Episode 82: Sarah Ward | Executive Functioning Skills Skills for You and Your Children

(upbeat music) - I'm joined today by Sarah Ward. Sarah, thank you so much for talking with me today. - I'm so excited to be here. I'm so honored that you invited me to hang out with you in chat today. - I think some of the best literature and some of the best trainings I've gone to are like somebody who could put a concept into terms where their audience says, yeah, I've been thinking that just didn't have the ability to articulate it. And you're articulating it for them. That's always a nice touch. And I feel like that's what you've done for a lot of people. My colleagues being some of them. And then, you know, of course I Googled you after that. I don't know if that's scary or not. But that seems to be the review is like people, you're helping people, especially educated people who want to do well, understand and make use of some of the executive functioning concepts that you talk about. So, I'd be interested to know a little bit about you and how you got into, let's, I'll let you explain it all into what you do and what is it that you do? - Sure, so I am a speech and language pathologist which always surprises people because they say, oh, I have nothing wrong with my speech or, you know, I don't have a speech problem. I don't do the speech end. The speech and language pathologist always have that strong background in language and cognition. And I initially started off my practicum and training at Mass General Hospital where I worked with clients that had traumatic brain injury. And it's very common when you have a brain injury that you can lose your executive function skills. You know, typically, you know, our frontal lobes, they don't, you know, completely house the executive skills but certainly a lot of the cognitive abilities of the frontal lobe are used by the executive system. And so a lot of times clients who've had a brain trauma, whether it's from a fall or car accident, et cetera, lose those executive function skills. And many people know that I have a husband that has a severe traumatic brain injury. So I lived with someone who had and lost their executive skills. And my daughter who is quite dyslexic and has really significant ADHD was lagging in the development of her executive skills. So the combination of being in a situation where I had a daughter who wasn't developing executive skills on a husband who'd lost his executive skills, that first took me down the path of, all right, let me make sure I really understand what executive skills are. But the part then that really happened was it made me crazy when I would go to a professional development and they'd spend an hour telling me what executive function was and didn't tell me what to do about it. So that was really sort of the instigator for saying, we have got to have as many practical strategies as possible. And then quickly I would say the other thing is, is that truly, I mean, I've been in the field for goodness gracious almost 30 years now. And for the longest time, we were defining what executive function was. And I would say it really has not been until the last probably eight to 10 years that there's just been this huge growth in truly understanding ways to not just compensate for executive deficits, but to truly bring about some neurologic change. And I think that's where our work is really focused at, is bringing about neurologic change, really helping individuals truly develop the skill, not just compensate for it. - Right, strategies, right. So as an SLP, I suppose you would be faced with clientele who they have challenges. And so maybe the ask of you at the sun level is, can you help these people compensate for their challenges? And you're saying you have that, you've developed that in your own life and in your work, but also if you use these things, they can comport to just later in life, just skills that you can bring with you lifelong. - Absolutely, because the fact of the matter is, is that just like people have to pay attention and everybody uses their executive function skills every single day. And it's not just, you know, certainly there are disorders that lend themselves where executive function is more challenging. And understanding that it presents differently in some of those different disorders, I think is really important, because it does change a little bit the direction in which we support those individuals, whether they're children or adults. I mean, I certainly, my case that I have the gamut from everything from, you know, five years old to 75 years old, when I work with all ages and in between. But this is something that all day long, you are having to engage your executive system. And so people just have to be learning these skills. And the thing is, is that in school, you apply it to certainly some aspects of academic, but in school, you're applying it to problem solving and organization and routines and time management. And then as you get older, you're applying it to work or college. And then I have a lot of clients, it's interesting that we'll reach out to me that they're doing okay, and they've learned some of these skills and they're mastering, and then they will be married, and then they have to sort of adjust a little bit to be able to hang in a partnership and a relationship, and then they're doing okay, and then they call me back because now they're a parent, and all of a sudden that hosts a whole new demand on your executive functioning skills. So it's something we have to do all the time, and it changes in shifts, you know, I suppose with the different kinds of parameters of age too. (laughs) - So I'm gonna, I have to save this question for a little bit later because it would only, you'll see why the order wouldn't make sense, but I'm gonna bring it out so it's not hidden in my pocket. I am, it's super interested in, so you have a lot of times in schools, say, but, and by the way, my span of clientele is five to 75 as well, so kids in schools and then adults who have addiction issues, and there are some skills you can teach, a lot of times within the walls of a school that aren't actually preparing people for life, and so something I'm gonna be interested in in the next 20 minutes or