February: Self-Awareness — The Executive Function Skill Behind Everything Else
This is the second installment in our year-long series. Check back each month for new topics with tips and practices to improve your executive function skills.
Executive function (EF) is the umbrella term for the brain’s self-management system — the mental skills that help us get things done. And self-awareness is one of the most important, foundational — and often most overlooked — EF skills of all.
Why? Because you can’t work with your brain if you don’t understand how it works.
What Self-Awareness Actually Means (and Why It Matters)
Self-awareness in the context of executive function means being able to notice:
What’s working for you — and what’s not
How your environment impacts your focus and follow-through
Your patterns around time, attention, energy, and emotion
It’s noticing how you operate and making small changes based on that insight — instead of trying to force yourself to work in ways that don’t suit you.
The good news? You don’t have to become a whole new person. Self-awareness gives you the power to work with the brain you’ve got.
What Self-Awareness Looks Like in Daily Life
Here are a few real-life examples of self-awareness in action:
You realize that starting with the hardest task makes you freeze — so you warm up with something easy first.
You notice that clutter in your workspace makes your brain feel cluttered — so you spend two minutes clearing off your desk.
You accept that your energy dips around 2 p.m. — so you stop scheduling your most important tasks then.
This is how you build an EF-friendly life: by making adjustments based on your real patterns.
Your Executive Function Practice for February
Try asking yourself one of these questions each week (or each day, if you’re game):
What makes it easier for me to focus, follow through, or feel calm?
What’s something that tends to throw me off track — and how can I plan around it?
What’s a recent win — even a tiny one — that I can learn from or build on?
Keep your answers somewhere visible. The goal is to notice your patterns without judgment and then use that information to make better choices for your brain.
Bonus tip: Encourage your kids to answer these questions, too. It’s a great way to model self-awareness as a skill, not a personality trait.
Final Thoughts: Noticing Is a Skill
If you’ve ever thought, I just need more willpower, consider this: what you probably need is more information. About yourself. About how your brain actually works. About what you need in order to thrive.
Self-awareness isn’t about overanalyzing yourself — it’s about creating just enough space between what’s happening and how you respond to it.
This month, practice noticing. You don’t have to fix it; you just have to see it.
Coming Up Next Month
March: Time Management — We’ll look at how to make time feel less slippery and more doable.
