In response to my recent post about executive function, several people have reached out to me to provide feedback. I thought it might be useful to have this feedback in one place, so I have collected it here. If you haven’t read my earlier post, I suggest you read it first.
Evan Dorn writes on LinkedIn:
I suffer from intense ADHD, which wasn’t diagnosed until just a couple of years ago. And even then only because the diagnostic criteria have changed & matured substantially since I was first tested ~2002.
I battle with executive function every minute of every day, and until I understood the cause and received treatment, I lived with decades of self-loathing thinking I was just a failure because I struggled with “simple” tasks that almost everyone takes for granted. In retrospect, it’s a bit of a miracle that I completed any of my degrees, much less my PhD. But compensating mechanisms learned through trial and error got me over the line, even though many of them are quite unpleasant when experienced from the inside.
Today I’ve got a much better understanding of how my own brain works, as well as greatly improved therapeutic help, and both make a huge difference. But I do wish more people had your level of empathy for conditions that include executive dysfunction. In a world that judges people’s moral worth by their productivity – even to the point of whether they deserve to have a decent standard of living – it can be an extremely unpleasant way to live.
One person has reached out to me by email. I’m quoting them here anonymously:
ADHDers in grad school need things not to be boring. You’re right about too big of a task being difficult to start, so coaching them on how to find the first step is good. But the small tasks might sometimes be boring and ADHD brains can’t focus and engage in a boring task. Sometimes boring things have to get done still, so strategies like music, color and body doubling help.
Smart ADHDers are also really afraid of failure. They don’t trust themselves to be good enough and are always right on the edge of failing (in their minds) so they’d rather procrastinate a task than risk failing at it. Forcing them to confront that fear and overcome it is important.
Finally, Tom Devitt comments under the article:
Claus, fellow professor here. I know you’re trying to help, and I’m saying this with all due respect: parts of your post land as demeaning and shaming to the very students you want to support. I suggest a different playbook.
Improving executive function doesn't boil down to “doing what you’re told, but smaller.” For many neurodivergent students (PhD candidates and undergraduates alike), the bottlenecks are time perception, salience, and working memory. Time blindness means the world collapses into two buckets: now and not-now. “Read one paper and write a paragraph” feels trivial, so it slides into not-now until a hard trigger makes it suddenly now, usually too late. Working-memory limits add an object-permanence effect: if the task isn’t literally in front of me—almost always better in analog rather than digital form—it may as well not exist. On top of that, ADHD is an interest-based nervous system: activation turns on with novelty, challenge, degree of interest, or immediate social consequence. That’s why students often jump to the most challenging part first; paradoxically, it’s the one that finally flips the “on” switch.
This is also why “break it into simpler tasks” often backfires. Shrinking scope without changing time, salience, or visibility lowers meaning (“trivial → not-now”), multiplies context switches, and creates shame loops (“I couldn’t even do the small thing”). If you want different results, change the environment, not just the size of the chores.
There’s also a real upside to neurodiversity that I think you’re missing. Many neurodivergent individuals are big-picture thinkers, capable of rapid association, systems-level synthesis, and deep hyperfocus when their level of interest or novelty is high. There are plenty of highly successful, neurodivergent people out there who just have different wiring, which has real advantages in the proper context.
Also, no need to reinvent the wheel. You’re not a psychologist, and you don’t need to be. Neurodivergent students benefit from licensed coaching and evidence-based supports. At UT, Longhorn TIES provides neurodiversity training for faculty and staff, as well as direct student support. Take the training and point students there: https://longhornties.utexas.edu/
Some minor changes in mentoring neurodivergent students can go a long way. Instead of “I simplified the tasks and they still failed,” try “Let’s co-design conditions that make time visible, tasks present, and outcomes meaningful.” That framing maintains dignity and enhances performance.
Making a boring task exciting I agree. But I think overall you should continue writing about executive function, and more advisors need to do so as well for multiple reasons. First of all, UT Ties is expensive and the scholarship they have is only for one or two undergrads. I went there, I got one 30 minute session with UT Ties, and they say if you want more sessions it costs hundreds of dollars or you need a coach which is more expensive. No thank you. I want my PI to help me. I think it's really nice that you think about this as a mentor and share your thoughts. The fact that you put effort, write about it, and read about it shows you care, and I personally find it really motivating that I'm not a burden. I'm just different and my advisor is willing to help he tries to get to know how different brains work, and I don't think most advisors even meet with their students once a month to see where they're stuck, and even if they do, it's just a check-in not actually teaching them how to do research. Most students just struggle and get drowned in their own world and never come up. It's not true that coaches and therapists are easily accessible at all. I'm in therapy for a long time, and it's not easy to find someone you can trust and match your personality who can also help you in different aspect of life at the same time. Finding that person really is hard and at the same time all these facilities are expensive and not everyone can access them, especially PhD students; even with insurance it's still a lot of money because you should at least go weekly to get results in less than 5-7 years if you want to cure yourself and enjoy life before you die.
I also don't think it matters to say smart or not smart, because people like myself who love to be called smart to fill the void inside and reduce self-hatred can still be stuck. I prefer to keep going instead of being told I'm smart but stuck. I feel people who comment don’t talk like that should know that mentees prefer their advisor to know they’re miserable and help them, rather than acting nice and not pointing it out, leaving them to drown in misery while surrounded by smiley faces.