158. Rescheduling Isn’t “Just Moving Things”: It’s an Executive Function Nightmare

Okay, okay...maybe that title is a bit dramatic. But seriously: rescheduling your day sounds simple enough until you’re actually in it. In this episode, I'm breaking down why a “hijacked day” (sick kid, unexpected meetings, constant interruptions) doesn’t just create a scheduling problem -- it can send our executive functioning skills into overload. 

Using Dawson & Guare’s Executive Functioning Skills framework, you’ll learn what’s actually happening in your brain when plans change and why it can feel so hard, especially if you have ADHD. This isn’t about excuses. It’s about understanding the real problem so that you can get to real solutions. 

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why rescheduling is more than “moving things around”
• The executive functioning skills being used all at once (and where the breakdowns tend to happen)
• The power of the pause: creating space between trigger and reaction
• Why emotional regulation is the gateway to better decision-making
• How working memory + time constraints + interruptions create the perfect storm
• Cognitive flexibility: getting out of all-or-nothing thinking when the plan changes 

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Dawson, P., Guare, R., & Guare, C. (2024). Smart but scattered: The revolutionary “executive skills” approach to helping kids reach their potential (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. 
• Ep. 157: Scheduling Curveballs (Without the Mom Guilt)

Episodes Coming Soon:

• AI tools I'm using to reduce the mental load
• Why email wording/tone becomes its own executive function rabbit hole

To find out how I can help you improve your work-life balance, click here.

Come join Work-Life Balance for Speech Pathologists on Facebook for more tips and tricks!

Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

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Hello, podcast listeners. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 158 and it's actually a continuation or it's, you know, I don't even know how to describe it.

A continuation or a part two of last week's episode. But having said that, if you didn't listen to last week's episode, that is okay.

You don't need to listen to it in order to benefit from this one. However, if you are somebody who struggles when your day gets hijacked and the schedule, like the rug, the scheduling rug gets pulled out from under you, then you might want to go back and listen to episode 157 because I've got some mindset tips and some tactical strategies in there.

That would be very helpful. Now, for today's episode, I I guess for a frame of reference, what sparked this topic was my son getting sick and I needed to reschedule, I don't know, a pretty full workday of meetings, client sessions, coaching sessions with my coaching clients and stuff like that.

And I thought, you know what, this is something that has been, you know, is a challenge. I've been here many times before and I've learned a thing or two and yet it is still challenging.

And I thought, what better topic to discuss than this one? Because if you are a mom or you are a busy woman or a caregiver or if you work in the field of speech pathology or related fields, you know all too well how schedules can get.

You know, thrown out the window and it's difficult. So in today's episode, what I want to do is talk you through why rescheduling is not just a scheduling task.

Like when your day changes, when your plans change, it's not as simple as, okay, well, we just have to move these things around, right?

It is an executive functioning landmine, like, and I might be repeating myself from last week's episode, but the extent of executive functioning skills that are required in order to shift your day like this is incredible.

And I say this because if you are somebody who has ADHD or you suspect that you do or that you have a nerd.

Divergent Brain, then a simple, you know, change of plans might not feel all that simple for you. And that is okay.

That is okay. However, it doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can do about it. So what I'm going to do today is talk you through why this is so challenging.

And I'm going to use an executive functioning model that is way more specific than what you probably think of when you think about executive functioning skills.

Okay. And side note, I mean, just kind of looking ahead a little bit in the upcoming episodes, I'm going to show you some of the AI tools that I use to reduce this mental load.

So as you listen to this episode, if you're like, oh my gosh, this is so much, what can I do to make it easier?

Here, I'm going to be sharing some of the things that I do to make it easier. And I'm also going to, in an upcoming episode, talk through why email wording and messaging to clients or colleagues or staff or families, whoever, right, can become its own cognitive load and its own rabbit hole or sinkhole, depending on how you want to look at it.

Okay. Because that very much came up in this scenario for me. And I know that this is something that you all need to hear about and can use some support with.

Okay. So just keep your eye out for those upcoming episodes. Now, as I said, quickly setting the scene yesterday, sick kid.

