my culinary explanation of executive function

just like a turtle trudging through peanut butter

Hey there, friend!

I find myself trying to explain to neurotypical people what life with ADHD is like.

Of course, I don't know what my brain is going on about half the time, so... I’m not sure I can help you, normie friend. 🙃

Anyway, one of the hardest things to explain is our struggle with executive function and getting stuff done.

After all, why can’t we just DO THE THING?

But now I can explain it, thanks to sandwiches.

Yes, sandwiches.

I know that sounds bonkers, but hear me out:

Back in college, I took a technical writing course. One of our assignments was to write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

When we turned in the assignment, the instructor pulled out a box with all of the fixings and tried to make our sandwiches.

He followed our directions EXACTLY.

So if you wrote, "put the peanut butter on the bread," he'd do this:

GIF of me placing an unopened jar of peanut butter on half a wrapped loaf of sandwich bread.

There was no taking the bread out of the bag if you didn't put that in there as a step.

No opening the jar of peanut butter if you hadn't included that, either.

His point was that if you're explaining steps to someone who's never made a PB&J before, you can't assume they have all the knowledge that you do.

Which is true!

But at the same time, you have to assume SOME kinds of knowledge.

Because if you have to explain ALL of that, where do you stop? Do you need to explain opening the drawer to get the knife to apply the peanut butter? How about going to the store to buy the peanut butter?

If you're that detailed, a three-ingredient sandwich could run into hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of steps.

GIF of a very long, unscrolling list

And if you showed that list to someone who'd never made one before, they'd be like, "No thanks, I'm ordering a pizza."

There's a balance between too much detail and not enough detail.

And I think "normal" brains understand this inherently when thinking about any task.

ADHD brains often don't.

We've got either way too much:

Image of a very thick book titled “PB&J in 9,487 easy steps”

Or way too little:

Image of a torn scrap of paper with “eat” written on it

Today, I’m talking about the first one.

too much pb, not enough j

Sometimes, I can’t start a task because even the simple thing I should be able to JUST DO feels like it will take a hundred years.

Why will it take a hundred years?

BECAUSE OF ALL THE STEPS.

GIF of an endless spiraling staircase. Evidently, from the new Magnum PI.

Take making a doctor’s appointment. Something that should take a few minutes, tops. But my ADHD brain sees:

• look up doctor's number

• check calendar for available dates

• find insurance info

• rehearse what to say

• find a quiet place to call from

• prepare for being put on hold

• figure out how to add it to your calendar immediately so you don't forget

• plan entire day of errands for the day of the appointment, since I’ll be out anyway

• start making lists of where to go and what I need there

Naturally, I’d find all that to be rather taxing.

But no one likes calling the doctor’s office, right? Of course, I’d procrastinate that.

🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷

The thing is, this also happens with things I want to do!

The clutter in my foyer and front closet is driving me NUTS.

I WANT it to be cleared out.

I don’t even mind cleaning it out.

The trouble is, to my brain, the task isn't just tidying the foyer.

It's:

1. Sort items in the foyer closet into piles

2. Realize most items don't belong in the foyer

3. Create piles for bedroom, basement, kitchen, and donation

4. Look at potential donation items and question everything

5. Is this actually donatable or just trash?

6. If it's trash, I'm contributing to landfill waste

7. Feel intense guilt about environmental impact

8. Remember I paid good money for this item I barely used

9. Feel intense guilt about wasting money

10. Should I keep it and try to use it?

11. No, that's how you end up on "Hoarders"

12. Maybe someone would want it on Buy Nothing?

13. That means taking photos and posting and coordinating pickup

14. Is this worth donating or am I just passing my trash to charity?

15. Create new pile of "items I feel guilty about" to deal with... later

16. Take the bedroom pile upstairs

17. Realize there's no space in the bedroom closet

18. Need to clean out bedroom closet first

19. Sort bedroom closet into piles for keep, donate, and store

20. Find out-of-season clothes that need to go to basement storage

21. Discover stuff that should actually go back to the foyer closet (why was this even up here?)

22. Find more stuff for donation pile

23. Put donation items in car

24. Or should I wait until I have more items to donate?

25. But then the donation pile will sit in my hallway for three months

26. Remember the Boy’s closet needs reorganizing, too

27. Find more things for basement storage in his closet

28. Uncover toys that should be donated

29. Find spot to secretly hold toys until 6 months have passed without him asking about them

30. Find old papers and school projects in stashed in the back of the closet

31. These should be filed, but where?

32. Office filing cabinet, obviously

33. Office filing cabinet is full

34. Need to clean out old documents

35. Need to shred sensitive documents

36. Where is the shredder?

37. Oh, it's in the office closet behind everything else. I need to organize this soon.

38. Wait, isn't there a community shred event?

39. That would be easier than doing it myself

40. When is it? Spring? Fall? Did I miss it?

41. Need to check the community calendar

42. Can't find community calendar

43. Check email for mention of shred event

44. Fall down email rabbit hole for 45 minutes

45. Remember I was organizing the foyer closet

46. Oh, look, more stuff to go to the bedrooms

47. But bedrooms are already cluttered with piles from earlier sorting

48. Some of those bedroom piles need to go back to the foyer

49. Why is that winter gear in the bedroom? It belongs in the foyer closet

50. But the foyer closet is what I'm trying to clean out...

And I know each decision above will slowly drain more and more of my executive function, which in itself is exhausting to think about.

That's how "clean the foyer closet" becomes an unholy mess of interconnected, endless tasks that last for infinity-to-the-power-of-infinity years.

At which point, my brain is like, “I give up. This is futile. We’re ordering pizza and never leaving the couch.”

GIF of Peg Bundy from Married with Children passed out on her couch with a pizza box on her lap.

So that’s why I can’t always just do a thing.

Because it’s not just “a” thing.

It’s 74,696 bajillion things and 13 times as many decisions.

…

That is, except when I have the exact opposite problem.

Which I’ll write about next time. :)

Till then, have a wonderful and weirdly wired week,

Kristen

P.S. People love to suggest "chunking" tasks into manageable bits. Which is valid!

But the reality of chunking with a task like decluttering means I'll end up with flotsam from the foyer stashed in bags in another room "to deal with later."

Which means sometime around November 34th, 3072. 👻