If you or your child have/may have ADHD, you can probably relate to this scenario:  

You know the tasks which you want to complete for the day, and you may have already made a list, but somehow even starting on these tasks feels much more overwhelming than it should.  You might even feel like you need to put forth much more effort in completing these types of tasks than others, and feel a sense of shame about not even being able to start the tasks.  If you can get started, then it might be difficult to persist on the tasks. You may get distracted by other things, such as other people talking, the thoughts you have about the other ten or more tasks you want to complete, the visual clutter in the room, or having another activity scheduled that forces you to stop the activity and somehow hope you can return to it later…and remember where you left off on the task. 

If any of these examples seem familiar to you or others in the household with ADHD, then you are having difficulties with executive functioning.

Let’s Make Sense of Executive Functioning and ADHD

Let's make sense of executive functioning in ADHD. Executive functioning is when the prefrontal cortex, the front area of your brain, just behind the forehead and above the eyebrows (Clinic, C., 2025) engages in the organization, planning, and follow-through on activities. Executive functioning activities are those that are more complex, may require multiple steps, and take longer to complete than simple tasks with a few steps. For people with ADHD as well as other conditions, difficulties can be associated with a combination of differences in brain development, brain chemistry, and/or injury associated with the prefrontal cortex.

Executive functioning also includes initiating complex tasks and maintaining focus on them. It means remembering what is most important and persisting on tasks until you complete them in a reasonable amount of time. Increased stress, illness, poor sleep, and poor eating habits, and either too high or too low of activity levels, can make executive functioning tasks feel more frustrating (Kofler et al., 2024; Malhotra et al., 2025).

References

Clinic, C. (2025, September 29). Prefrontal Cortex: What It Is, Function, Location & Damage. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/prefrontal-cortex

Kofler, M. J., Soto, E. F., Singh, L. J., Harmon, S. L., Jaisle, E., Smith, J. N., Feeney, K. E., & Musser, E. D. (2024). Executive function deficits in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(10), 701–719. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00350-9

Malhotra, S., Kishore, M. T., & De Sousa, A. (2025). Clinical practice guidelines on cognitive impairment and ADHD-assessment and management. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(1), 106–116. https://doi.org/10.4103/indianjpsychiatry.indianjpsychiatry_720_24