Producer: And welcome back to this special edition of the Full PreFrontal podcast, the Big Pictures series, a discussion of why executive function matters. As always, I’m here with my host, Sucheta Kamath.

Hello, Sucheta, good to see you. What is this discussion all about? Why are we doing this?

Sucheta Kamath: great question, Todd. So, executive function as you know, we are deep into 50 episodes of this podcast and I thought it might be a great idea to pause a little bit and revisit the why and other how, and why does this all matter. So, I thought we will take a minute to discuss the nature of executive function, the scope of executive function, and implications of executive function in everyday life, and I hope the listeners have gotten a sentence that we have been having guests in various walks of life, some specialize in studying children, some work with neuroscience, some work with cognitive sciences, some with anthropological background. So, all that eventually ties back to executive function and I thought, might as well take a minute and revisit these ideas and layout a structures so that those who are interested in understanding the relevance and importance of executive function might find this overview very valuable, and the big picture to be is always like, bird’s eye view. You start high up there and taking a perspective, then you can see the vast ramifications of the skill set.

I was having lunch with somebody yesterday, with these five women in – women CEOs and the discussion led to a lot of them talking about hiring people and really running into problems, and struggling with – or their own struggles on when is the right time to fire them? And, most women at the table said they’d take too long to fire them because they are just not comfortable, but they were also saying that they also are greatly in hope that these people will change their ways, and so that got me into the discussion with them about something called soft skills. So, all these people who are hired for the way they look on paper: they have great credential, they have great degrees, they also probably interviewed decently well, but that was but the test is in you get the job done and can you get it done without much instructioning, and can you take the initiative and solve the problems and take care of stuff without needing to much handholding? And, most of them are dissatisfied with these employees are complaining about needing to much handholding, and so that is why this conversation, that how the exact description of these people worthy of being fired are demonstrating failure in executive function.

So, I hope that made sense.

Producer: It did. 50+ episodes of this show, the thing that has surprised me the most is how pervasive executive function is and how a lot of your focus, I believe, is more towards the student, but every one of us in every walk of life and virtually every discipline, this is the idea of executive function as critical to our ability to survive and thrive. So, it has been fascinating to me how many walks of life executive function touches, so that’s probably very appropriate that we pods, reflect a bit on this series so far and really get the – kind of reality that big picture, so I think that’s a great thing. I’m looking forward to it.

So, I guess what we should do in leading off this discussion probably remind everyone exactly what executive functioning.

Sucheta: That’s a great start for us. So, I’m going to kind of gives some quotes about various experts in the field and what they say. So, we have had Paul Zelazo, and so he defines executive function this way: he said, executive function comprises the ability to be mentally and behaviorally flexible to changing conditions to provide coherence and smoothness in one’s response – and sorry, it is so technical, but during ongoing and new encounters with the environment, executive function questions and relates the ongoing goal achievement. So, these two questions are, like how does this relate to me and what should I do now?

So, let us kind of disassemble this are kind of break this down into parts. So, what speaks to me about this definition is number one is adjusting mentally and behaviorally in a flexible way to changing conditions, and for example, you and I sat down to do this interview and I said, “I would love to have a cup of hot tea,” and so you went to the station where there is hot tea kind of situated and you came back and said, “Well, the guy was cleaning,” and so that required you to wait which required me to wait, and that is literally, that waiting for the guy to clean the machine so that it dispenses hot water is behaviorally and mentally flexibly adjusting to the changing condition, and what was the condition that changed? That the coffee machine and the hot water machine should operate without any hitch. It didn’t and that required you to pause and stop, and adjust and not throw a tantrum which you didn’t, or for me to kind of lose it which I didn’t, that I don’t have the tea and I want it now.

So, that is the first part of it. Does that make sense?

Producer: Makes all kinds of sense. I mean, and as I go through the world, these scenarios you encounter the scenarios virtually every minute of the day, don’t you?