something is thinking about whatever strategies that you'll talk about, how do we make sure that people aren't wedded to the people offering them the strategy per se, and that they're actually learning and mapping that on to experience. So, but first, I am interested, and can you talk a little bit about executive functioning? What is executive functioning and what are the areas in which you're working on and developing? - You bet. So, most people, when they sort of start talking about executive function, especially in school, they talk a lot about it being that thing around organization and time management, in planning, and recording your homework and getting your homework turned in, and all of those things, or when you get older, being able to show up to work on time, et cetera, and those are what I consider to be the outputs of the executive system. And really what the executive system is, is all based upon this ability to have what we call visual forethought essentially. And my favorite example is, okay, sure we're hanging out in this podcast, and you're talking to me, but I guarantee that while you're talking to me, or maybe your audience is listening, they're running a movie through their head, and the movie through their head goes, okay, and this is like one of my favorite examples. As soon as I hang up with Sarah, I have got to run into the laundry room, I've got to throw the wash into the dryer, because I need those shorts to go to the gym tonight. And I'm going to take the hamburger out of the freezer, because I was going to make burgers tonight, and then I'm going to walk the dog around the block, come back, and I need to pull up that file and prepare a treatment lesson for a kid. And then you go, oh my gosh. That child that I'm working with this afternoon is my tricky kid. I need to have a lot of things prepared. I can't take the dog for a long walk, I'll have to take the dog for a short walk. So you're able to run a plan A and a plan B in your head, based upon seeing how those things will play out. Now, individuals who don't do this, and we can talk about why individuals don't create the movie. And back up for one minute. If you do run that movie, then what happens is the minute you and I hang up, you're headed right to the laundry room. And the minute you leave the laundry room, you go right to the kitchen. And as soon as you leave the kitchen, you go to the mudroom and grab the dog and out the door. You go and you know already in your mind, you're gonna take the short loop to the left instead of the long loop to the right, you know, whatever it is. But if you don't do this, then you hang up with me, you check your email, you might look at Instagram, you go to the bathroom, you come back to your desk, you go upstairs and make a cup of coffee. - Now you're talking about me. - And then what happens is you get to that tricky kid and you don't have the lesson prepared. You go to go to the gym and dang it, your shorts are sopping wet in the washing machine and you come home and there's no hamburger to make burgers. You know what I mean, I mean, those are the things. So the fact of the matter is, is that ability to create mental imagery is a part one of executive function. And is that ability to really visualize? But the part two is that you have to visualize over greater distances of space and time. So you can visualize what's my plan right after this podcast, what's my plan for dinner tonight? It's Friday, you know, and tomorrow, what's coming up this weekend and what's going on for work next week that I need to be thinking of. Oh, and by the way, two weeks from now is Christmas and I have some Christmas presents plus there's that Christmas party I need to go to. You know, you're constantly like shifting back and forth along that mental time space horizon and planning from that. [BLANK_AUDIO] In various disorders, individuals have trouble with the visualization and the planning over time. And so our focus is how do we develop individual's ability to do that? And I'm talking on a bit, but I find it quite fascinating when we think about individuals with attention deficit disorder, Russell Barkley, who's really considered the other of the research on attention deficit disorder, will tell you the worst thing we ever did was call attention deficit disorder, attention deficit disorder. Because I'm sure you've all met someone with attention deficit disorder that can really focus when they need or want to. But individuals with attention deficit disorder, it's often an inability to persist with attention over time towards a future goal. So if I have ADHD, and I'm holding up my visual thought level, because that's what I do, I'm a speech therapist. You've got this thought in mind, but when you have ADHD and your brain, your thoughts turn away from your mental thought bubble, it's like that mental thought bubble drops out. And now when you shift back, what was I doing? And that's why people with ADHD might be sitting at their computer to pay a bill online, and they need to get the checkbook to enter the routing number, and then they go, and they see the paper towel out on the counter, and realize, oh, gosh, I've got to move that down the hall. And then they're shifting from thing to thing. So whereas if you contrast that, and I find this really fascinating too, with individuals with autism spectrum disorder, there is just a really interesting groundbreaking study that came through that they did a 20 year review of all of the research on individuals with autism spectrum disorders, ability to have this episodic for thought to visualize the future. And the fact of the matter is, is that I'm present Sarah, and future Sarah has to pack because I'm traveling tomorrow to go out of the state for an extended period of time for work. And future Sarah doesn't want to miss her flight tomorrow morning, because that would be terrible. So future Sarah has to think about what's the rush hour traffic going to be like? What is it going to be in TSA security? Will it be heavy or not? In other words, present Sarah has to step into the shoes, and I have to have theory of mind of my future self. Well, this huge research study showed that many individuals with autism have trouble having theory of mind of their