Executive Function & ADHD: A Clear, Brain-Based Primer
- Eliza Barach
- 4 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Adults with ADHD aren’t struggling because they don’t know what to do. They are struggling because they can’t reliably access what they know at the moment it matters.
You might understand your goals clearly, care deeply about them, and be highly capable in your work or personal life. And yet, planning falls apart, motivation drops, emotions take over, or time seems to disappear.
These patterns are often framed as problems with discipline, effort, or motivation. But they make much more sense when you understand how executive functioning actually works and it's role in these frustrations.
What Executive Functioning Actually Is
According to Russell Barkley, executive functions are best understood as self-directed actions. They are things the brain does to itself in order to regulate behavior over time (Barkley, 1997a, 2012). Their purpose is to help humans pause, reflect, imagine the future, regulate emotion and motivation, and act in service of long-term goals (Barkley, 2001).
Simply put, executive functions help you shift from what’s happening now to align your actions with what matters later.
This distinction is critical for understanding ADHD. It's not a disorder of intelligence or insight. ADHD is a disorder of future-oriented self-regulation—difficulty using internal signals to guide behavior when rewards or even consequences are delayed (Barkley, 1997a).
Executive Functions Work as a System
Executive functions don’t operate independently. They develop and function as a system, where earlier capacities support later ones (Barkley, 1997a, 2012).
When access to earlier executive functions is inconsistent, downstream abilities—like planning, follow-through, emotional regulation, and motivation—become harder to access, even in adults who are capable, reflective, and intelligent.
When you combine this with the cognitive energetic model (Sergeant, 2000), you can start to see why ADHD executive dysfunction often feels situational, inconsistent or stress dependent (Barkley & Murphy, 2011). We need the right conditions, the right stimulation in order to regulate and use our executive function skills.
The 7 Executive Functions Explained
1. Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to notice your own thoughts, emotions, actions, and internal state while they are happening. This is the foundation of all self-regulation (Barkley, 2012).
In ADHD, awareness often arrives after the moment has passed—after you’ve gone off-task, reacted emotionally, or lost track of time. I often joke with clients that despite having strong convictions in who we are and in what we believe, we often forget all of that in intense moments or in the face of distractions.
Understanding this challenge helps us ADHDers better handle these situations in the future. For example, externalizing our goals or what actually matters to us so we see them when we need to.
2. Inhibition
Inhibition is the ability to pause briefly before acting. What that actually looks like is creating enough space to choose a response instead of reacting automatically (Barkley, 1997a).
When inhibition is unreliable, behavior is driven by immediacy—what feels most urgent, stimulating, or emotionally charged right now (Barkley, 1997b; Nigg, 2001). Yes, this is in part why we suffer from shiny object syndrome. The sparkle and glimmer catches our eye and we are less likely to pause to consider if all that glitter truly is gold (Hey Smashmouth).
3. Non-Verbal Working Memory (Visual Imagery)
Non-verbal working memory is the ability to hold mental images in mind—to recall past experiences and imagine future outcomes. As the mind’s eye, it allows you to visualize imagined futures to anticipate consequences and then orient behavior toward what comes next (Barkley, 1997a).
In ADHD, future goals often drop out of awareness at the point of action. This contributes to time blindness and the feeling that deadlines or long-term consequences don’t feel real until they’re urgent (Barkley et al., 1997). This is why it can be helpful to use a calendar (please put the pitchforks down). When you can externalize the timeline and see it in plain sight this reduces the burden on your working memory capacity, allowing you to make a decision that will support your success.
4. Verbal Working Memory (Self-Speech)
Verbal working memory is internalized speech—your inner monologue and thus your ability to talk yourself through tasks, remind yourself of rules, and reflect on what you’re doing.
When this system is inconsistent, guidance often needs to come from the outside in the form of written instructions, reminders, or spoken prompts (Barkley, 1997a; Berk & Potts, 1991). Externalization is everything here and this helps explain why so many of us tend to be verbal processors. We need to download this information out of our head in order to create the mental space to work through it and act on it.
