The estimate you forgot to send. The materials you meant to order yesterday. The callback you missed that cost you the job. The stack of unopened mail on the counter that feels like a physical threat. The promise you made to your kid that you forgot until it was too late.
It's not the individual screw-up that's killing you. It's the slow, grinding feeling of incompetence. It's the voice in your head at 3 AM that says you're letting people down, that you're a step behind, that you can't even handle the basics while you're juggling a dozen other things perfectly. It's a direct hit to your identity as a capable, reliable person who gets things done.
Here's the truth nobody tells you: That 3 AM voice is reading from a script written by a system that was never built for your brain.
The Nail Gun Analogy
If a guy on your crew kept trying to run a nail gun with a dead battery, you wouldn't call him lazy. You'd tell him his tool is out of juice.
Your brain is a high-performance engine. And for years, you've been trying to run it with a junk drawer full of mismatched, busted tools the world told you should work. It's like trying to build a deck in St. Charles County with nothing but a hammer and a prayer. You might get it done, but it's gonna be ugly, and it's gonna take you three times as long.
Executive Function:
This isn't a feeling. It's your brain's internal foreman. It's the part of your brain responsible for planning the job, getting the crew started, staying on task, and adapting when things go wrong. When the foreman is burnt out, the whole job site grinds to a halt.
The Neuroscience (In Shop Talk)
Your prefrontal cortex — the foreman — runs on dopamine. That's the brain chemical responsible for motivation, focus, and task initiation. Here's the thing about dopamine that the productivity gurus don't tell you: it doesn't reward effort. It rewards the prediction of reward.
Research confirms that dopamine's primary role isn't to make you feel good — it's to signal Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs), the mismatch between what you expected and what actually happened. Your brain is constantly asking: "Is this task likely to deliver something worth my energy?"
For a neurotypical brain, "I should send that estimate because it's the responsible thing to do" is enough predicted reward to get started. For a brain with different dopamine wiring, that sentence generates approximately zero signal. It's not a motivation problem. It's a signal problem. The foreman isn't lazy — the radio is on the wrong frequency.
And here's the other half of the equation: dopamine is also the primary driver of information-seeking motivation, curiosity, and exploration — even without immediate tangible rewards. That's why you can spend three hours deep-diving into a random hobby and then be unable to send a two-line email. The brain is following dopamine. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do. It just isn't doing what the calendar says it should do.
A Shop Class for Your Brain
This isn't about talking about your mother. This is about building a better workshop for your brain. Executive function coaching is a strategic consultation to give you the right tools, build the right systems, and get your operation running smoothly again. It's a shop class for your brain, focused on one thing: making your Monday work.
THE "WHAT TO SAY" SCRIPT (For Yourself)
INSTEAD OF: "I'm a f*ck-up. I can't believe I forgot that again."
TRY THIS: "My system for tracking that task failed. I need to build a better one."
That shift — from "I am broken" to "my system is broken" — is the most important upgrade you'll ever make. It moves the problem from your identity to your infrastructure. And infrastructure can be redesigned.
You're a professional who knows the value of the right tool for the job. It's time to apply that same no-BS logic to the most important tool you have: your brain. Stop trying to muscle through it with the wrong equipment. Find out the difference between coaching and therapy, and then get your Monday back.
When you're ready to build your toolkit: Start here →
Part of: Executive Function → | Related: Why You Don't Need Another Planner · The Burnt-Out CEO