This was a surprise disruption. I had a lot of moving parts. There was an upcoming 4th of July holiday.

So at my schedule of this work week, there's less room available for scheduling work meetings and calls. And I was also trying to do all of this shuffling while I had my sick son, my son who was sick, and then my three girls home.

And it was just chaos, right? So I want to share with you how I think about tasks in a way to, number one, normalize the struggle and explain some of the struggle, not to excuse the struggle, not to excuse and say that this is something that we should just give up on and there's no point.

It's hopeless. No, not at all. But to give you a little bit of the anatomy of what goes into something like this so that you have a better understanding of why it's hard and then what you can do about it.

And I'm going to share in this recording a... A framework of executive functioning skills from Dawson and Gere. I'm certain I'm not saying their name, that last name correctly, but I will try to remember and hopefully my AI tools will remind me to reference this, their work in the show notes in case you want to hear or read anything more about their work, okay?

So when we think about executive functioning skills, there are lots of different ways that we can conceptualize them. There's lots of different frameworks out there for how they are represented.

There is no one right way, okay? I just want to make that clear as we begin. But I like this one, this framework from Dawson and Gere, because it breaks executive functioning down into 11 specific skills.

And this makes it easier to pinpoint what is actually the hardest for you. And to choose. choose. Strategies that are going to match the real breakdown or the breakdowns that are occurring.

Okay. Now, a lot of this is, you know, uh, they overlap, like, right. Like the, these skills overlap, they are like intertwined.

And so we can't break them apart in like neat little boxes. Um, even though we want to, and even though this episode might make it sound like we can.

Okay. I feel like those are all the disclaimers that I need to share. Okay. So first metacognition, essentially self-awareness, the ability to be aware of what is happening in your mind, in your body, and in your environment as you are in it.

Right. So like, for example, I was dealing with my son who was, was getting sick. who had gotten sick.

And I, in that moment, was able to kind of be an observer and recognize through my metacognitive skills, what was happening.

Okay, I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now. I can feel it in my chest or in my stomach, right?

I'm noticing that I'm, you know, a little bit shorter and a little bit like, like short and maybe frustrated in my tone when I'm talking to the kids.

These are like my own stress signals, my own patterns. And this is all happening very, very quickly, by the way.

But for people with ADHD, one of the one of the struggles is metacognition and being able to notice what's happening in like in your own experience as it's happening.

And if this is an area of struggle for you. It can become very difficult to make change, right? Because if you're not even aware of what's happening and that there is a problem that's occurring, or maybe you know there's a problem happening, but you're not really sure how that feels in your body, what that looks like, what you're thinking in those moments, right?

You just go into reactive mode. So instead of being in reactive mode, we have to sort of get above it, sort of like look from the outside in or pause and zoom out before taking action.

And self-awareness is one of the core pieces of my coaching framework in the work that I do with the women who I coach, okay?

Secondly, response inhibition. You might also think of this or hear it referred to as impulse control. We know that people with ADHD or people with neurodivergent brains can struggle with impulsivity.

So for example, when my son is sick, impulse control is at play here. And if I'm struggling to control the urges or the impulses to act, I might make one problem into many problems.

Or I may take one level of challenge and amplify it because I'm already acting before I'm thinking. How many times has this happened to you where all of a sudden you're already moving to go and do the thing that you thought of in your mind?

You didn't even realize or pause to consciously decide if you wanted to actually get up and go do the thing that.

You're now doing, right? So if you have ADHD, this will probably be very relatable for you. So in yesterday's example, where my son was sick, I had to control the urge to just immediately fire off an email or send a text message right away.

Like, oh my gosh, I have to cancel. Sorry. Right. Without thinking, because that will impact the quality of my problem solving skills.

So what might happen if I'm not stepping into a place of impulse control might be over committing or making mistakes and giving, you know, wrong days or times as I'm offering rescheduled appointments.

Right. Right. Or I might add more into some to a day that I would typically, you know, later I would probably.