future self. They can envision a future space. They can envision other people, but they don't really step into the shoes of their future self. So I find that really compelling. And that's something we have to really address with individuals with any level of spectrum disorder. What do you think accounts for that, the study that you're talking about, the inability or eliminated ability to map themselves onto the future and think about what they're doing next? I think it's related to two specific things. The first is that ability to see yourself in a future space and time is something called episodic forethought. And you recognize the word episode. And we've always known that we have episodic memory. Episodic memory is autobiographical memory. It's your memory for yourself in a past episode of your life. So it's what you remember that you did on last Thanksgiving. It's remember what you did at a birthday party. It's what you remember that you did last year's holidays. It's remembering, oh my gosh, that monster snowstorm where I had to shovel the driveway and the snow blow or blew out, you know, I don't know whatever it is. And when we have passed episodic memory, we generally re-experience that. But just as if I said what was on last night's episode of your favorite TV show, we generally start by saying, oh, it was all about the character X. Episodic memory usually centers around who the central character is. I was here at Thanksgiving. I had to shovel the drive. We know that episodic biographical memory is poor in individuals with spectrum disorders. So I think one reason it's poor is that not only do they not see themselves in the center of past memories, they just don't see themselves in the center of that. The second thing is that their memories may be more focused on minor details of the situation. So that might have been more like, I don't know, something related to the snow and a minor detail about how there was a huge snow drift by the mailbox instead of the larger gestalt of the experience. So that's my-- I have some other heavy hypotheses about that, but I think that's a big component of it. I fall somewhere on that spectrum. You're right about calling ADHD, ADHD. There's something about it. Disorder is in the name. So if you're talking about DSM criteria, the fact that it causes impairment and distress somewhere in my life somehow-- OK, that's true. Although I feel like I've outgrown those things in some sort of natural way, that's the part where I'm saying you've helped me put words to the experience. And I've had both of those problems for different reasons at different times. So people will say, for someone with ADHD, a lot of people who say they have ADHD aren't writing books and then conducting therapy and then working in a school and then being a musician and all of those things. And professionally, if you don't have any attention, how do you have time to do all that stuff, which I don't really know the answer? And on the other hand, sometimes, for me, it's sensory. And so the more or less comfortable I feel in a moment or in a memory with the sensory input that I'm facing, makes me more or less able it seems to create future planning. So I mean, for me, right now, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. Although there is the anticipation of I'm talking to a person, I'm going to publish this. There's nothing coming in at me right now that makes me think, I can't think. I wouldn't be able to project into the future until I'm comfortable. And then if I have a memory of a thing that I'm planning, I might not be able to access that memory very well until I've experienced something like the plan. I have to work backwards. I have to do it half-hazardly first, and then be comfortable with it, and then plan it. So all of that's fascinating to me. And it sounds like you're hitting on all points of spectrum. So I'm curious about what some strategies are to combat that both in the now and for the temporal context that you are describing to people need to generate. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So there are many strategies. And it certainly, while I would say that sometimes it depends upon age, the fact of the matter is not really, because we sort of take those strategies and just age them up if you will. So one of the first strategies, of course, is to really help people travel, if you will, that mental spatial timeframe. And how do you envision what am I going to look like this afternoon? And what am I going to look like tonight? Where do I see myself tomorrow? What's coming up after that? And when we think about traveling that mental spatial timeframe, there are ways in which we certainly do that. But every single one of those is always a prompt for what we call mind-miming. And I love-- and the ability to envision the future is called mimetic processing. And that episodic for that mimetic processing. And I love the fact that it has the word mime in it, because when you think about miming, if I said mime brushing your teeth, you would gesture for me brushing your teeth. If I said mime for me brushing your hair, you would gesture brushing your hair. Now, if I said mime for me going downstairs and getting a pack of paper towel and bringing it back up stairs and going to the laundry room, you would show me. You would say, well, I would go down the stairs and through the door into the garage. And it's in the right-hand corner. And I'd get that big thing of paper towel and I'd bring it back upstairs. And it would go on the counter to the right of the kitchen, whatever it is. And that motion where we're gesturing has a very specific name. It's called representational co-thought gesture, which is just a big name, but essentially said co-thought. It accompanies our thoughts. It's what allows us to feel ourselves moving along that timeframe. So one of the easiest and best tricks for supporting individuals is more typically people will say, tell me what your plan is. Tell me what you're going to do. Or parents and teachers say this to kids all the time. Now, it's time for bed. Tell me what you need to do to get ready for bed. And one of the most easy, most magical tricks that you can do is don't say, tell me. Replace it with the word show me. Show me your