How to Sharpen Executive Functions: Simple Activities to Help Your ADHD
Executive functioning refers to the cognitive and mental abilities that help you engage in goal-directed action. Executive functions direct actions, control behavior, and motivate us to achieve our goals and prepare for future events. Executive function skills are the skills that help us establish structures and strategies for managing projects and determine the actions required to move each project forward. To improve any executive function, practice is critical. Here, learn how to improve core executive functions through recommended activities, exercises, and games.
What are Executive Functioning Skills?
There are three core executive functions that include inhibitory control, working memory and and cognitive flexibility.
1. Inhibitory Control
Inhibitory control of behavior is self-control or response inhibition – resisting temptations, thinking before speaking or acting, and curbing impulsivity. Discipline and perseverance – staying on task despite setbacks or boredom and delaying gratification — require inhibitory control.
Inhibitory control of behavior improves with activities like the following.
Activities That Improve Inhibitory Control of Behavior
Games like Simon Says (great for all ages).
Playing music with others (to practice waiting until it’s your turn to play).
Performing a comedic routine (to practice trying not to laugh at your own jokes).
“Buddy reading,” where you pair up and take turns being the reader or listener. The listener receives a simple line drawing of an ear to help the person remember to listen and not speak.
Listening to stories read aloud should improve sustained attention as it requires listeners to work to keep their attention focused without visual aids, such as pictures on the page or puppets acting it out. We found that listening to storytelling improves sustained auditory attention more than does listening to story-reading where the illustrations are shared after each page is read.
Activities that challenge balance as well as focused attention and concentration:
Walking on a log.
Walking on a line. Similar to walking on a log, this activity is as challenging for young children as walking on a log or balance beam is for adolescents and adults. To increase the challenge, children can try to do this while balancing with something on their heads or racing with an egg in a spoon.
Walking with a bell and trying not to have it make a sound can be a fun activity for a group of people of all ages. (It is also great for calming down.)
Activities that challenge fine and gross motor skills as well as focused attention and concentration
Household and kitchen chores such as pouring a liquid, spooning beans or peas, carrying a tray full of filled glasses, peeling a vegetable, threading a needle, sewing, etc.
Other ideas: beading, juggling, etc.
2. Working Memory
Working memory is the ability to hold information in the mind and to work or play with it. Just holding information in the mind without manipulating it is short-term memory; not working memory. Working memory enables us to mentally play with ideas and relate one idea to another, remember multi-step instructions and execute them in the proper order or remember a question you want to ask as you listen to the ongoing conversation.
Activities That Improve Working Memory
Perform mental math, like calculating discounts or totals while shopping or calculating scores during a bowling match.
Play a storytelling memory game in a group, where one person starts the story, the next person repeats what was said and adds to the story, and so on.
Hearing stories may improve working memory, as it requires the listener’s working memory to remember all the story’s details and relate that to new information as the story unfolds without the help of visual aids.
3. Cognitive Flexibility
Cognitive flexibility includes the abilities to:
See an issue or situation from different perspectives
Think about something in a whole new way (“thinking outside the box”)
Find a way to succeed despite unexpected problems or barriers
Admit you were wrong after you receive new information
Seamlessly adjust to change or the unexpected
Activities That Improve Cognitive Flexibility
Engage in improvisational activities, like theater, jazz, and dance, for encouraging and nurturing creativity and adjusting on the fly.
Play think-outside-the-box games. Come up with creative, unusual uses for everyday objects. You can eat at a table, for example, but you can also hide under it, use it as a percussion instrument, or cut it up for firewood – the list is endless.
Find commonalities between everyday items and make a game of it. Example: How is a carrot like a cucumber? (Shape.) Like an orange? (Color.) Like a potato?
Here is a list of activities that improve all executive functions:
The arts like music, theater, or dance
Sports including traditional martial arts, which emphasize self-control, discipline, and character development.
Wilderness survival
Woodworking
Cooking
Caring for an animal or animals
Each of these activities requires executive functioning skills including planning, cognitive flexibility, perseverance, and creative problem-solving