So what I often do is talk, I do this with myself and I talk with my coaching clients about the power of the pause.

The power of the pause, the micro pause, right? That tiny space between where you have a thought or there's a situation, a scenario, right?

The trigger and then the reaction. That tiny space in between the trigger and the reaction is where the power lies.

Another piece that goes into this in terms of executive functioning skills is emotional regulation, emotional control. This is something that as of now is not recognized by the DSM as a component of ADHD.

However, there is a lot of evidence that suggests that people with ADHD struggle with emotional regulation, okay? And whether you.

you want to call that ADHD or not, I will tell you, I myself, as a human with four kids and a business, I struggle with emotional regulation a lot.

So in yesterday's example, needing to recognize that stress was happening in my body and manage those emotions so that I wasn't taking action or making decisions from an emotional and reactive state.

Okay. I'm not trying to say that emotions are bad or wrong. Absolutely not. But we don't want the emotions to be running the schedule.

We don't want the emotions to be running the show. Okay. We need to regulate first. Once you're able to regulate, then you can access the highest level of thinking.

But if you are in a emotionally dysregulated place and you are trying to take careful, thoughtful action, you're going to fail nine times out of 10.

So recognizing that you're becoming dysregulated. And so you can see, by the way, how that first executive functioning skill of metacognition ties in here, right?

You have to be able to recognize what's happening in your body and pause and manage so that you can get to a place of regulation and then take action.

Okay. Another executive functioning skill that is definitely challenged in the, you know, chaos of rescheduling your day is working memory.

You guys, my working memory is poor. At best, my working memory is very poor. Um, So when we're talking about working memory at a very basic, simple level here, it is your ability to hold, to store and retrieve information when you need it, while you are also doing something else.

So rescheduling your day is a classic example of a high degree of challenge when it comes to working memory.

So what it looked like was keeping track of, okay, which clients need to be rescheduled? What times are available?

Who did I offer these times to already? And can I remember the specific days and times and store and hold that information in my head as I go to send an email so that I'm not toggling back and forth from tab to tab to tab to tab, right?

Trying to figure out. What were those times again that I was going to offer? Who am I sending this email to?

Thinking about what are the family constraints or the logistical pieces that I have to hold and remember, especially if you have a day or a week that is a bit of an outlier, a deviation from the normal pattern.

So for example, this week is the 4th of July holiday. And so I had to remember that Friday was not a workday for me.

That Thursday was not a full workday for me. So I had to hold that information in my mind as I am making these adjustments.

And as you are trying to hold all of that, right, you can imagine and probably you know from personal experience that the load, the cognitive load of this and the tax that we pay, especially as individuals who have.

Or suspect that you have ADHD, right? So this is one of my biggest struggles with executive functioning. And it is something that I have put strategies in place to support myself with this.

That's not necessarily what this episode is about. But with this example or with any of these executive functioning skills that we're talking about, please know that there are strategies for each and every one of these to support you in strengthening them, okay?

All right. Next executive functioning skill that comes into play here is planning and prioritizing, right? So I needed to have a step-by-step plan in place.

What is truly urgent? What can wait? What is the order of operations here? What's the order of operations? For, you know, in this moment, so as like I've got three kids that are, you know, tired and hot and hungry and wanting things from me, and then I've got my son who's, you know, tossing his cookies on the sidelines, and then I've got the two dogs and I'm, you know, in that moment, probably not the moment where I need to start rescheduling the next day's sessions, right?

So recognizing what is urgent, what can wait, and then planning and prioritizing what needed to be handled in that moment, and then once I was able to shift into gear of shuffling, planning and prioritizing what I needed to shuffle.

How was that? How am I going to decide which things need to be rescheduled first? Which ones are the highest priority?

Which ones are low priority? What can I maybe delete or delay or delegate, right? What's going to be a good enough plan?

Right? Especially for those of us who struggle where everything feels equally urgent or equally important. That is a recipe for analysis paralysis or total chaos.

Okay? So that absolutely was coming into play when I needed to reconfigure my day. The next executive functioning skill here from Dawson and Gears.