plan to be ready for bed. Show me your plan for breakfast. Show me your plan to pack your bag. Because the minute you say the word show, it forces the engagement of the motor neuron pathway. And we know that action is embodied. And so even if I say to you, OK, show me your plan to pack your bag. And I want the child to say, well, I'm going to go down the hall into the mud room And I'm going to, you know, put my coat in my bag and then bring my bag up and put my lunch in my bag. Now, those of you that are listening would see that I'm gesturing and using my hand to indicate the motion of where I'm going. But even if a child doesn't reach out their hand and say, "I'm going to go here and I'm going to go there and show you," the fact that you said the word "show" gets their brain's motor system thinking. So that's one great trick. Yeah, can I just reflect on that? It's not that you haven't said. I'm going to reflect it, though, that you said "show" and that can mean whatever a person interprets show, whether that's verbally, letting you know verbally what that will look like, or whether that turns it into a kinesthetic ask, or if it means it's now a drawing, they have the reins of that. You've replaced, you know, the "make me a list" question with "show" which means they're, right, it's engaging the part of their mind that they now they visualize and they're thinking about how to help you visualize. Correct. I love that you captured it that way. That's exactly right. And the part that I'll add on to that, which is the second is, you know, we were talking about the fact that every single one of us at some point is going to experience a novel experience. And so now I use the word "novel loosely" in the sense that if you're getting dressed this morning, you don't know what the future is going to be like, technically it's novel because it's ahead of you. And what we do is we can think about future situations. So if I'm getting dressed and I'm like, oh boy, it's going to be rainy today. Or if I'm getting dressed and I'm going to a future situation in which I have an interview for a new job, or maybe there's a future situation in which I am going to be leaving work and I'm going to go into Boston with my friends tonight. So what happens is is most of us when it comes to visualization, you know, it's not like you're standing there brushing your teeth and having an image of yourself naked. And then you're going to picture what clothes you're going to put on. It's rather like you have an image of the routine of clothing. Like you see kind of a blurry image, if you will, in your mind's eye, if I've got clothes on my upper body and clothes on my lower body, and I have some accessories like a bag. And then your brain pulls up that future thought bubble context of it's raining out. So if it's going to be raining, then how does that change what the shirt looks like? It'll be long sleeve. And the added accessory might be an umbrella. If I'm being getting an interview for a job, then I probably shouldn't wear the t-shirt. I should probably wear the button up to collar shirt. And I should probably tuck it in and have a belt. And if I'm being interviewed, then I should probably shape my face. I don't know whatever it might be. But what happens is is that we use future context, which is considered to be situational intelligence or situational awareness to guide our planning in the moment. And so it's very helpful to help individuals understand the features of a given situation and then to flex those features based upon a future context. So instead of just even saying if I was going to show a picture of to someone, okay, here's a picture of you being dressed for school. Now go get dressed. Yes, that's helpful. And it's much more helpful than, and we want it to be a photograph, not clip art. We really want them to see it. But as an added level of that, it's very, very helpful to say to that person, okay, in this photograph, we call this feature blocking, what are the features of you being dressed and ready to go? Well, my body is ready, which would encompass my hair and my teeth and my face being washed or shaved, depending upon what the situation is. I have clothing, I have my materials, and I have shoes. So if it's a rainy day, then my shoes would become boots. If I'm going to a job interview, then my shoes are going to become like I have to wear dockers, which is a terrible order. That's not the one I'm looking for. Like my dress shoes. Whereas if I'm going to basketball practice, I need my high tops. And you know, we constantly flex that depending upon future situations and contexts. And so I think the other thing that's really critical when we're supporting individuals with executive function is that we're not just telling them, okay, here's the plan for this. It's that we're giving them the features of planning so that they can flex those features depending upon a future situational context, which really reduces anxiety for people who don't like anticipating novelty. And so that's it's a very helpful approach. What does that look like in terms of what you're creating for them visually? Or is this something that you're thinking you're talking people through? I'll leave it at that. I have more thoughts, but sure. So I think I could explain this in two ways. And let's give a more sophisticated example. So I'll tell you a little story. I worked with a gentleman who is a professional. And he is a CFO of a major company in downtown New York, extremely successful intellectually at his financial skills. And his executive functions are extremely challenged. I mean, he's the guy that's late to every meeting. He's often missing emails and all sorts of things. But he's your numbers guy. I mean, he's just he's brilliant. And so I was talking with him and he was in his office downtown in New York. And I said, so I see here, you know, we were looking at his calendar. And I want to talk about calendars again for a minute because he looked at the calendar and I said, okay, so I see here that it's, you know, we know it's one o'clock now. And I see that you have this or whatever it was like, it was like 1245. And I said, our session will end at one. And I see on your calendar that you have a meeting at two. Where's that