39/100 Confidence

Confidence is something I keep coming back to in this project. It is something that I keep running into in every part. I wonder about how confidence effects peoples self assessment answers? I wonder about how confidence effects people Executive Function strengths and weaknesses? I wonder about the effect lack of confidence can have on someone’s life? I know from my own life experiences that confidence is a powerful thing that can greatly effect someone’s abilities to do something. I guess I wonder is it more powerful than Executive Functions? #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

38/100 #12, #8, #7, #6

I have made it through the first 12 and so far these 4 are the only ones I needed to redo. As I go through I am reminded how different these each are. This may have been my biggest question, would I make these and they would all look the same? I didn’t think they would but I am so glad to know for sure they don’t. I wish I had known earlier in life that everyone’s brain was unique.

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37/100 redo

I am going through and figuring out which ones got mixed up, so far #1-5 are right but #6 was mixed up so redoing that one. I really want these to be accurate representations of each persons data, even if that means I have to go back and redo many of the ones I already did, before moving forward.

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36/100 Cognitive Flexibility

In my own Executive Function self assessment my biggest strength is flexibility. In my learning about cognitive flexibility I have started to understand that this strength is what allows me to see many possibilities, to see things from multiple perspectives and ask lots of questions. If flexibility is a weakness you are probably a pretty linear thinker, problem straight to solution kind of person. If flexibility is a strength you may see lots of solutions to every problem. Depending on the situation, I can see where both of these could be good skills to have but as with so many things in this project I can also see the flip side. A flip side I can see for myself with Flexibility as a strength is that my thinking can be little messy. With more thoughts and ideas comes more room for mistakes. I don’t think this is a bad thing just something we should maybe make more room for. If someone is a flexible thinker we need to give them room to explore all the paths before they come to the one that is going to work. This may mean more trial and error. In some environments flexible thinking and the mistakes that come with may even be punished or corrected making what is truly a strength feel like a weakness again.

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35/100 Explaining your thinking is hard.

Thanks to my mistake, I have had a kind breakthrough moment in this project. As I was sitting down going back through my organizational process trying to figure out where I had gotten mixed up and what I needed to go back and fix, I kept getting to a point in my thinking where I would realize I just needed to physically make the portraits in order to see if I had truly fixed my mistake. It was in this moment that I realized that I have learned Executive Function skills in my life to get by in places like school and work and this has been important part of me being a functioning person and adult who is responsible for other people. but if I want to truly understand something I have to make it, or touch it, or see it or experience it because that is truly how my brain processes things, by doing. In my learning about Executive Functions I have again and again read that Executive Functions are so important because they are the way that people process information coming into the brain to turn it into the brain outputting something. What if for some people Executive Functions are not how they process information ?

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34/100 It’s okay to make mistakes.

I realized yesterday, as I was finishing my 30th portrait that I had a mistake in my process and had inadvertently switched two of the categories in maybe every portrait I have made so far. I haven’t gone through them all to see which ones I will need to redo but there are definitely some that I will need to redo (so if I already sent you a copy of yours and I need to redo yours I will send you a copy of your new one!) When I realized this I was mad and frustrated with myself, then I had this overwhelming feeling that made me want to stop the project right then and there. After a little bit of time and some positive self talk I have reminded myself that mistakes are part of the process and this is a project about process. #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

33/100 The power of changing your thinking.

This morning we put together a kaleidoscope kit we got for a present. I wasn’t totally sure how well it would work as we were putting it together but it works great. You spin the same beads around and you get a different picture each time. I couldn’t help but see a comparison to how this project has shifted my perspective on so many things. I didn’t change the beads I just looked at them from a different perspective.

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32/100 What happens long term?