I have no idea how to say this name. That's really terrible. But Dawson and Gears framework, if you will, is time management.

Right? Being able to estimate how much time something is going to take. Being aware of the passing of time.

Being able to be in control of how much time you're spending on something and shift when needed. Knowing what time constraints you have.

Right? So I needed to. To estimate the time cost of rescheduling, right? And not just in terms of minutes, but like, what's the cost here for my coaching clients?

If we delay a whole week, what's that going to look like? And how can I still support them? If I am, how much time do I need?

And am I willing or able to spend on the rescheduling itself, right? Making decisions with real time limits in place.

And if I'm underestimating time in any sense of the word, of the concept here, it's going to impact both my ability to reshuffle the day and potentially the day that I reshuffle, right?

The rescheduled day might look like a total show if my time management skills aren't operating at a strong enough or high enough level.

visit Okay, organization, organization, systems, rhythms, routines, where you are tracking information and materials, being able to know what information you need in order to complete the rescheduling, knowing where to find it, knowing where you need to go to then execute on the rescheduling, right?

So if you are somebody, and I'm not trying to call anyone out here, but hello, I have been there and I still am often there at times and that's okay.

We're not going for perfection here. But if you are somebody who knows that you're trying to find, let's say, a template for a report and you've got in your head a list of four different places where it could be, and then, oh yeah, I forgot about this fifth area where it might be, right?

You now have information in life. Lots of different places. Your ability to go and find what you need quickly, easily, is negatively impacted.

So being able to have some sense of organization with your information is going to help make these types of tasks, like reconfiguring your day, a whole lot easier.

All right. Next one in terms of executive functioning skills that are at play here. Task initiation. Right. How many times have you ever had a situation happen or a task that you have to get done and you cannot seem to bring yourself to get into action?

Right. It's interesting because sometimes we talked we talked earlier about the executive functioning skill of impulse control. Right. Response, inhibition, impulsivity, all different ways to kind of refer to the same concept.

And now. Here we are talking about, before I was saying, oh, you might start taking action without even realizing what you're doing.

And that is true and very real. And also, you may get stuck in paralysis and not be able to initiate action because of executive functioning breakdowns.

Both can be true. So I don't want to confuse anyone, but I want you to recognize that there's lots of different pieces at play here.

So for me, in yesterday's example, task initiation for the rescheduling of the day was not all that difficult for me.

However, task initiation for handling the mess that needed to get cleaned up from my sick child, that was a different story.

It was definitely stuck in analysis paralysis for that, right? So being able to take action and start, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it feels challenging, right?

Something that That I often will do and will encourage my clients to do when I'm coaching them is identifying one small step, the smallest first step that you can take to get going.

Sustained attention, meaning being able to start and complete the task. Stay with it until you close the loop, the open loop, meaning this thing in your mind that is unresolved, that you haven't yet completed.

So this looks like being able to follow through on what you're doing, okay, without getting sidetracked and then forgetting all about it.

This executive functioning skill of sustained attention is very interwoven with impulse control and working memory. I mean, it's connected to all of the executive functioning skills because like I said,

They are all related, interrelated. But I think when I think about sustained attention, my mind immediately goes to working memory and impulse control.

Because in order for me to sustain my attention, I have to be able to inhibit an impulse to go and do something that catches my eye, that seems easier or more fun, right?

I need to, but I also need to be able to recognize what's happening in my environment and when there is something going on where I do need to pause my focus and shift gears for a minute, right?

And then if I do, whether it was an intentional shift of focus or it was a lack of impulse control and I've shifted focus, I need to have my working memory in order so that I know where I left off and where to pick back up when I resume or so that I even remember to pick back up because I can't tell you how many.

Sometimes this didn't happen yesterday per se, but I can't tell you how many times I will be doing something and then get interrupted for one reason or another and forget all about it until usually like three in the morning.

I'll wake up and remember or when I'm like in the shower. Those are the times where I tend to remember, oh, my gosh, I forgot to send that email or I forgot, you know, I started that report and I never finished it.