meeting? And he's like, oh, it's, you know, basically on the other side of New York City. I said, so if we mind that and we visualize that, that means as soon as you hang up with me, you will need a few minutes to just check in with any emails you've lost. You'll probably need to go to the bathroom. It's just around noon, so you'll probably want to grab something to eat and drink. Then you'll have to pack up your stuff. You will have to go down the elevator of the skyscraper into the parking garage. You're going to have to get your car, run it around the few levels of the parking garage, drive all the way across Manhattan because you need your car to then get home later. Then you're going to have to find parking in that building. You're going to have to park your car and then go up the elevator all the way up to that building. Probably again, maybe go to the bathroom and get there and check in so that you're actually there a few minutes before two o'clock. He looks at me and he goes, the meeting's at two. He goes, I never even, I didn't even think about any of those things. The reason why I share that is, he knew he had to get there. He's like, yeah, I would have figured I'd get me out and leave it like a corner of. Any of these things like clocks and calendars, we always share, there's simply prompts for mind mining. They prompt you to run the movie through your head. If you're not running the movie through your head, it's a challenge. Let me come back to the example of features. We have to teach then individuals the features of the kinds of time. For him, transitions between meetings and activities, the features of those are fueling your body, taking care of your body, packing and transportation. If I'm just going to a meeting in the conference room, one level down, the transportation is simply my body walking down the stairs. If I'm going to a meeting here, the transportation I have to consider might be the subway, but I still might have to walk to the subway and get on the subway and get there. Or if I'm going to be an Uber, then I might want to consider pre-ordering the Uber, whatever it might be. If it's fueling my body, where does that meeting fall between 9, noon and 6? Does it matter? Anyway, I mean, I hope that's helpful because it's what allows people to have cognitive flexibility and understand how will this experience be? And our favorite phrase is the same, but different. Same but different is really makes you flexible. What are your favorite ways of prompting people to think about those nuances and their scheduling? Because now it's like, it sounds like with some prompting, you've allowed people to, as you say, run the movie through their mind. They can see some of the elements that would either get in the way or be helpful to them, things that they need to consider when making a plan. I've heard you, I understand the concept, get ready, do, done, which I love. And I think I've seen a sophisticated lower developmental level of, let's say, a kid getting ready to go outside, and that could look different in any season. So running the gamut, what are some of the ways, depending on the situation, depending on the person that you make those visualizations and make the connection? You bet. So when we're working with students, generally probably from about middle school on up and where they're making the transition to really using some form of a calendar or a planner system. We have an acronym called ACE Your Time. And we get kids to learn and understand that there are different kinds of time. So the ACE stands for any appointments or activities that are at a specific time. So, you know, if I have school, that's at a specific time. If I have soccer practice, that's at a specific time. If I'm an adult, I have a meeting at a specific time. Then we have to assign a time for where we're going to do things like homework or paperwork or chores or errands, etc. The C in ACE Your Time stands for Chill, like where you're going to chill out, be creative, relax, do whatever. And the E is what we call the extras. And the extras are the most important one, actually. So the extras are all those things that I was just telling you, extra, anything you need extra time for associated with those other things that you've scheduled. And so the extras are time to shift gears. So, for example, when you hang up with this podcast with me, you're going to need a few minutes to shift gears, which means at the dog, go to the bathroom, grab yourselves a little water, shake it off, and then get back to work. I mean, you're not just going to hang up with me and be productive immediately. If you do, that's awesome. But generally, people don't. The other extras, of course, are extra time to drive to and from somewhere or transportation. The general routine. So, for example, if you're going to go to the gym, the extras that go with that are the 5, 10, 15 minutes you need to change into your gym clothes and pack protein powder and get out the door. But the most important extras for lots of people are what we call the goes withs and the mavies. And the goes withs and the mavies are the expected but hidden time factors. So, even if my doctor's appointment is at one, what goes with the doctor's appointment is it never starts at one. You might have to wait. I live outside of Austin and it takes me 25 minutes to drive to Logan Airport. But what goes with rush hour traffic at 6 a.m. is twice the time. It'll take me an hour to get to the airport at 6 a.m. instead. If you go out to dinner on a Saturday night, what goes with that is maybe having to wait for a table. But a lot of our students don't account for that. So, to just give you a super practical example, some kids are like, why don't have a football practice until 4. Okay, great. But what goes with that is that you have to be in the locker room, get all of your football gear on and the football field happens to be on the other side of the soccer field, which means you need all that time to get into the locker room, get yourself changed, walk all the way across the soccer field and then be on the field at 4. And these may seem obvious. And the thing is, is that kids may know that, but they don't mime it and plan the time for it. And so, pulling it all together, we