Executive Functions have nothing to do with intelligence or knowledge, these are different parts of the brain. So someone who struggles with Executive Functions can be very intelligent, think the bumbling professor character. Yet many people, especially kids, who struggle with Executive Functions can find school setting to be a challenge. In a society that mostly measures intelligence by success in school this can cause lots of kids who have issues with Executive Function and struggle with school to believe they are not smart. In my own experiences in school and as an adult in both my role as a teacher and parent, I have seen this happen so many times to kids. If you think about all the reasons that a kid might struggle with Executive Functions and I can only imagine how much worse the pandemic has made this issue, that is a lot of kids who go through school feeling like they are not smart because their brains don’t work the way school does. I also really strongly believe this sticks with people, kids who struggle with Executive Functions in school start to loose confidence and interest and curiosity. In all my reading and research so far I have found little about the long term effects this has on people but I think it is pretty significant and important to think about.

#100daysofefportraits #efportraits

31/100 Structure

I don’t know exactly when I learned this about myself but I have known for a long time, maybe since college, that I need structure to do things. I need guidelines, or accountability or something to keep me on task. I also know that I need just enough of those things to keep me going but too much structure or rules and I get overwhelmed or frustrated and give up. I have done this 100 day project many times now and it is for me the perfect balance of structure and accountability with flexibility and room for creativity. For my Executive Function skill set this is balance that works. As an adult I am grateful to know this and have the freedom to work in environments that allow this balance of structure I need.

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30/100 The Process

Last year I heard a Children’s book author speak about her work, she mostly shared about the process she went through in her writing. The most memorable part for me and the students I was teaching at the time was when she showed a giant stack of papers and told us these were all the drafts she had gone through to write this children’s book. I was impressed but the kids really couldn’t get over how much work had gone into what seemed to them to be a relatively short book. As I have worked through this project I have thought about this a lot. I think in tasks were there is an outcome that is shared it is easy to overlook the process. And really the process is probably often more important then the outcome. For me in creating this project the process has been a spiral of learning, listening, thinking, making and repeating. But it has also been important for me in this project to be super thoughtful about my process because I think that is what has allowed my Executive Function Skills to complete the task that is this project. Even a project about Executive Function skills needs Executive Function skills to happen. #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

29/100 more painted papers!!

When I first started this project I had no idea how many of these portraits I would make, I still have no idea how many I will make but the fact that I just finished my 30th makes me so happy! Painting more papers to keep making more. #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

Flowers from my favorite 13 year old.

If you want to take the self assessment for a portrait please go to katiegillharvey.com and select Be a Part of the Project.

28/100 interwoven

I have been thinking a lot about how our individual Executive Functions relate to those around us. Do you get along better with people who have similar EF profiles to you? At home or at work is it better to have someone who’s strengths and weaknesses are opposite to yours? #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

27/100 Where is my brain owners manual?

You can struggle with Executive Functions and not have ADHD but if you have ADHD you struggle with Executive Functions. Lots of things such as learning disorders, autism, trauma and depression can interfere with Executive Functions. If you don’t have a disorder that causes you to struggle with Executive Functions you still have Executive Function strength and weaknesses because everyone’s brain is different. And everyones Executive Functions are effected by things like stress and sleep (and after the last few years who is not stressed?!) So the long and short of it is that being aware and understanding Executive Function skills are kind of important to all of us.

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26/100 ADHD

Early on in my EF learning I listened to a podcast with clinical psychiatrist, professor and ADHD researcher Dr Russell Barkley as the guest and he said “ADHD is an executive disorder because it interferes with all Executive Functions… other disorders like autism, bipolar or brain injury may interfere with only 1 or 2.” For me personally this was news and ADHD runs strongly in my family, myself included. Yet, I had never really heard anybody put ADHD in those terms before. I always thought of it as an attention issue or maybe a hyperactivity issue, but now that I have spent the last few months really thinking about it as an Executive Function thing it makes so much more sense to me. It also made me think of how many people, 11 % of the world’s population, struggle with ADHD. Since learning this I have had many conversations with people who deal with ADHD on a daily basis who also had no idea. I hope as Executive Functions become a bigger part of our everyday conversation more and more people will see this connection. #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

