Dyslexia is often seen as a learning disability that impacts reading and writing. It is and it does. But it is more than that. It affects executive functioning. The part of your brain where the cogs are constantly moving like a well-oiled machine. In theory.

I describe myself more as an old grandfather clock. One moment, those cogs are working the way that they are supposed to, the next the cogs have either jammed or they are working backwards.

I remember in school, one of the TAs saw that I answered the maths problem first and did my working out second. She went and told other TAs and I overheard her surprise. The working out why was harder for me. My brain had already processed the sum, came to an answer but didn't tell me how I got there. Similar things happen in my adult life if I have a problem that needs to be solved. My brain will usually work out how to do it while faced with a new problem while friends who come to me for help will have a solution pretty much instantly from me. More than a solution, I'll spam them with ideas as my brain goes into overdrive mode.

Some things, these cogs are better at. Like problem solving, such as the maths example above. Other things it struggles with, like word recall and organising time. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm late... I'm not. I have tools I use for that... but it does make it hard to organise a project. It's where the cogs begin to get jammed.

This post will discuss executive functioning challenges faced by me as a dyslexic person.

Executive Function's Affect on Organisation

This isn't necessary about being late for things, though maybe some dyslexics struggle to be on time. I don't. I hate to be late. It makes me anxious. I would rather be two hours early... and yes, I have been that early before. So, I will simply tell myself the time is before it actually is and aim to be there at that time. I am never late for the self-given time either.

The problems I face with organisation is breaking tasks down. I started my PhD in 2021, and for awhile I felt I wasn't getting anywhere, because I wasn't breaking the task down. What I initially attempted to do was a timetable that went something like this:

That's a lie... it didn't go something like this, it was this. The only thing that my timetable did was tell me if I had a uni appointment (green), a workshop (orange), had to work (purple), travel (pale blue), or teach (cyan). The grey blocks were study blocks, the numbers in the corner told me the hours I spent studying that week. It didn't tell me though, how many books I read, when I read them, how many words I needed on my essay. So it felt like I wasn't doing anything. But also, I couldn't work to a timetable. Being told to study at 9am—even by myself—was hard.

Working around organisation issues

What did work for me was a different, more simple timetable. I still had dates Monday-Sunday but instead of grey blocks meaning study at 10am I broke the tasks down and created a list of up to 6 items. For example, a Thursday list might look like this:

• Read Rediker's article on Women at Sea and make notes
• Look at revision notes of Chapter 10 of novel
• Work on the transcripts
• Travel to Cov -> Teach

It's important to note that these are put down as tick boxes for the day, they're not timed. It meant I could look at what I needed to do for the day, do it, tick it off and not be stressed because I didn't start study at 9am. It didn't matter, so long as I ticked the items off at the end of the day. And it meant I didn't have to worry about the time (unless it was time sensitive like teaching). This really helped me to stay organised, and I could see what I did better.

Executive Functioning Decoding Challenges

One of the things I hate about dyslexia and its struggles with executive functioning is the decoding challenges I face. It's the ability to look at words and know how they're meant to sound based on the letters that are there and be able to join broken words together. Its one of the reasons the Game of Thrones books are taking me forever to finish. How the hell am I meant to know how to say Daenerys. I have to read and listen to the audio book at the same time. My brain freezes on words it cannot pronounce and Martin is massive fan of using hard to pronounce names. But it's not just the pronunciation of words that cause decoding challenges.

Hyphens and acronyms. They're an issue because they require a lot of memory recall. You have to remember what they mean. Some of them, like PhD are used mostly in acronym form that recalling the meaning isn't really an issue. Others that are not widely remembered by the global population require you to remember if asked what it means.

Acronym Challenges

Acronyms aren't too bad if you have photographic memory... until you get to the situation where they're alike. PIP. PRP. PHP. PhD. For the most part, those four are separate, unrelated acronyms. In the order written, they mean: Personal Independence Payment (disability benefit), Progression Review Panel (end of year assessment), Hypertext Preprocessor (Coding language.... do not ask me where the P went), and Doctorate of Philosophy (degree).

I deal with all 4 of these acronyms but because they're in different categories rarely mix them up.

Institutes love acronyms and my university is no different. It has caused some issues though as some of the acronyms are similar. Such as the RDA and RDDA. Two forms a student has to fill in each year... only I didn't realise until after perhaps the twentieth email of "but I've done the form" that they were two separate forms. The reason I finally understood is because eventually, they removed the acronym and spelled the form name out.

The confusion is because both the forms are the same category: administration form. If one of them was administration form and another something else, chances are I wouldn't have confused them, but then there would have only been one form.