teach kids to ace their time by understanding the kinds of time. So, that's one of the big ways with some of the upper grade students. And we do use Get Ready Do Done with all ages. That's super interesting. It's funny. I'm trying to put myself in your story there. I was trying to think, which archetype do I fall into? I get to conferences, I get to meetings, I get to I'm a musician, I get to my shows for load-in hours before the thing starts. I think I do it in reverse order where like any distress in my life probably comes from getting places too early because for the same reason, like if I had a balanced view, if I gave myself the opportunity to have a balanced view of what did you call them? The babies and the goes with. The goes withs and the babies, yeah. Right, of my life. I could probably budget a better amount of time to be somewhere early, like I like to be, but not have so much time in between to either be bored or try to think about how to be productive. And so, I'm that's interesting either way. No matter, you know, it's it's not that doesn't mean that I have like extra executive function. It means I take the limitations of my executive functioning and I just compile them together and put it on the other end of things. Oh, I totally appreciate this. It's so funny because my husband is forever annoyed by me because I travel extensively for work and I am that person that if my flight's at nine, I will get to the airport at seven. And he's just like you don't need to be there at seven. But in my mind, I think, well, maybe there will be traffic on the way. I could get there and maybe I'm going to be in that terminal where I'm going to have to go down and all the way across and it really or take two trains to get there depending upon where I am. Maybe there will be a really big line in the TSA. If I get there and my flights delayed, maybe I could catch the earlier flight. Like I can run all the scenarios through my mind. And then I know if I get there and I'm there two hours ahead and I don't really need to be there, I always have other work to do. So there is this thing where it can go both ways. You're exactly right. It can be planning to the extreme and it can also be kind of an absence of planning. And I think sometimes there's a happy medium in between both of those. I have a couple of practical questions for you. There are, I've threatened you that these questions will come up and I'm interested. First of all, I love your visuals. I mean, I've gone through tons of slides now, visuals that you've created. And I don't know if I've said it already before, since we've recorded, but I have trouble with the idea, this is not your idea, but with people's idea that if somebody needs a visual in their mind, the elements of their story that are salient and that we're supposed to be helping them with that, that a visual is necessarily the what like one visual, I'm showing you equals one visual in your mind. I think there's a bad idea that your visual is an exact mirror rather than there are ways we can prompt somebody to be thinking visually so that they have those elements in their mind. And so I'm curious about some of the different strategies that you use to help people visualize. You gave one, you like simply using the switch of terms, show me rather than what will it look like. So I do you have, I'm sure you have mountains of strategies maybe more than you can explain to me in the next 10 minutes, but oh no, there's one that's several, but one that's just a super fast trick that we use all the time with again, individuals of all ages, it's not limited. Actually has a name, it's called psychological essentialism, but the trick is is that so oftentimes parents, educators, et cetera spouses, we tell people actions go upstairs and brush your teeth, pack your bag, clean up the rug, make your lunch, sweep the back deck, whatever it is. Now the problem is, as the adult, when I say go upstairs and make your bed, brush your teeth, pack your bag, or in school, whatever it is, you know, read that chapter and do that math worksheet. I'm actually the one doing the visualization of the action. I'm the one visualizing you packing your bag because I'm telling you go pack your bag. So the problem is, again, I'm prompting that student, but I'm the one visualizing the action and typically the response you're going to get is, okay, but they may not actually be visualizing carrying it out. So what we do and the magic trick is to turn the action instead into a noun label and we call this job talk or the urge strategy, you put ur on the end of everything. So I can say hey kiddo, I need you to go upstairs and be a toothbrush. Because the minute I say toothbrush, what I'm essentially triggering is your sense of role or job. In this moment in time, what kind of time is this? What's my job? My job is to be a toothbrush. That immediately triggers you to be like, well, what does a toothbrush or do? What is a toothbrush or look like? And it's funny. I think about this so simplistically from the talk about job talk. When kids are little, we teach jobs and professions all the time. Here's a doctor and what are the doctor's tools? Has a stethoscope in the doctor works in a hospital and here's the fireman and his tool is the fire truck and his fire hose and he works at the firehouse. Well, it's no different if you're a toothbrush or you're upstairs and your tool is your toothbrush and toothpaste. If I say I need you to be a bed maker, a bag packer, a counter cleaner, a back deck sweeper, I mean, put her in the end of everything, a chapter summarizer. If we're a rolling dice, I need you to be a dice roller. I need you to be a word maker, a letter matcher. I mean, it doesn't matter. There's an amazing book by Elizabeth Sauter, S-A-U-T-T-E-R, called Make Social Learning Stick. And she is a lot related to that. It's a very good resource. But it is just an amazing trick to help individuals create the imagery of, okay, and the fact of the matter is, it's a great trick for you, too, because if you're going to see, I mean you, meaning people in general, if If I sit down at my computer and I really need to get my, you know, tail end and gear and I need to get to work. And I'm going to do something, sitting down and