Books about executive functioning & time management

Quick Things You Need To Know:

• This is a mishmash space where I’m throwing basically any book that has to do with managing tasks and time. I can’t even begin to understand how NTs track and manage time in their heads without lots of spreadsheets and calendars and alarms. And I can’t find any books to explain it.
• Dozens of new members each new highlight their primary challenges as ’time management’ or ’not enough time in the day/week/…’ or ’Not enough time to do…” or the impossible concept of ‘making time to…’
• I am a human, which means I also have this problem!
• I’ve been thinking about this. When we say ‘we don’t have enough time…’ or ‘I’m having a problem managing my time’ – that’s not really true, right? Like, time is a finite resource. You can’t manage time like you can manage other resources. Other stuff – if you lose it, or need more, there are potentially ways to gain or spend it and get back to a baseline. We can’t do that with time. It’s linear.
• For me, when I say ‘I don’t have enough time to…’ that’s actually me saying that I don’t have enough of something else, so I need to invest a unreasonable chunk of my dwindling time on earth doing things to make up for it. I don’t have money for childcare, a personal chef, or an assistant – so I have to juggle all my domestic, parenting, and work tasks at once. It’s not really about time, it’s about money, or some other scarce resource.
• Another thing that might drain our time is disability – all disabilities consume time. That’s why they’re disabilities – we need to invest more effort into just existing in a world filled with hurdles and busywork that abled folks can navigate effortlessly. Thanks to my executive functioning disabilities, planning my schedule for the next week, setting alarms so I don’t get distracted, and creating routines takes me half a day. Preparing myself to attend a party takes a week, then another week of hiding in a dark room to recover. Reading an email, deciding if I have time to handle it, when I will have time to handle it, thinking of the contents, formulating a response, and then decompressing and handling the anxiety of it all takes between 15 minutes to several hours.
• While shortcuts to save abled folks’ time are plentiful throughout the world, without accessible support for various disabilities, that lack of accommodations costs us time.
• So thinking about how to address parent challenges with time management, we have to consider:
  • Scarcity of support and resources that affect how we perceive and spend our time (childcare, money, domestic support, etc.)
  • Disabilities that affect how we spend our time (scheduling accessible transportation, executive functioning & planning mental disabilities, and so on.)
  • The impact of curated social media posts in skewing how much we think an average human can fit into a small chunk of time
• This is on the back burner because the whole thing is still a long tangled noodle in my brain. But here are some books I’m slurping to untangle this mess of lack of time

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Quick & Messy Book List:

BOOKS ABOUT DIVIDING TIME BETWEEN KIDS

• I got nuthin.’
• I really want a book that helps kids understand why some siblings need more parental attention than others (disabilities, etc.) Still looking.
• Also relevant: I’m still collating data and notes on how to spend storytime when you have multiple kids of different ages who like different books. I’m like 80% there and will report back when I figure out that magic.

BOOKS ABOUT LIFE/WORK/REST BALANCE

• ‘Away’ – (Emil sher) The text consists of post-it notes that mother and daughter leave for each other because busy schedules keep them from crossing paths throughout the day. This is a great representation that validates the experience of kids with a single working mother. I also love that it’s not a bad thing. I grew up much like this, although my mom was way less involved than this mom.
• Bizzy mizz lizzie – Shannon.  remembering not to overschedule and to take breaks. Ages 5+
• Rosie saves the world – fine illustrations. engagement was okay for 1-2 reads. at 5, Q understood the moral right away, that she’s so busy trying to help others, she forgets to take care of her own family. we learned about ’tikkun olam’ – repairing the world by doing good deeds. and mitzvahs. centers on a white girl. great for showing a few ways kids can do acts of kindness.  judaism

BOOKS ABOUT WHY PEOPLE (including parents) NEED TIME TO THEMSELVES

• Also not a book I have managed to find yet.
• Ideally, this is where we would teach kids to respect other peoples’ time. Not making them wait for you, and so on.

BOOKS ABOUT EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING & TIME MANAGEMENT

• So Few Of Me
• Peedie – (dunrea) beginning reader – validating, helps kids see they’re not alone in making mistakes and forgetting things

BOOKS ABOUT MINDFULNESS

• Little Sid – Lendler, cute modern twist on the story of siddhartha’s hero’s journey, one that connects with kids and gets to the point better than any other I’ve found. Growing up with a dad who bailed, the standard story of Siddhartha infuriates me. This one allows me to get over my personal issues where he is both wealthy and entitled enough to feel it’s acceptable to abandon his wife and newborn child (Sid is a kid in this one) and it brings it into the common era, where we see parents who are too busy to hang with kids (I feel seen) and the urge to fill that emptiness with THINGS and loving, generous caretakers. this is a spectacular book to get to the POINT of his journey, without the abandonment and class tourism. this book acknowledges his wealth and privilege, without treating it like it’s just another hurdle. i love this. also the illustrations are adorable, the story is funny. this is perfect for collections on Buddhism, as well as mindfulness, perspective, and focusing on what matters. Nepal, south asia, wealth inequality, need versus want,  buddhism, multiracial AAPI
• So many other books on mindfulness, which need to be in a separate list because of sheer quantity.