Sucheta: Yes, you know, just reminded me of a story – I’ll give you a comparison. I was listening to this amazing man called Pico Iyer here. He is an author, a writer, he has followed Dalai Lama for the last 20 years and he has written a lot about it, and now, he writes these reflections about stillness and mindfulness. Brilliant, brilliant writer, and he was telling his story that his house burnt down. This was 20 years ago when he lived in California and their old house burnt down, and he said, “The house burnt down,” and the next day, he said, “I woke up with nothing and I went to a local store nearby and bought a toothbrush. That was the only thing I had in my possession and that was the only possession I had, and the next question is, what would I do next?” And so, apparently, one of his friends who was a teacher said, “There is a monastery nearby, why don’t you stay a few days there?” And it was in complete isolation in the hills of California, and he said, sure clear it he had no options and what was so beautiful about this is once he arrived in this barren – it was a monastery; as you can imagine, it was very barren. A room had a bed and a nightstand, a lamp, and that is, and a large window –

Producer: Very minimal.

Sucheta: Very minimal, and a large window opened up into this big Valley, and he said, “I had nothing and I had this incredible view,” and that view reminded him – he uses this term that imagine you have a camera in your hand and you have been taking pictures, but the shutter is on and this experience made him feel like the shutter was taken off and he had much grander, clearer sense of the view of the world, but the backdrop was, he had nothing. His house, he lost everything in the fire, he had no possessions and he had no clear idea where he was going, and that was so poignant.

Now, I’m going to give you another example which is just the opposite of this. So, this is the story written by John Grisham and in his career, this is the only story that is actually based on the truth or the real episodes of life – real life, and it is a nonfiction called The Innocent Man, and it’s a story about a murder that happened in 1980s and how it was mismanaged. Two people were put on death row and they actually had not committed a crime, but one of the stories that struck a chord with me was there is a man in the story who actually – so, John Grisham was asked, how did you get started with this whole – writing about this story? This is in Ada, Oklahoma, a tiny, tiny town where they had never heard of a murder. It turns out, he said the headlines read that a very accomplished athlete from Ada, Oklahoma who was marked to become this national baseball player became a death row inmate, and what was the trajectory of this young man and why did he landed there? He said, I just couldn’t believe it. An athlete, you know what goes into becoming an athlete. You have to be disciplined and kind of have lots of practice and focus and commitment, and he did have that, as a backdrop of this story was this young man got drafted from high school went to play professionally, had a lot of setbacks. It was really managing himself very poorly, so he kind of got into women, drinking, drugs, and he had an injury, and after he had that injury, he became disabled and not able to play, and he was put on the bench, and then eventually was thrown out at the team because of his bad behavior, and then moved back into his tiny town, lost everything he had, and so it is a global fire that I’m talking about with Pico Iyer that I described that made him lose everything, and so these are two individuals, when the experience loss, one found himself and one lost himself, and to me, that is what gets me thinking about executive function because it is that changing conditions in life that command or ask us to adjust in a flexible way, but in order to provide coherence and smoothness to one’s life, coherence is maintaining meaning in life and you know, Dr. Tim Pychyl is one of my guests and we talked about this existential crisis: why people don’t do what they wanted to, they mean to do? They keep destined themselves to accomplish this goal but they don’t because they have this existential kind of dilemma inside that do I really need to do this? Does this even matter? And those who actually are in crisis do not lose sight of the bigger picture of life tend to adjust, adapt, and do well, and that’s why we are talking about this.

Producer: Well, I’ve heard you talk about one of the goals of all of this, right, is to yield to outcomes that are social and emotionally desirable, appropriate and future-centered, right? Isn’t that what you are aiming for?

Sucheta: Yes. Well, not me – I mean, all of us should be aiming for it but yes, this is exactly what I talk about in terms of is successful or what does training or supporting, or helping people to develop executive function looks like. So, as I continue this conversation, I want to bring in another definition. This was given by Guare and Dawson, and Peggy Dawson was one of my guests as well. So, according to Peggy Dawson and Guare, they define executive function as neuropsychological concept referring to the cognitive process required to plan and direct activities, and what are these activities? Task initiation, follow through, working memory, sustained attention, performance monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and goal-directed persistence, and again, sorry for these technical terms, but what it means is again, can I direct myself following a plan that I create for myself? Can I inhibit the impulse to do something else? And I continue to watch myself and monitor myself? And, can I persist? And, no matter what the circumstances are, can I persist? And, all these skills collectively are called executive function, and again, going back to back to you and I, for example, as you take a flight from Chicago to Atlanta come and produce a show, you have to stay persistent. For example, if you have somebody ahead of you who is taking too long to remove their shoes or they have not bothered to remove the pennies from their pockets, or they have their cell phone on them as they go through the machine and they have to come back, and as you are witnessing other people’s poor management of self, not losing your focus or your own patience is really critical in you achieving your goals, and how many times we have talked about people using their mind when they are at the airport? So, there is one thing to do well when things are going well and the other is to do well even when things are not going well, and that is where executive functions really help.

