The Executive Function Is... Not Functioning

You know that point in the year where absolutely everyone is running on fumes?

The school routines are barely holding together.
The executive function is executive dysfunctioning.
Parents are trying to survive end-of-year chaos without losing the one important paper that was apparently due yesterday.
And neurodivergent adults in the workforce are out here pretending they totally understood the verbal-only instructions from a meeting that should have been an email.

May has entered the chat.

This month has reminded us of something we keep seeing over and over again. Most neurodivergent people are not struggling because they “don’t care enough.”

They’re struggling because the amount of invisible effort required just to keep up with everyday life is exhausting.

The planning.
The transitions.
The remembering.
The masking.
The trying to look functional while your brain has 37 tabs open and at least six of them are playing music.

And yet somehow, the advice people still get is: “Have you tried using a planner?”

Groundbreaking.

So this month, we wanted to talk about the things underneath all of that.

The real-life struggles.
The patterns we keep seeing in the community.
What’s actually helping right now.
And why we’re continuing to build NeuroLocker the way we are.

May has been a bit of a month over here at NeuroLocker. In the best “our tabs are all open and we somehow started three new projects at once” kind of way.

One of the biggest things we’ve been working on lately is completely restructuring our educational content and social strategy.

Instead of just posting random productivity tips into the void and hoping they magically help someone, we wanted to build something more intentional and more real.

So we’ve started creating focused educational series around topics like:

Not just definitions. Not just awareness posts. The actual lived experience underneath them.

Because people don’t just need awareness posts and generic advice thrown at them. They need conversations that actually reflect how these struggles show up in real life.

We’ve also started taking bigger steps toward building out the educational side of NeuroLocker in a much more intentional way.

That includes exploring conversations with investors and supporters who understand that neurodivergent students need systems that actually support how their brains work - not just accommodations after things have already fallen apart.

Our long-term goal is still the same: to build tools and support systems that reduce overwhelm, improve follow-through, and make daily life feel a little less impossible.

And alongside all of that, we’ve continued having conversations with potential partners who are just as passionate about improving support for neurodivergent individuals and families as we are.

And it’s one of the most encouraging parts of this month - realizing how many people are actively looking for better ways to support neurodivergent students, adults, and families.

At this point in the school year, a lot of neurodivergent kids are barely hanging on…

…and so are their parents.

May always feels a little brutal.

Everyone is tired.
Everyone is overstimulated.
The routines are falling apart.
The masking energy is gone.
And somehow there are still spirit days, missing assignments, teacher emails, end-of-year projects, and at least one form you were apparently supposed to sign three weeks ago.

Love that for us.

One thing we’ve been seeing a lot lately - both online and in real conversations - is parents carrying this constant pressure to prove that their child isn’t “just not trying hard enough.”

Because even now, so many neurodivergent struggles still get treated like behavior issues instead of support needs.

And that doesn’t magically stop once school ends. But we do want to take a minute to say congratulations to all the parents out there for making it through another school year!

We’ve also been hearing from adults in the workforce who are exhausted from trying to navigate environments where their neurodivergent traits are either misunderstood, minimized, or treated like personality flaws.

The forgotten email.
The missed transition.
The need for written instructions.
The overwhelm after too many meetings.
The “quirks” people joke about until they actually impact performance expectations.

People are still being expected to function inside systems that were never designed for how their brains actually work.

And that gets exhausting.

That’s part of why we’ve been focusing so heavily this month on ADHD, autism, executive function, and the real-life experience underneath all of it.

Not the overly polished social media version. The real version.

The version where someone can be incredibly intelligent and still struggle to start a task.
The version where “high functioning” usually just means “good at hiding how hard this actually is.”
The version where people are spending so much energy trying to appear functional that there’s barely anything left afterward.

Because the more conversations we have, the clearer it becomes:

Neurodivergent people don’t need more shame, more pressure, or another productivity lecture from someone whose brain naturally generates dopamine when they complete a spreadsheet. (Must be nice.)

What people actually need is support that understands how these struggles show up in real life - at school, at work, at home, and in all the messy moments in between.

And we’re seeing more parents, educators, professionals, and neurodivergent adults openly talking about these experiences than ever before.

So I’ve been doing a bit of research about neurodivergence, Autism, ADHD, and Dyslexia this week to up our social content for the upcoming weeks, and I’ve actually learned a lot.

Some of the data that I’ve been reading up on is similar to the research we did when we first started the company, and some of it was brand new information that I had a grasp on, but never went into a rabbit hole of learning about.

I just wanted to include some of that data here, because part of NeuroLocker is being able to educate as many people as possible on not only the lived-experience stuff, but also having the data to back up what we’re doing. And don’t worry - this won’t be too infographic-y.