BOOKS ABOUT SHUTTING UP & SETTING AN EXAMPLE

• Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker (Jones) Q has enjoyed this in the past, so I got it for age 7 while he’s in super-interruption mode and has been picking up the nasty habit of mansplaining and ordering his friends around. this doesn’t address the control issue, but we do see how her being quiet for a damn minute means her whole life gets better in ways she couldn’t have foreseen because she was so busy talking. Such as – eating breakfast goes way quicker and she’s less rushed to catch thee bus.Both of us enjoyed it and he asked for it for several reads. he also had the self awareness to recognize that this is a challenge for him and something he needs to work on. i have no problem with this being a girl because 1. we’re reading books about boys who talk to much along side it and 2. it’s not gendered in any way, she just happens to be a girl. listening.
• Yoga bunny – even though no one wants to join him (all the chacters are he/him or unspecified), he keeps doing his thing, and eventually everyone joins in. not worth getting again but the illustrations are calm and cute and the flyleaf shows all the positions, which the kids like to imitate. worth leaving on the potty bookshelf for a 3yo but the story is meh (animals keep racing by bunny, and bunny incites them to do yoga with him but they are too busy, until one by one, they join him). mostly i like the illustrations, especially the end covers ( library book was frustrating because flyleafs are taped shut) which show plenty of basic yoga poses. this part is both mine and r2’s favorite, and if i had the time to do it with him, we’d try out all the poses together. it’s very enticing since the bunny doing poses looks so cute and fun.

NOT RECOMMENDED

• the boy who cried fabulous – not sure if this is a tale about being gay or being late to things because you’re easily distracted. boy keeps being late becuase he’s caught up in how fabulous everything is, and his parents ban him from saying that word. so he says ‘marvelous’ and other words, until his parents realize that his personality is actually a lot of fun and it’s okay to be late. This story is supposed to be a metaphor for validating gay kids with homophobic parents: “She said, “Now Roger, you go straight — straight to class, and don’t be late.” Roger tried hard to obey, he knew that he should not delay.” /”“You go right home. Don’t gad about.” But the metaphor is so weak and doesn’t translate for kids. It’s more like an in-joke for adults. I don’t like that. I don’t like when adults try to have conversations over kids’ heads. It’s snobbish and elitist and childism. It also reinforces some stereotypes about what it looks like to be a gay boy (flamboyant, etc.) that are kind of reductive. The end result is more of a commentary on distraction and not respecting other peoples’ time. Being gay is fine! Not respecting other people isn’t. So it’s a really weak and shitty metaphor. “I know that I am not on time. But what I did was not a crime. With so many fabulous things to see, the time just got away from me.” “If he kept his eyes upon the ground, and did not stop to look around, surely he’d pick up the pace and swiftly move from place to place.” 

• Someday is not a day of the week – o’malley – like the idea of this, but this suggests that grown ups are pushing things off because they are ignorant, not because they have real obligations with long-term consequences. also suggests they can drop those obligations if they just try, which isn’t true.
• Forever or a Day – sarah jacoby – both 4 & 6 had no clue what was gong on. vague with no story, it’s a bland greeting card.
• Be where your feet are (cook) illustrations are better than usual, but the clumsy writing still takes forever to explain what this means. Q enjoyed it okay at 7 but it was painful to read. could have (and likely has been) done much better in another book. As usual, Cook takes a topic we desperately need a book on, and then makes a confusing hot mess of it that leaves kids worse off than before.
• Tyrannosaurus dad – dad is a dinosaur, he’s always too busyworking, son wants him to come to field day, but he says he’s too busy, shows up anyway and saves the day by filling in for the ump and being an umbrella. not sure what the point of this book is. not worth getting again.
• This morning Sam went to mars – Carlson – everyone wants Sam to focus and he keeps missing the bus and screwing up at school. Shows how eating and sleeping and stuff helps him focus. Not convinced a kid would suddenly decide to go to bed earlier just so they can not miss the bus. Folks with impulse/exec func issues aren’t super great at planning ahead and it’s not like we don’t already know stuff falls through the cracks when we mess up. This book implies that executive functioning disabilities can be overcome with a good night’s rest (while doing nothing to address issues of insomnia and other obstacles that prevent us from heading to bed early) and just hones in on the shitter parts of neurodiversity & ADHD.