New Year’s Resolutions: Is it laziness or executive functioning that keeps us from reaching our goals?
For many people, the start of a new year provides inspiration to make positive changes.
Studies have shown that nearly half of Americans create a resolution to improve themselves in the upcoming year. Yet, by the end of January, nearly 80 percent have stopped working on their goals. Meaning by the time you read this post, there is a good chance that you may already be struggling with maintaining motivation for keeping your resolution. For some people, this can lead to feelings of guilt and regret and possibly even shame and hopelessness. Yet, the culprit behind this failure may be more related to Executive Functioning (EF) than a lack of resolve or willpower.
Executive functioning refers to how our brain carries out different tasks related to setting and achieving goals. If we think of the brain as an orchestra, executive functioning is the conductor who directs all the sections to play together in harmony. At its heart, creating and keeping habits boils down to figuring out what to do and how to do it. Understanding the different executive functions and their role in setting, planning and achieving goals can help us identify personal areas of strengths and weaknesses.
Understanding executive functions and their role in setting up and following through on goals:
Thinking Skills (The what to do):
Organize/ Plan: The ability to come up with ideas and choose an area to improve.
Planning is taking our idea and creating a specific, realistic and measurable way to achieve it. Individuals who struggle with these areas may have difficulty knowing how to identify and express their thoughts or organize their thoughts in a logical manner. They may also struggle to focus on creating a plan without getting distracted by unrelated thoughts, fantasies about unrealistic outcomes. Planning may also lead to anxiety or distress due to past failure or worry about not being able to follow the plan.
Initiate: The ability to start working on the plan. Individuals who struggle in this area tend to
be those who engage in all or nothing thinking and can take on one of two extremes. Those who start out extremely strong and full of energy and excitement only to lose motivation once the task becomes boring or routine. Unrealistic goals and plans also contribute by sapping energy upon realizing that accomplishing our goal is going to be harder than we thought. At the other end, are those who avoid starting all together due to forgetting the plan or due to anxiety or stress.
Organize Materials: The ability to gather necessary equipment or supplies and keep them organized and available. Individuals who frequently lose things or forget where they put them often find following a routine stressful or frustrating. Continually having to purchase new items can also create a financial barrier. Working Memory: The ability to hold information when working on a task. This is an important part of organizing and planning as it allows us to keep track of our thoughts and not have to continually “reinvent the wheel” due to losing track of ideas. It can also make learning something new frustrating if we have trouble remembering or understanding written or verbal instructions.
Self-Monitoring: The ability to accurately assess our performance. This is an important part of following through on our plan to achieve our goals. Difficulty with self-monitoring can cause us to either underestimate our performance and become frustrated with our perceived lack of progress or overestimate our skills and effort and become frustrated when our results do not match our expectations.
Behavior skills (The how to do it):
Shift - The ability to shift refers to being able to switch from one task to another. Individuals who struggle with shifting often have rigid thinking and have trouble adapting or modifying plans when things change or aren’t working. Another component can be the tendency to hyper-fixate, such as spending time focusing on one part of the plan to the exclusion of others or getting stuck on having to create the “perfect” plan.
Inhibit - Refers to the ability to manage competing impulses and to remain focused on the task at hand. This is one of the most common areas that people associate with executive functioning. It shows up in many of the phases of accomplishing goals by allowing us to remain on track and not become distracted.
Emotional Control - Emotional Control is one of the most important EF skills because it allows us to recognize, validate, and manage the feelings that come up for us during the process of setting and working on goals. In order to improve executive functioning, it is crucial to identify which areas we struggle with due to lack of knowledge or skills and which areas are hard for us due to managing our emotions.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most important part of working on goals is to follow the motto of “do what works for you.” Pay attention to which of the areas above feels more natural and look for ways to utilize those strengths. Identify areas that are harder and seek out strategies for improving those skills. If you are unsure of how to make improvements, it may be beneficial to work with a therapist or executive functioning coach. Growing Roots has counselors with extensive experience working with individuals of all ages to improve areas of executive functioning. If you believe counseling could be helpful in addressing EF, please contact the office at office@growingroots for more information.
More information about Executive Functioning
The Science Heavy Stuff:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/behavior-rating-inventory-
Of-executive-function
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10512143/#:~:text=Executive%20functions%20(EFs)
%20skills%20are,wide%20range%20of%20mental%20disorders
Regular Language Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_Rating_Inventory_of_Executive_Function
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/executive-function
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325402
More Tips for Achieving Goals:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-
do/202412/why-new-years-resolutions-set-you-up-to-fail