If you like the structure then reply and let us know you want more educational content like this! My research rabbit holes will already be much bigger, so I may as well share the info if you’re interested!

A study done by the CDC in 2024 found that over 7 million US children aged 3-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. They also found that nearly 78% of children with ADHD have at least one other co-occurring condition.

1 in 10 people worldwide have dyslexia. It is considered the most common learning disability in the world. It has also been proven that students with dyslexia are more vulnerable to experiencing internalized disorders like anxiety and depression due to their low opinion of academic competence coupled with repeated experiences of academic failure - both internally and externally.

A study conducted said 76% of college students with learning disabilities have said they did not tell their college that they have a disability. By law, you cannot ask for accommodations without disclosing your disability.

That same study said that 81% of young adults with learning disabilities have not made their employers aware of their disability, and only 5% of people say they actually get accommodations in the workforce.

They also said that only 46% of working-age adults with learning disabilities are employed. Compared to adults with no learning disabilities, adults with challenges are twice as likely to be unemployed.

Okay, let’s be real for a second.

Everyone knows all the traditional tips and tricks that neurodivergent people are told to use. Here are some examples of those:

But a lot of the times, the process is a lot more of a struggle than the task or suggestion is asking for.

So yeah. It can be a lot. And yes, these tricks can work for some people, but not everything works for everybody. The suggestions I am going to give will also not work for everybody, but will hopefully make the process a bit easier for someone.

Creating “entry points” into the systems is a lot harder for people to do, and can be difficult to learn, especially as a neurodivergent person. Finding the one thing that needs to be done to start a task, then doing it can make finishing the task a lot easier.

More and more people are recognizing that neurodivergent support cannot keep being treated as an afterthought. The conversations we’ve been having recently have all centered around the same core idea:

People need tools, systems, and environments that actually work with neurodivergent brains instead of constantly forcing people to adapt themselves to systems that were never designed for them in the first place.

And that shift matters a whole lot more than some people think. Because for a long time, support has mostly been reactive.

Wait until someone is overwhelmed.
Wait until grades drop.
Wait until burnout hits.
Wait until someone is struggling badly enough that it becomes visible to everyone else.

We want to help move the conversation earlier than that.

Toward proactive support.
Toward accessible systems.
Toward reducing friction before someone hits the breaking point.

That’s a huge part of why the partnerships we’re building are so important to us. Because we genuinely believe collaboration is how better support gets built in the real world. Here’s the partners that we have collaborated with so far:

Empathic Engineering

Empathic Engineering is an organization that focuses on consulting, continuous improvement strategy, and leadership development in manufacturing and technology companies. Their focus is on helping companies focus on their current growth opportunities and how they can get there.

CHADD

CHADD is an organization that focuses on supporting children and adults with ADHD across every stage of life - no matter where you are in that stage. They facilitate support groups and are major advocates for helping people with ADHD.

If you’re part of an organization, school, support program, advocacy group, workplace initiative, or community that cares about improving support for neurodivergent individuals and families, we’d genuinely love to connect.

And even if you just know someone doing good work in this space - send them our way. Some of the best conversations we’ve had so far started with: “Hey, I think you two should talk.”

Reach out to our partnerships guy, Chris, here: [email protected]

We’re always open to conversations that lead to better support, better systems, and fewer people feeling like they have to navigate all of this alone.

As we head into the final stretch of the school year and the beginning of summer chaos (because apparently our brains are supposed to seamlessly transition routines overnight), we want to ask:

What’s one thing that has actually helped you lately?

Not the “perfect system.”
Not the color-coded life reset.
Not the 47-step morning routine somebody on TikTok swears changed their life.

We mean the real stuff.

The tiny adjustment.
The random trick.
The weird little workaround that somehow makes your day 10% easier.

Hit reply and tell us.

Honestly, some of the best neurodivergent support strategies come from other neurodivergent people just figuring things out in real life, and we’d love to start sharing more of those moments with the community.

If any of this made you stop and think “wait… this is exactly what my brain does.”

You’re not alone. And you’re exactly why NeuroLocker exists.

We’re building tools, systems, and support designed around real neurodivergent life - not the imaginary version where everyone remembers passwords, transitions tasks flawlessly, and somehow responds to emails immediately after reading them.

Whether you’re a student, parent, professional, caregiver, or just someone trying to keep all the tabs open in your brain from crashing at once, we’re building this with you in mind.

Try NeuroLocker:

No perfect system required.
Just support where it actually matters.

Talk soon,

Sophea

Co-Founder, NeuroLocker