Executive skills are brain-based skills required for humans to perform or execute tasks. Most of us have a spectrum of executive skills strengths as well as weaknesses. The goal of this program is to implement and design interventions to address specifically identified weaknesses.

In neuroscience terminology, there are eleven separate skills included within the definition of Executive Function:

1. response inhibition (thinking before you act)
2. working memory (holding information in memory while performing complex tasks)
3. emotional control (managing emotions to achieve goals and tasks and direct behavior)
4. sustained attention (paying attention despite distractions, fatigue, and boredom)
5. task initiation (beginning projects without procrastinating)
6. planning/prioritization (creating steps to complete a task knowing what is important and what is not)
7. organization (creating and maintaining systems to keep track of information or items)
8. time management (estimating how much time there is, how to allocate it, and knowing that time is important)
9. goal-directed persistence (identifying a goal and following through to completion without distraction from competing interests)
10. flexibility (revising plans as conditions change)
11. metacognition (self-monitoring, and self-evaluating).

Smart but Scattered, Dawson and Guare (2009), 16-17.