Executive function at its heart this set of abilities where you continue to do well, persistent with this intention to achieve goals that you have for you without losing your big picture connection.

Producer: All right, well, just made it very clear why I have such stress and frustration at the airport, is apparently, at the airport, everybody loses their ability to have proper executive function. Good, there is some intriguing behavior found at the airport.

Well, I’ve heard you talk about this idea of ongoing goal achievement. Talk about that in the context of executive function.

Sucheta: So yeah, ongoing goal achievement is, for example, if I’m writing with a pen and my pen does not work, I am interrupted. So now, I have a new goal which is find another pan and this happens to me often, then I start going through my back and I cannot find another time. So now, even though writing was my goal, now, I have a new goal which is to find a new pen, and there are people who actually get sidetracked by this new goal. For example, in order to search for a patent, and leave the room where I was doing the work, and now, I’m in another room and I noticed that in that room, there’s a lot of chaos. So, for example, here is laundry that has not been good, the drawers are open, and also file folders are out on the table, and now, what I’m doing is now start sorting through the files were start folding the laundry so that ongoing goal achievement is now, I have track of my original goal which is to actually finish writing, and I had a temporary but short in new goal which was find a pen. Now, I have a massive new goal which is get the laundry done, and so those who have good executive function in fact don’t give up the original goal that got interrupted because of something that came up that was not something they were hoping for, and so this ability to interact or brush against the environment and still stay committed to the goal that you have is great executive function. And so, as I was mentioning earlier, the two self-guiding questions people with good executive function ask is, how does this relate to me and what should I do now? And so, constantly asking yourself redirect, redirect, redirect is something that leads to more proficient ways of getting things done, maintaining good emotionality in at and also serving the bigger picture. So, if you ask me what is my definition of executive function, this is how I define executive function: so, executive function refers to the choreographed ability to make yourself do with you intend to do using the capacity envisioned for self to yield or to get the outcomes that are socially emotionally desirable, appropriate, and above all, future centered. That means this is not just serving the need of the moment but it’s also connecting your future behaviors, and now, what does the future look like which you asked earlier that it is very important to understand the future self. So, it could be the future of five minutes, future of one hour, it could be the future of the day, it could be in one week, it could be 10 months, it could be a year or 10 years. So, I feeding that cookie is serving the purpose of feeling excited and happy, and I may be doing that because I am stressed, and that does not serve my bigger picture which is there is a wedding in March that I need to go to, then serving that future goal becomes a priority in the middle of me wanting to either cookie, and that intercepting the current action with the intention of checking in with your future is really important thing that people with good executive functions do effortlessly.

Producer: Is it different in terms of how you deploy your executive function when you’re thinking about a future that is an hourly versus when it is five years away?

Sucheta: Yes! Yes, and our only goal is better formulated because it is closer to you. It is in focus. Rarely, people actually sit down and have well-mapped out steps to a future goal. So, for example, a future five-year down the road goal may be I want to have $10,000 in savings in my account, the $10,000 five years down the road is great conceptually, but what steps does that mean? So, literally 10,000 over five years means 2000 at the end of each year. So now, how does – at the end of next year, I should have $2000 extra above and beyond my projected savings. Now, that requires me to no monitor, if I take those $2000 – I’m making this up.

Producer: Sure.

Sucheta: So, I’m breaking this down into may be $150 per month. Now, if I break that down into $150 of savings above and beyond what I was already thinking or not thinking, not calculating my raise, that breaks down into four weeks. So, I’m now looking at something like maybe $30-$40 per week if I am saving, then I am now beginning to think that I’m getting closer to my $10,000 goal. Now, only if you break that down in such a minor way with great attention and care, only then can you monitor your behaviors on a daily basis. So, for example, if I — and this typically happens at night for all of us – is I am on Amazon and I am biting dog food, and I have an option to buy 15 pound bag and save by buying may be 35-pound bag – I’m making this up – do I make a wise decision based on my future in mind, and how much saving with that contribution? So, that’s one thing. The dog food buying is inevitable. If you were to raise a dog and take care of your dog, we don’t have an option of not buying the food, but if I am now looking at a scarf which is my 15th scarf and I don’t need that scarf, then save the that $35 on the scarf is a wise decision because that’s $35 can help me reach my $10,000 goal. Does that make sense?