Right. So sustained attention was definitely a big piece of this rescheduling process yesterday, especially when I was juggling all the different things that were competing for my attention at that point in time.

I've got a couple more for you, but I hope that as I'm like rattling these off, I'll pause for just a second to check in with you.

And not that you can respond to me or answer, but I'm curious. It's like it. Is this making sense for you?

Are you starting to recognize the ways in which the executive functioning skills are at play here? Is it starting to shift anything for you in terms of your experience when you're juggling something like a day that goes to ?

Is it helping you better understand why things feel challenging? Is it helping you to maybe have a different narrative in your mind, like a different story that you tell yourself, right?

Maybe instead of telling yourself, gosh, I'm so scattered. Maybe now we can shift the narrative a little bit, right?

Because this is actual evidence-based information here. And I know my SLPs love some good evidence-based information. Okay. All right.

Cognitive flexibility. This was a big one, right? Just in and of itself being able. So to recognize the need to change courses, right?

Change the plan. You need to have cognitive flexibility. How can I pivot? What am I going to do? Now that could be in terms of like overall having to pivot and be flexible with my entire next day.

It was also could be very micro. We're having cognitive flexibility in each moment of the shuffling. Being able to stop doing something and recognize, okay, I see now I have to pause my attention here, shift focus to my child who needs me.

Cognitive flexibility needs to be on board here, right? In order for me to pivot. Getting out of all or nothing thinking or black or white thinking, right?

These are the things that we have to be able to do in order to shuffle and make a plan B.

All right. And then last but not least, I will share the 11th executive functioning skill from Dawson and Guarra's framework, which is goal-directed persistence, basically staying oriented to the goal.

Now, this kind of overlaps with a lot of what we have talked about today, but I'm going to go on a more macro level here.

However, overall, with this scenario that I'm sharing, having a sick kid at home and needing to reschedule your day, I had to lean on and bring in my goal-directed persistence here of this overall goal for me of work-life balance, which is to be able to protect my family time, be there for my family, and show up in a way as, you know, in my role as a mom, in a way that I feel really good about, while also maintaining my business and...

Serving my coaching clients and focusing on my goals there as well, right? So goal-directed persistence, being able to, you know, that's more of a macro level example here, but even if you want to go more micro, being able to complete the reschedule process, even though it's annoying, even though it's challenging, even though, you know, it was uncomfortable, right?

How many times have you, like, had a situation where you just kind of give up halfway through and you bail?

This is a waste of time. This is, I can't do this. And then you walk away, right? That doesn't, that typically doesn't feel good.

And that's very different from deciding that you're no longer willing to give your time towards something that doesn't fit in, okay?

That's not what I'm talking about here. But really goal-directed persistence, meaning your ability to persist with something that you know you want and need to persist.

And yet it is challenging. Okay. So this hopefully helps illustrate why rescheduling feels so heavy, because you're basically using every executive functioning skill all at once.

So this load that we feel is not imaginary. It's not, it is, it is real, but it's also not fixed.

Meaning you can change it. You can strengthen it. You can support your executive functioning skills, right? And when you have a better understanding of the role that executive functioning and the role that your ADHD is playing in anything that you do, it opens up a world of possibilities for how you can implement strategies that will actually help you.

So improve your work-life balance. This is the stuff that I absolutely love nerding out on. It's so nerdy, but it's true.

I love thinking about all of these things that are happening at once and how it ties into our mindset, how it ties into our experience of the world.

I mean, once you start recognizing how many executive functioning skills are at play with anything that you do and you start understanding your ADHD, I'm telling you, the possibilities are endless for the shifts that you can make and what you can do to set yourself up for success.

All right. Hope this helped. If you haven't listened to the last week's episode, the day that got hacked episode, right?

Go back and listen to that one. This episode will make more sense and you'll get some mindset and strategies in that episode as well.

And don't forget to keep an eye out for those upcoming episodes that I mentioned earlier. Always, if this is work that you want support with, click the link in the show notes, book a free consult.

I would love to walk you through how I can help. All right. I'll talk with you all soon. Bye.