So far, I haven't found a workaround for acronyms. Mostly, I ask if I don't know what they mean. I have put the feedback to my university that they need to change RDA and RDDA to different acronyms and they agree. Last I checked, they were debating a name. I suppose the only real workaround is encourage workplaces not to have similar acronyms that sit in the same category.

Hyphen Challenges

Hyphens are the bane of my life. I don't mean words that are meant to be hyphenated that show a link between two words, like check-in. I mean when you get to the end of a line and either a publisher or an ebook has decided it will hyphenate the middle of a word. Pre-sent, pres-ent. As a dyslexic, something like that is awful. My brain cannot work out what the word is straight away, especially as the hyphen placement may affect where I think the stress falls. The first example would suggest to me that the stress is on the s... someone is going to present something. The second makes me think the e is stressed, not the s. Someone is getting a gift.

In my experience, hyphened words in books do not make sense, and ebooks even worse. For the non-dyslexic, its to show the word hasn't finished yet. To the dyslexic, it's a challenge to figure out the meaning. Now I have to reread that sentence to make sure I got the right word through context. Because the hyphen distracted me I forgot what was happening in the sentence while I try to work out what the word was. It's annoying.

Unfortunately, like acronyms, I have no work around with this. Kindle does not allow you to disable hyphens... although kobo apparently does, but all my books are on kindle. Physical books will have hyphens in them too. I have found, however, that having the font on kindle large and unjustified will limite the hyphen amount.

Memory Recall issues

Executive functioning is responsible for the speed at we recall something. For people with dyslexia, this can be a challenge. It often affects our ability to find the word that we want. I'm sure everyone has been in that situation where you sit down and you say to someone, can you pass me... that?

For a short time you forgot the name of 'that' which could be as simple as the word 'pen'. But somehow you and the person you spoke to both understand 'that' to mean pen. After a few seconds, you remember. If you're speaking a second language, it may happen more frequently due to the brain trying to remember the word in the correct language.

With dyslexia, it also happens more frequently. A lot of items get referred to as 'thingy' because I forgot for a few minutes what it is called. When writing, I may use synonyms of the word I am trying to ind as a placeholder. Sometimes the synonym works better than the word I was looking for, sometimes it is out of place.

When I find a word, I may use it overzealously because it's the word I remember. I say that my brain has a new 'favourite word' at the time. An example is in my academic essay, I suddenly started writing 'acute' every other paragraph where another word would just be as good.

To avoid overuse of words, I get someone to read my work to me. My dyslexia support. Its having that oral input while reading that helps the issues with executive functioning memory recall as it strengthens my comprehension of what I have written, and I will hear the issues with my work.

Auditory Processing Issues

Executive functioning not only affects my working memory with memory recall but also my auditory processing. It's no good asking me to remember an oral conversation. I forgot the sentence said a moment or two before. It's why I can't just "listen" to Game of Thrones, I have to read it as well to fully take in what was said. I didn't realise that until my second year of uni.

Prior to this, all my classes involved the other three learning strategies of VARK (visual, auditory, reading, kinetic) not just auditory. But in my second year, we were in a tiny room which made it hard to do any of the kinetic work my lecturer usually had planned. The projector didn't always work, which removed visual aspects and the reading was more like homework. It meant that most the time I relied on solely hearing, except for when the kinetic activities could work with the classroom set-up and the moments when the projector worked.

I found the class really frustrating and couldn't work out why until I reflected back after my diagnosis of dyslexia. It taught me how much I relied on the other inputs to absorb information. For that class, DSA (disabled students allowance) gave me a mic so I could record the lectures and go back to them, which helped.

So my work around, I guess, is if you can only rely on audio, record it. It'll give you time to process the information later, take it in. As I replayed to the lecture, I often played a game or drew (kinetic movement) to absorb the knowledge. I researched things as they came up in the recording, adding the reading input too. This helped me progress in the module.

Facing Executive Functioning Issues

Dyslexia is a condition that you are born with. It will always be there, and so will the executive functioning issues that come with it. There's no cure but that's ok. There are tools to help and people that can support you.

The checklist idea is not something that I thought up of, it came from my boss. Audiobooks exist with immersive reading so that you can read and listen at the same time to help reading comprehension. If you are working on a piece of text but you don't have university support, you could ask your friends to read it to you. Failing that, there is software like Claroread that will read to you. It'll be what I'll be relying on after I graduate in 2024. Reading aloud either through a software or a friend also help you to determine whether the synonym you undoubtedly used makes sense.

So, while executive functioning will always be there, use support where you can, get friends to help, and find methods that help you when neither of that is available. The checklist method is one that I'll be keeping. Here is a copy of it, if you would like one to download.