Producer: Makes sense.

Sucheta: So, most people struggle in connecting with their future self that is five years down the road is because they have not really broken it down into parts and steps, and so it is not concretize the mouth, so it is much easier than nearer the future, the more in focus. The further in future, the lesson focus, and so it is really hard to kind of connect to that plan which is only going to come to fruition five years down the road.

Producer: All right, well, listening to you there, Sucheta, it almost sounds like you are talking about self-optimization. So, I guess it’s fair to say that people with great executive function skills are functioning optimally, yeah?

Sucheta: Absolutely, and so let us look at self optimization. What does that mean and what does that look like? So, self optimizing means I am putting the most optimal effort to get the best results for me and not in a selfish way, but in unenlightened self-interest waived. That means as I achieve the goals for me, I am not causing any harm to others as well as I’m not taking only the opportunities of others to achieve their goals. So, for example, in a classroom, if a teacher asks a question, a self-optimized student answers a question by raising his hand, but he does not raise the head if he has already answered the question to time. So, self-optimization is socially relevant. Same way, if you’re sitting around a table and we have ordered two large pizza which has eight slices each and there are six people, and so we quickly do a mental math and make sure that 12 slices means everybody gets to and we have 16, that means we have four more slices left. Self-optimized person is the one who says, “I will hold back my hunger and see who wants to take third slice.” So, there is an element of social regulation in self-optimization.

So, the self-optimized person is also aware of self and has a great sense of what is working and what is not working. So, self optimized person says, “You know what, this did not work, so I’m going to do it differently.” So, in order to do differently, you need to have a great sense of what went into doing it and why did it not work well? So, give you an example. I used to have a client was in his late 30s and he told me that there was a major event is coming that he was preparing for which is his may be turning one, and he said, “I am not helping my wife at all and she is kind of upset with me, so she has given me one job and my job is to organize all the pictures of the baby and put them into cell montage so that we can play that during his first birthday,” and it was literally three days before the baby’s birthday, the whole family was coming from each side and they had invited guests, there were probably for 40, 50 people and they had rented the hall, and he was not prepared; he did not have all the pictures, he had not told his wife he had not – he did not have the pictures, he was scrambling and he was so stressed out that it was not doing what he should of done which is reach out, tell people, ask for help, adjust, adapt – no, he had not done any of that.

So, we kind of discussed this, and I kept asking him how is it going between you and your wife? And he says, “What do you mean?” I said, “She sounds like she might be upset with you if you are not doing your job, but you haven’t even shared with her that you are not doing your job,” and he said, “No, no, no, everything is perfect, no problem.” The event happens as you can imagine, and next week, when he shows up, he says, “My wife wants a divorce,” and it was very shocking to him. The next day after the birthday, the wife, at breakfast opens him she wants a divorce, and he was so caught off guard, he was absolutely unaware that there was anything going on in the marriage that kind of led to this divorce request, and he was blindsided and he was angry and upset, but he literally felt that it was because of these pictures that he did not put together – the montage which was not do very well, and I said, “Is it possible that it’s something else or in addition to the montage, or is it not putting together the montage was just the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

So, people who are not functioning optimally have very poor insight and they are not able to recognize their behaviors and their mental adjustment affects the world around them, but they also don’t recognize that other people are evaluating or see the way they are carrying out their life’s mission in the steps they take, and when they are not optimal, it affects their partner’s ability to be optimal. So, there is a boomerang effect that it creates a chaos not just with the individual who is not optimally functioning, and now, you can imagine in the business world, for example, if you are a team member amongst 10 and you are not picking up or pulling your weight, you are going to be a burden for the entire team, and so eventually, so beginning, people might tolerate it, then people might be irritated with you, and eventually, people are going out ask you or they are going to ignore you, or exclude you, and eventually, you are going to get fired.

