I think that one of the biggest divides between tech ICs and management comes from an inability to have an honest conversation about day-to-day executive function and the anxiety surrounding it.

If I was still managing developers, this would be the next step.

Everyone manages it indirectly. The advice is to sleep better, drink more water, use pomodoro technique, pair program, use x y and z “hack” without ever really verbalizing the problem you’re trying to solve.

I used to read a lot of productivity books, and they’re filled with these “hacks”, but no one really gets down to the core functions you need to do consistent deep work and what the lack of them feels like.

Hyperfocus and the The Productivity Project come a lot closer to a good mental model about this stuff, but by necessity the author just shows his conclusions rather than all his research. Insights are deeply practical, they’re probably the best productivity books I’ve ever read

For example “Task activation”, the ability to just freaking start things, especially when you really don’t feel like it. This is the ability to flip a switch and cut through negative inertia and begin working on a thing.

“Working memory”, do you, at this instant, have the mental horsepower to solve this set of problems?

“Sustained focus” - when your mind wanders from a task (which is totally normal and expected), do you have the ability to bring your focus back to the task at hand?

This by the way is the only part of my theory of executive function that meditation helps with.

“Task breakdown” - can you detect when a task is particularly hairy and break it down into small enough pieces that it doesn’t fill you with anxiety any more? Can you make it easy to start?

A lot of this is connected to experience and domain specific knowledge.

“Time management” can you make a plan for a day, week etc and stick to it? More importantly, can you make good decisions about when to discard the plan?

In answer to this people came up with the three daily priorities thing which is a stonking great idea.

“Metacognition” do you have the ability to reflect on your knowledge and behaviour with the goal of improving?

This is why we have retros, and why good retros are so transformative.

If managers try to directly help with someone’s executive function, that’s called overbearing, draconian, micromanagement.

If an IC reports a problem with their executive function upwards, then they’re lazy, slacking, unproductive. The conversation has no room to exist.

So we come up with practices that either ritualize or indirectly improve all of our executive function situations without talking about them directly. I don’t know, maybe it’s one of those things we’ll never talk about directly. We make up strange rationalizations for them.

As a manager, you end up spotting executive function problems with other people and suggesting things that will probably help.

Things like pair programming (task activation), scheduling deep work on the calendar (sustained focus), planning sessions (task breakdown) etc