Executive Function Strategies Blog

I was cruising down the Massachusetts Turnpike, breeze in my hair, with just enough time to arrive a little early for my meeting, when I realized that I was supposed to be heading east, not west. My arrival would not be five minutes early; it would be ten minutes late due to this nasty thing called physics. How did this happen to me, an Executive Function coach? (And, heck, the owner of a company that teaches Executive Function skills to people!)

“If I don’t wash the towels, then make up the lunches, then go get ice for the cooler, and pack the car up tonight, we’ll never get out the door and to the beach tomorrow.” This is just the sort of thing my friend Dylan would say as he prepares for Cape Cod traffic in the summer. Usually, I reply with something like: “Could Geoff help you with some of that?” Dylan laughs and rolls his eyes as he reminds me that Geoff is the reason he needs to do all of that prep work himself. 

Moments of quiet and calm - and eruptions of tears and frustration.

At night, a tangle of worried thoughts instead of restful sleep. 

While this could describe daily life for many of us in 2020, our team has been particularly attuned to the new challenges that parents and professionals have been facing this year. How have we kept our fingers on the pulse? 

During the past year, our Client Services Coordinators have had conversations with over a thousand individuals looking to learn more about Executive Function coaching and to determine if it’s a good fit for themselves or their kids. Sometimes, it’s just not the right time to begin the coaching journey. There may be mental health or other challenges that need addressing first, before a coach can have a positive impact. Most of the time, though, the folks we talk to have the right combination of frustration about their current situation and interest in making a change for the better that unlocks the real potential for coaching to be life-changing. We love those moments. That’s when we can hear the change in their voices that signals a hopefulness and optimism that had been hard to come by in the months - or years - prior. 

As we reflect on this year, what are some of the themes that our team has observed in these phone calls during 2020? Let’s get a fly-on-the-wall perspective to learn more from our Client Services Team and their 1000+ conversations they had this year - and their best insights from 2020 for struggling parents and professionals.

“Not another meal to prepare!” “I wish I was motivated to work-out.”  “I just didn’t have the time to do that today."

Sound familiar? You're certainly not alone - getting motivated isn't always easy. We all have those days where the routines get stale and even getting out of bed becomes an arduous task. In this article, I'm going to share my six simple motivating hacks that I use every day to live a more productive life. Hopefully, you can take a few of these and apply them in your own life to overcome those days when it's tough to get going and accomplish what you need.