So, that is what I mean by self-optimization has such an impact on the only think of the problem, do we evaluate outcomes, the way you change, and the way you understand its impact on others, and those with great executive function of incredible sense of self-optimization and they are attuned with their performance and outcome.

Producer: All right, so if I’m understanding this correctly, you can be very intentional or you can have very automated or automatic processes, so it sounds like we are seeing to be successful, to be more optimal, you have to be very, very intentional.

Sucheta: So well said, yes. So, executive function in essence is intentionality. You have to have a purpose but you also have to pay attention and you have to watch what you are doing while you’re doing what you are doing, and if it is not working, you need to change what you are doing, and so to change, you need to get off the autopilot and get intentional into the intentional mode.

So, I want to kind of bring in this idea of habits and executive function. So, in order to become very optimal, you need to have routines and habits. They are very, very essential, by the way. So, what is a routine? Routine is something that you have decided intentionally previously. It has sequence of steps that follow themselves, and you don’t have to intentionally say, what do I do next? It is automated, and so when you follow an automated predetermined sequence of events, it becomes smooth and it brings efficiency. However, the real executive process kicks in when something is not working well. So, for example, you do not need to bring the physicists mind when you are loading the laundry, right? It is not a massive problem that you are trying to solve. However, let us say you are loading and you drop the first bunch of clothes into the washer, and you hear cling! you know, there are some coins or something metal into the washer and you will remove them. So, automatic thing is to load, and then pour, and close and press. That is the automatic process or automatic thought process that is involved in doing the laundry, but hearing the cling or [imitating buzzer sound, any noises that tell you that it’s not going right or needs to be intercepted, you changing your autopilot and bring your intentionality, that is executive function.

So, couple of things happen to people that do not have a great executive function. One is, they do not pay attention to that little cling that they heard, and they ignore it, or they also do not know why that stopping, pausing, reflecting is essential in this context. So, they are misjudging the situation which calls for a novel response versus automatic response, and so it’s really important to be intentional but you also need to be very attentive and you need to have some critical thinking in place. Bottom line is to do all these things, you need to be so mindful, so you have to be very mindful in the moment: why am I doing what I’m doing? How does this matter? And, is a giving me the results I want? And so, those who do this kind of self check then to do better.

Producer: Well, so you are not always going to get an obvious signal like loose change in the washing machine to say, oh, I need to change something! That’s where self-optimization comes in because those signals won’t always be obvious, and so sometimes, routines are good in some respects, but even those will need to change from time to time, yes?

Sucheta: Yes, yes, and so this happen to me a couple of weeks ago, I had a brake pad wear and tear signal, and now I have a critical decision to make. So, it was thought I was not paying attention; I was very much paying attention to my car. When I started it and when the message with top, and then I had to get off the autopilot which is just get into my car, drive, get my business done, it required intentional step which is then called the dealer, make an appointment, find time, drop the car, get a loaner, and then find the insurance. There were so many steps involved in taking care or responding to this message, so there was that reluctance on my part to not make that call because it had too many steps. So, yes, the intentionality is there, but knowing how intentionality means more work, sometimes, people don’t want to do more work, and so they are just avoiding it and that’s why they are procrastinating or they choose a path of less-optimal functioning or they delay the goal achievement, and as a result, and they are stranded. For example, I don’t know how long I could’ve driven that car with the brake pad wear and tear signal, and eventually, maybe I was not going to be able to brake. Maybe that’s when I would actually go and take care of it, in crisis.

Producer: Common tale, unfortunately.

Sucheta: So yes, executive function is constantly bringing in focus when things are not going well, and once things are not going well, you have to decide what steps to do: should I continue or should I do different? And yes, oftentimes, there is no loose change banging around the washer that tells you take a different action.

Producer: All right, so thinking hear a lot about just being and operating optimally, and it sounds like if I’m understanding you correctly, this is an ongoing exercise. This is something we always have to be working on, always this idea of self optimization, this is a lifelong thing, right? I mean, so I guess there is lifelong benefits to good executive function, there is real lifelong applications to all this, yes?