saying, oh, you know, I really need to work on writing my book. Okay. Well, that's so broad. That's not really giving my job. But for me to sit down and say, okay, it's five o'clock and between five and four forty five, you know, I might say, I'm going to be an author, but specifically, I'm going to be an image creator. And you know, just knowing like that is the role that I am going to play between five and five forty five, it's a great way to do to kind of help you mono task a little bit. Oh, I love that because you're using a psychological trick that's sort of ubiquitous, but putting it in language that's appropriate for everybody. I mean, when I'm thinking about where I'm working with adult clients or facing addiction struggles, maybe it's somebody who wants to like lose a ton of weight or something. And you think, alright, what does a healthy person, what would be the routine or habits of a healthy person? That's sort of, it engages that same kind of trick where you think it a healthy person would do this and I'm going to take on, you know, the task of what this healthy person would do. I'm going to be this healthy person today. I'm going to be a meal prepper. Right. So you're right, so you're quickly turning that just by the verbiage to just, you know, the nomenclature issue. It's fascinating. This is the current climate is probably not the best to chat about it, but there have been multiple recurring groundbreaking studies on this approach where they would invite individuals into the community, into like a community facility, and they would split the room in half. And in one half of the room, they would say, I'm so glad you are here tonight. I'm running for office. I would love if you would vote for me. Don't forget your driver's license next Tuesday and here's all the literature on what I'd like to do for the community. Please vote for me. And then the same politician would go into the second room of individuals and say voters, I'm so glad you're here today. As a voter, I really hope you would do this. Voters don't forget your driver's license. And the difference was 64% of the individuals called voters showed up because when you are given a title and you're given a role, it's like you own the role. I'm a voter. I got to show up as a voter. A voter needs a driver's license, a voter needs to read the literature. And if you look up those that, if you're a person who's interested in research, that's where a lot of this comes from. Are these studies that were repeated over and over by calling someone a voter? Then the second part of that, that's extremely interesting. And obviously, if anyone listened to both of the things that you said side by side, you know what speaks to you more. I mean, I checked out the first example already. So yes, personalizing it. And then what you just described as you're an author, and I'm going to be an author, but you use the same trick to get you to be the err of whatever salient task you need within being an author. So you're starting to get practice and embedding the concepts within each other. Yes. Yeah. It's a magic trick. It really is. So my last, and I'm trying to use my executive functioning skills to get us out of here on time, while still being interesting, hopefully. Absolutely. My last thing is there are more or less levels of buy-in to the concept by an individual, I'm sure. And by buy-in, I mean, an interest in engaging the skill in the first place. So I would imagine that this isn't you don't use a trick and try it again and again, especially if it's not working. You use a range of tactics or helpful prompts for people. That's the most difficult or something that maybe people aren't thinking about. For instance, I'm thinking about a kid who I work with who certainly will benefit from several of your techniques, ways of visualizing things that not us visualizing it for him, but him visualizing it and taking ownership of it. But there's a general in life problem of motivation, you know, any effort is too much effort. So that's just an example, but I'm wondering if you have, you can think of examples like that and how you've ameliorated the unwillingness to participate in it or the ways in which the visualization effort just didn't click right away. I do see that I think holistically, I have a lot of students to where motivation is extremely challenging and I think that I feel like sometimes we grossly overused, misused the word motivation a little bit in this day and age. In fact, I think I just did. It's fun. Do you say that? Yeah, I mean, and I have a lot of thoughts on that, and good ones actually, but I do find that there are right now for so many of my students, the poll of social media, the poll of the computer, the poll of that. It's very, very hard to tear yourself away from that and lose track of time and not even realize, oh my gosh, you know, I had good intentions to do my homework and now two hours has passed and I'm up late and I'm tired and I don't want to do it. That's one thing. And then sometimes I also find that for some of my students, there's this sense of it's hard for me and if I do it once, people will think that I can do it and then they're going to expect that I can do it all the time. Do you ever see that? Like, oh my gosh, that's like, and that's really scary. Like, I don't want suddenly everyone thinks that, okay, now I can just do this all the time because I just, I can't, it's, it's very hard. It's hard. So I guess what I would say is that one other big component is motivation often comes from the imagination of the future and I really like that. And your motivation depends upon how close or far your future is. So for example, if you put a piece of chocolate cake in front of me and I'm trying to lose weight and I'm trying to lose weight for my anniversary in May, well, May is so far out that I'm like, whatever, I'll eat the chocolate cake, you know, like it's just, you know, I'm not that motivated by it because that's so far out of my window. Similarly, if I'm going to Hawaii next week on my beach vacation and I really want to lose 10 pounds by Monday and you put chocolate cake in front of me, I'm not going to lose 10 pounds by Monday. So forget it. I like the chocolate cake. Do you know what I mean? I mean, there's