25/100 compassion and empathy

I used to work in a school that had a sign taped over the copy machine that said “lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” I always felt a smug agreement with this sign. As a planner, maybe even a little compulsively so, I never had to run in an emergency to the copy machine. I now realize that is actually because planning/prioritization is a strength of mine. But instead of feeling the same sense of smugness now I feel an empathy, the person running to make emergency copies again and again probably had a weakness in planning/prioritization, something they were likely aware of and working on, and I doubt that sign was going to be the thing to change this for them. If anything this sign was probably adding stress to an already stressed out person. I doubt this was the goal of the person who hung the sign, in fact I feel very confident that the person who hung the sign is strong in planning/prioritization. Being aware of my own EF skill strengths and weaknesses has given me a surprising amount of compassion and empathy to things that would have once probably irritated me about other people. Realizing that someone is not doing something to you as a personal affront but just because it is the way their brain works makes it lot easier to understand behaviors that once would have baffled me.

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24/100 confidence, anxiety and self awareness

The interesting part of this project, that I didn’t really think of before hand, is that these are all self assessments and therefore the the views of only one’s self. If I asked my husband or my boss or my sisters to asses me, I wonder how different they would be? Throughout this project I have noticed that these three words keep coming up for people. And for myself I know how much confidence , anxiety and self awareness play a role in my own answers. I also have had several conversations with friends about how obvious the Executive Function weaknesses of our loved ones can feel to us even when they seem to be oblivious. But looking at our own selves is it harder or easier to see those things? Would we get a more accurate picture if we asked multiple people to asses the same person? Or is the self assessment the most important part?

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23/100 Flip side

“The flip side of distractibility is curiosity” - Dr Hallowell

Through this I have learned that every Executive Function has a flip side. for every weakness there is a strength and for every inability there is an ability.

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22/100 What if creativity is inhibited by Executive Function?

The more I thought about The Beatles documentary the more I was reminded of this quote. As someone who has spent the last 20 years teaching art to kids it is without question to me that kids are the most creative people I know. Knowing how most kids are just developing theIr Executive Function part of their brain makes me wonder if this is part of what allows them to be so creative. In practical terms, if kids don’t have all the limitations of schedule, goals, and tasks that frees up their brain to think in a different, more creative way. What if some people as they become grownups with Executive Function weakness are able to hold onto that ability that kids have for creative thinking? What if the flip side of Executive Dysfunction is creativity?

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21/100 The Beatles are an Executive Function nightmare.

Like lots of people I watched The Beatles documentary “Get Back” which aired on Disney + this winter. As a long time Beatles fan I was excited about the documentary but watching it during all my Executive Function research I couldn’t help but see it through that lens. All I could think about was how Executively Dysfunctional the Beatles were. Prior to the time of this documentary The Beatles made 12 albums in 7 years, many of which are thought of as masterpieces even still today. Yet in the documentary they cannot get it together, they are late, silly, goofing off, sleeping, leaving early, fighting, and generally struggling to reach their goal of planning a concert and writing an album. It turns out that just prior to their last album and the filming of this documentary their longtime manager Brian Epstein died. He clearly played the role of the Executive Functioning brain of The Beatles. Without him to give their creative genius some structure I don’t think The Beatles would have been so prolific. Watching this, I had so many questions about the intersection between creativity and Executive Function. It was again another seed planted for this project. #100daysofefportraits #efportraits

4w

20/100 What are some things you do that help you to be stronger in Executive Function areas you are weak in? Like little techniques that help you stay organized or be on time or remember things you need to remember? I have lots, as an executive functionally challenged teenager I went to an organizational tutor and I still use many of the things I learned there today. But I have been surprised in this project about some things I do that I didn’t even realize I was doing. I recently learned about Body Doubling, a technique were a person working on a challenging task has another person nearby. Not necessarily to help them with the task but to just be there, physically in the same space while they work. I use this all the time but had no idea it was thing. I knit nearby while my kids do school work they are having a hard time with, and I can’t empty the dishwasher without a podcast. It is so interesting how our brains often figure out supports without us even realizing why.

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