Sucheta: oh, yes, absolutely. So, you can see if you are a child with great executive function, then you are able to manage your attention, manage your own goals well, you are listening, you are following through, you are getting work done, and then you become of this amazingly independent student in the classroom, and you become a joy to teach, and when I say Jory, it means you can be an adorable kid but you may not be the joy to teach. Because you are difficult, that means you don’t cooperate, you don’t follow through, you don’t do what you say you will do, you are not proficient. Then, you have this young child becomes a teenager and he is ready to embark upon life’s mission which is to go to college, let’s say, and managed to live in a dorm by himself, go to classes by himself, no nudging by parents. You need to set the alarms and attend all the classes, you meet these deadlines which are much more obscure than the way it was in high school, and you also need to balance your drinking – Thursday night drinking to kind of taking part in classroom discussion versus turning all the assignments, joining protests on campus, as well as maybe become a campus editor, newspaper editor. That is like the balancing act, and then you become this employable individual which leaves college with this degree and now, you have a resume and this resume is something people look at it and say, “Okay, so it looks like you have this education. Can you function as part of a team?” And then, you get hired. Now, you have to show that you can actually show up on time, you actually take part in all the meetings, you take the essence of that meeting, you create a task list for yourself, you meet the numbers, you meet the deadlines, and you do all it takes, or you may be stay longer or maybe stay up later, and you produce the products that your team wants you to do. If there is a hitch, then you go and approach her boss, ask for help, you advocate for yourself, and then you also are the individual needs to manage your relationship, whether it’s a girlfriend or you are on a dating app, or you like to play online video games. You need to now say to yourself that you know what, 2 AM is too late, and then you need to take care of your car by paying the insurance, taking care of the oil change, you have to clean the car, you have to make sure that you put gas regularly – I cannot tell you how many young adults I work with have called somebody to get them or call AAA because they ran out of gas on the side of the highway.

So, those are the things that allow you to kind of just run your life asked if it’s a company, and then eventually, then it leads to that long-term plan: as an independent entity, you are not supporting yourself, but also are you contributing to your society? Are you contributing to the causes that bring harmony in the universe? Are you taking on something that brings meaning to your life? So, all those range of skills that happened over time from 0 to 90 requires executive function, and just to quickly juxtapose this with all the research that talks about poor executive functions, have tremendous implications and successful life, let me kind of give you some overview. Researchers talk about that if someone is diagnosed with mental disorder, they are going to experience impaired executive function, so let me give you a list of some mental disorders: ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) – it is actually considered a mental disorder in which you are not able to control your attention and you are not able to manage your goals, and that actually is going to lead to executive dysfunction and it’s going to have a lot of impact on your ability to stay goal-oriented and manage your relationships, and be successfully able to adjust and adapt, as I was talking about earlier; conduct disorder which is a 20% to 30% of ADHD population also has additional conduct disorder, that means you are likely to become more defiant, you are likely to become more difficult, you are likely to be delinquent, and if you have those kinds of difficulties because of the wiring in your brain or the brain chemistry, you are going to have executive function problems, addiction in individuals with addictive personalities are shown to have executive function disorder; schizophrenia and depression.

So, we have research that actually shows that these mental disorders are likely to be affiliated with or there is a direct correlation between mental disorders and executive dysfunction, and often in my practice, I find that when you go to see a psychiatrist your primary care physician, or general notion in commonsensical notion that public has is they are focused on the mental disorder but not the underlying executive function and they are not receiving any help in developing these skills and abilities that make you self-optimal.

The second part of this is poor executive function is shown to be related to physical health challenges. For example, obesity is linked with executive function problem, poor ability to actually regulate food intake, your eating habits, and your consumption of alcohol and drugs is related to poor executive function, but what I find very fascinating if there is a genuine poor treatment adherence if you have executive function problems, and what does that mean? That means the very mental disorder gets you this prescription to take pills, and then you need executive function to actually take pills on time, get the refill diving, and actually monitor your sleep and not mix alcohol and those kinds of recommendations, which are treatment adherence is impacted by poor executive function, and that means your success managing these mental disorders are physical ailments is going to compromise. So, you see how tremendously impactful that can be.

Another little important caveat there is that for executive function shown to be directly correlated with school readiness. So, when a child from 0 to 5 goes through these developmental stages, his readiness to start kindergarten and show that capacity actually be a good member of a kindergarten class is directly correlated to strong executive function. So, this kind of is very, very interesting: research shows that the entry level reading skills, entry level math skills or even IQ doesn’t have that impact in determining the success with which you will experience that adjustment in kindergarten, but executive function purely shown to have that impact. So, it is really, really important, and again, what Todd, what I’m saying, is this part of everyday conversation? No.