5. Emotional Self-Regulation
Emotional self-regulation is the ability to shape emotional responses rather than being driven entirely by them. Emotions themselves are not the problem. The challenge lies in accessing regulation when emotions are intense or immediate (Barkley, 1997a).
In ADHD, emotional reactions often come on quickly, with less opportunity to pause and recalibrate. This can impact relationships, decision-making, and perseverance toward goals. This is why I often recommend strategic circumvention of negative emotions and strategic immersion of positive ones. Prevention of negative is way easier than regulation in the moment and activation and success is much more likely in the face of positivity.
6. Self-Motivation
Self-motivation is the ability to generate drive internally when rewards or consequences are delayed. Because our executive functions build on one another you probably are starting to see the full picture.
If in the moment, we struggle to access who we are (Self-awareness), pause to consider an action (Inhibition), mentally and verbally project outcomes (Verbal & Non-verbal working memory), and check in with our emotions to strategize in service of a preferred outcome (emotion regulation) it can be difficult to have drive when we literally forget who we are and what we want in this moment.
Since this system can be unreliable, external motivators—deadlines, accountability, urgency, novelty are necessary for us to activate behavior.
7. Planning & Problem Solving
Planning and problem solving are the most downstream executive functions. They involve generating options, thinking flexibly, and mentally testing solutions (Barkley, 2012).
In ADHD, planning difficulties often emerge under stress because by this time the earlier executive functions are overloaded. Planning is usually the first capacity to collapse when the system is taxed (Barkley, 1997a) which is why we might struggle to pivot in the moment and can seem very rigid. This is why I often recommend to clients to proactively identify plan A, plan B and plan C because it can be really difficult to pivot when you get flooded.
What ADHD Executive Function Challenges Get Mistaken For
Since planning and follow-through are the most visible outputs, executive function challenges are often misinterpreted as laziness, lack of motivation, or poor self-discipline. OBVIOUSLY, that is not an accurate depiction of those of us with ADHD.
Executive functioning is a performance system, not a knowledge system. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it consistently at the right time and in the right context (Barkley, 1997a, 2012).
Brain-Aligned Adjustments
I've dropped some tips throughout the article, but to pull it all together more succinctly, effective tips to work our executive function system include:
External reminders and visual cues when internal awareness drops
Making future outcomes concrete and visible
Reducing reliance on willpower at the moment of action
Using written instructions, checklists, and spoken prompts
Treat structure, accountability, and external motivation as necessary supports, not personal weaknesses or indulgences (Barkley, 2012). Who cares if you need a body double to do your laundry? If it gets done through means that are not illegal and are not hurting anyone, then why does it matter?
An Agency-Restoring Reframe
When executive functioning is understood as a system for regulating behavior across time, ADHD stops looking like a collection of personal shortcomings. Inconsistency does not mean you don’t care or aren’t trying. It means your brain needs support at specific points in the process.
The question shifts from “Why can’t I make myself do this?” to “What does my executive functioning need in this moment?”
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References
Barkley, R. A. (1997a). ADHD and the nature of self-control. Guilford Press.
Barkley, R. A. (1997b). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65–94.
Barkley, R. A. (2001). The executive functions and self-regulation: An evolutionary neuropsychological perspective. Neuropsychology Review, 11, 1–29.
Barkley, R. A. (2012). Executive functions: What they are, how they work, and why they evolved. Guilford Press.
Barkley, R. A., Koplowicz, S., Anderson, T., & McMurray, M. B. (1997). Sense of time in children with ADHD: Two preliminary studies. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 3, 359–369.
Barkley, R. A., & Murphy, K. R. (2011). The nature of executive function deficits in daily life activities in adults with ADHD. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 33, 137–158.
Berk, L. E., & Potts, M. K. (1991). Development and functional significance of private speech among boys with ADHD. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 19, 357–377.
Nigg, J. T. (2001). Is ADHD an inhibitory disorder? Psychological Bulletin, 125, 571–596.
Sergeant, J. (2000). The cognitive-energetic model: An empirical approach to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 4(1), 7–12.
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