something about that imagination of the future. So part of it is is I think that you have to help individuals connect to an emotion of a reasonable future and to just make it boil it down to a very simple example, if a student comes into my office and I know, for example, baby from their teacher, their parent that they absolutely have to get a biology research paper done. And I know this is the kid is going to be like, no, I don't. They don't know what they're talking about because they just don't want to do it. I will start by saying, imagine you leave my office and you're done with your work and you go home from my office. What do you see yourself doing this afternoon that you're really looking forward to? I want to go long boarding. I just, I really want to, you know, long board, they just paved this whole new driveway near my house and I just can't wait to take the long board out. Okay. So our motivation right now, our goal is operation after school long board. So what will it look like for you to be able to go long boarding? Well, I can't have any homework. Okay. We need to do to wipe that homework out so that you can go long boarding. But if I had started with you need to get your biology research paper done, and here's, and here's how we'll break it into tasks, right? Right. Right. So a vision of the motivation at the beginning, you know, this is in reverse order. Yeah. Yeah. And really connecting to the emotion of it, I think, is really powerful. It seems on the other hand, and this will be the last thing, but it seems on the other hand that there is a, there's an element of connection that has to happen if you're introducing a concept like this, like you have to anticipate, even if you're not going to get it perfect, what the scale is or what the frame is that a person can imagine the future in. So there's the huge motivator, maybe the thing that seems salient to them that isn't to you when you're talking about a biology project, and you put that front and center. That's your carrot. I mean, that's what you're thinking about getting done. And then there's like the ability to do a, to do a task in general. So like rather than flooding a person or overwhelming a person with constant visuals, or maybe they feel bombarded, it's, this is about how much I anticipate you could think about now. And so I'm going to give you this and see how successful we are. I don't know. I'm just. No, well, you're exactly right. And I'll, I'll give you a quick story. And so Pierce Steele wrote a book called the procrastination equation. And his story is very funny because he absolutely, his goal was to get a PhD. He wanted a PhD in psychology. And he had terrible, terrible problems with procrastination. And so he jokes that he got a PhD in procrastination, because he did that's what he did. He researched it is procrastination was so terribly research procrastination he got his PhD and and all of his dissertation was about procrastination the whole thing. But I definitely love the procrastination equation because it really is truly like a mathematical equation of all of those factors of the ability to understand how far into the future is a task. What is your sense of ability and capability of doing the task? Because if you said to me, okay, you know, how motivated are you to climb Mount Everest? I may be as motivated ever, but if I really don't believe in my ability to climb Mount Everest, it doesn't matter how great of a plan you give me how emotionally I want it. If I truly know of myself, like, you know, I've got bad hips or knees, it's just not going to happen at the ability. Right. So you have to sort of say it's the ability to understand what is your sense of ability? What is the level of impulsiveness and what is it over time that you're going to actually be doing? So when you kind of look at that, it's a great resource to and we manipulate those factors for some of our students. We find that we can improve their ability to move along certain things. And I'll give you one other last sort of favorite resource. I feel like I mean, I'm a little bit of a research resource or kind of person, I guess. There's another brand new book on the market. Just came out, I believe, in 2021 called Chatter. And Ethan Gross Cross Care OSS, I believe is the last name. Don't put me on that. And we certainly know, and you've been hearing me all night, talk about the fact that self talk is critical for all of these things. What am I going to look like? What's it going to look like when I'm done? What do I need to do? How's that going to feel? What could I do to motivate me? We have to really use a lot of self talk. And there are all kinds of self talk in our mind. You know, one self talk is the self talk of planning. But my saying, oh, my goodness, but what if I get to the airport and it's really crowded? What if my plane is delayed? What if there's terrible traffic? And I miss my flight? What if I mean, that's a different kind of self talk that can interfere with planning. And so I love the idea of chatter and helping individuals understand and tease out. What's the voice that's going to help you plan and develop those intention statements versus what's the voice in your head that can and it's okay. We all have those kinds of thoughts about contingency planning that we need to be thinking about too. So that's another great resource to chat about to speaking of chatter. Beautifully said. And thank you. And you've with humility given a lot of resources other than yourself. But where can people find more of you? We did like a sliver of what your work is. And so if people want to engage in your work, see some of the visuals or strategies you've created. Or can I send them? Thank you. Absolutely. So our website is www.eflikeexecutivefunctionpractice.com efpractice.com. And lots of resources there. And I'm so appreciative of you inviting me to hang out and chat with you today. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, I appreciate it so much. I told people that I invited you on and that you were coming on. Well, how did you do that? I don't know. I just wrote to her and she seems to be receptive. So I appreciate very much. So happy to be here. Have a happy holiday. Hey you too. And thanks again. Thanks.