Producer: No.

Sucheta: We are not having this conversation, right, often? The next thing, set of skills that are really fascinating is executive function protects both reading and math competence by the time somebody graduates from high school. So, in order – so fundamental rule of education is what? Is to prepare the student to understand how to learn and think to become competent so you can become this critical thinker and learner that can take on life’s challenge, right?

Producer: Right.

Sucheta: You need executive function manager learning and manage your relationship to the classroom in which you are learning. So, what if you have poor executive function, then it affects her classroom attention which affects your love for learning, so that means I see that all the time, students who love math tend to do better in math but the same student with same mind tends to do poorly in history because he hates history. Now, however, if you have really bad history grades, that means if you’re failing in history and you are doing advanced math, you really can’t go to the next grade and this is lost a lot of students because they are not able to afford to the same attention and intention to subjects that they don’t like as much as they are able to do for subjects they love, and this is executive dysregulation. That means you are not able to manage your effort based on your interest or lack thereof, and that’s very critical. Now, moving on to now, this person is been educated. Now, as I was talking to you earlier, employability. So, how does this employability relate to executive function? Research shows that your ability to be productive or your productivity directly related to executive function. So, people with poor executive function take too long, they tend to not work smarter, but they tend to work harder, if they do work hard, and they actually show that sometimes, they get hired for the right reasons because of that we may look on paper and they get fired for not actually showing up with the set of skills they are promising on paper. So, they are just likely to not keep the job they receive. The next tier of problems in terms of lifelong implication is poor executive function is linked with marital harmony. So, people with poor executive function tend to be less dependable spouses, they tend to act more impulsively, they tend to be argumentative or difficult to deal with, they tend to be inflexible, and they tend to lose the forest for the trees. That means, they don’t understand these sacrificial acts that lead to further each other in good faith, effort to bring pleasure or joy, or to ease up other person’s burden, and so people with executive function problems tend to be not mindful of those little nuances, and hence, other people and to be underweight with such individuals and it leads to that breaking point where there tends to be more divorces associated with a person with executive function problems.

And, last couple of things to talk about, lifelong implications is poor executive functions are associated with social problems, and what are those social problems? Criminality, criminality which is intention to harm her intention to take away something that belongs to others, just not having a good impulse control, but also not thinking through about consequences. So, there tends to be more recklessness in terms of their behaviors and there is a lot of emotional outbursts. So, getting angry and hence taking these steps such as hurting somebody tends to happen with people with executive function. So, I just can’t emphasize enough that this term I know is an enigma for many, but I’m hoping through this discussion today, I have kind of laid out this a big picture of executive function and how critical it is for us to pay attention to it, really take all the effort that we need to either polish these skills and to help people become more self-aware.

Producer: Well, you know, just hearing you talk, we talk a lot about the self and we talk about the future self, and the self-optimization, all this “self,” but this has a real impact on society. Think about all these problems that exist in our society. You can attribute a lot of those to executive function, right?

Sucheta: So rightly said, Todd. You know, as we conclude this episode, what I want to release a is we need to think about societal prosperity. What does that societal prosperity look like? That means when you take care of you and I take care of me, when you and I work together, we are more motivated and centered to do better for the collective good, and the collective good can become a priori of the if your personal needs are taken care of, and a lot of times, because of the executive dysfunction and mismanagement of self and mismanagement of goals, you are really not in alignment of bringing or putting the needs of either as equal priority, and so I find that these individuals tend to be less competent team members. They are not the most flexible individual, so they become the naysayers. They are less likely to collaborate and operate when it’s required to work with other people, and of course, you can imagine it impacting the innovation and imaginative workforce. So, what we need to really be thinking about is not just a limited sense of I when we talk about optimization, but by optimizing self, you are optimizing society, and it’s such a wonderful way to bring joy to the world.

Producer: Alright, well, I just said a minute ago, I have never really thought about the idea of executive dysfunction so, so impacting our society and culture, and our relationships, and our education, and the workplace. It is just fascinating to think about in how this impacts the big picture.

So, alright, well, that’s all the time we have today on this special edition of Full PreFrontal. We will return soon with the Big Picture series, a continued discussion on why executive function matters.