Executive function is not motivation

Why “he could do it if he wanted to” is almost always the wrong diagnosis, and what to look at instead.

“He could do it if he wanted to” is usually built on one observation: the task was completed once, under different conditions. That is not evidence of choice. It is evidence that the conditions mattered.

What to look at instead

Initiation, sequencing, and stopping are three separate capacities and they fail separately. Someone who cannot begin a task may be excellent at finishing it once begun. Someone who sequences well may be unable to stop, which looks like obsession and is actually an absent brake.

Ask which of the three failed. Then change that one thing. Incentives do not help with initiation, and consequences do not help with sequencing.

A note on cost

Compensating strategies work and they are expensive. If you are running four of them at once to hold down a job, the job is not the problem and neither are you. The arithmetic is.

This guide is free to copy, print, and forward, including to schools and clinicians. If a section is wrong or unclear, tell me and I will change it — hello@glideslope.practice.