage’s prefrontal cortex, it caused him to lose his ability to use executive function, specifically inhibition, causing him to behave in ways deemed socially inappropriate.³³ 

Although unfortunate for Gage, his injury is considered one of the most influential brain studies of the 19th century, as it provided evidence that the brain is linked to personality and that lesions in specific areas can lead to mental changes. Prior to his case, the frontal lobes were not believed to have specific functions or a relation to behavior.³² Lesion cases like Gage’s show how brain damage and dysfunction can lead to behavioral changes and can be used to test relationships between brain function and behavioral and cognitive symptoms for people battling mental health conditions. Gage’s case in particular shows that rehabilitation may be possible for individuals with brain areas that are damaged or malfunctioning. 

Free Time Contributes to Executive Functioning

While there are many interventions aimed at helping children develop executive functions, a 2014 study suggests that the best way to teach children is to give them plenty of free, unstructured play time. If we provide too much structure or too many rules, children do not have the chance to learn to self-regulate or be in control of their own time and focus. 

Researchers from the University of Colorado studied 70 children between six and seven years old and asked their parents to document their behavior over a week. Parents were asked to write down which activities their child engaged in so that researchers could categorize them as “structured” or “unstructured.” 

At the end of the week, children participated in a study to test various aspects of their executive functioning. In one task, children were given a category and asked to name as many words related to the category as possible before moving on to another category, to test their cognitive flexibility. Another task, known as a flanker test, was used to test their inhibitory control. In this task, children were asked to press a button to indicate in which direction a fish at the middle of the screen was oriented. Sometimes, “flankers” (distracting stimuli) would also appear on the screen to see if children were able to ignore distractions and focus on the task at hand. To test their working memory, children played a touchscreen game where a cue (such as an image of a flower) would appear, followed by another image (like a cloud). Children were then prompted to click a happy face only if they had seen a special combo (predetermined by the researchers), which meant they had to retain the first image in their working memory while processing the second.

The researchers found that children who participated in more unstructured activities performed better across the executive function tasks. However, the study only showed a correlation: it may be that children who had strong executive functions were trusted by their parents to engage in unstructured play, while parents with children with low executive function (i.e., executive dysfunction) had to be given more guidelines.³³

Who’s In There? A Behavioral Toolkit to Enhance Self-Control

Often, when we talk about people’s ability to control their impulses (like not eating that second cookie!), we say they have strong willpower. However, psychologists suggest that there are many different ways that people can improve their self-control and that different strategies will work for different people. Though it can be hard to control ourselves in highly emotional situations, our writer Tiago Rodrigo explores various strategies to help us overcome temptation and stay focused on our long-term goals. 

Intentionality

Using our executive functions requires us to be intentional, imploring us to keep our long-term goals in mind so that we’re able to resist impulses or distractions. Some philosophers argue that intentionality is the most important aspect of our consciousness and what distinguishes us from other animals. In this article, we explore why intentionality matters and how it intersects with executive functioning (spoiler alert: our executive functions are what allow us to be intentional!). 

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