The confetti has dropped.
The balloons and noisemakers are packed away.
It’s not long into January, and the magic of a new year and starting resolutions wears off. It’s time to get back to the real business of life, and frankly, right now, life feels hard.
For many of our learners with diverse needs, all the goal-setting, resolutions, and planning for a fresh start this time of year can be stressful and enough to warrant an all-out protest against the new year.
Identifying and planning goals for a new year is doubly daunting. These skills already take a significant amount of effort, and when combined with the pressure to make substantial changes at the start of a new year, it doesn’t always go well.
That’s why, today, we’re putting together a list of 10 tools you can snag to jumpstart executive functioning skills in 2022. These are our favorite recommendations for clients, parents, and teachers who want to focus on making gains this year in areas like planning, organization, and time management but don’t want all the stress that comes along with it.
Check out these tools you’ll want to add to the toolbox this year:
1. Clever Fox Planner
One of the best planners for goal-setting and academic planning, designed to help visual learners break down overwhelming to-do lists into manageable steps. The planner pages go step-by-step by breaking goals into smaller parts to distribute across the year.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Planning, Organization, Task Initiation, Time Management
2. Samsill 24 Pocket Spiral Project Organizer
With pockets for each month of the year, erasable tabs, and a zipper pouch, this project organizer moves beyond the three-ring binder mess. We use these to help learners designate a place for documents, essential assignments, and to-do items.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Organization, Self-Monitoring
3. Visual Timer
If you’re not using visual timers, don’t wait any longer into the new year before you add them to your EF toolbox. Seriously, it’s the one thing on this list we come back to repeatedly with clients. Visual timers help learners understand how much time they have to complete a task and anticipate upcoming transitions to new tasks.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Task Initiation, Attentional Control, Flexibility, Time Management
4. Habit Tracker
Are you or your learner starting the new year off with building new habits? Try a visual habit tracker. Each month, your learner can use this spiral-bound notebook to choose new behaviors and log results. The colorful wheel design becomes a visual reminder to your learner of goal-setting and progress toward setting new habits.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Planning, Self-Monitoring
5. Reusable Planning Sticky Whiteboard Squares
For learners less likely to use a paper planner, these whiteboard planning squares are dry-erase, adhesive-free stickers that can be reused up to 2,000 times. Use any dry-erase marker to write on the squares, which stick to any smooth surface like windows, mirrors, fridges, laptops, whiteboards, or cabinets.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Planning, Task Initiation, Organization, Time Management
6. Rocketbook Fusion Reusable Notebook
Every time I show my Rocketbook Fusion off to a friend or client, their reaction is the same — “how cool is that?” The 42-page notebook is fully reusable with any Pilot Fixion pen or highlighter. Just give it 15 seconds to dry, and then the wipe-and-go pages are ready to be used again. Plus, with the Rocketbook app, you can quickly launch your notes into an email, text messages, or popular Cloud-based storage like DropBox or Google Drive. It’s a great way to help your learner stay organized, keep track of notes and important reminders without having tons of loose papers and reminders everywhere.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Organization, Attentional Control
7. Pavlok 3 Mindfulness Tracker
Is your learner willing to try anything to help with behavior change? Have other strategies to build new habits not worked thus far? The Pavlok 3 Mindfulness Tracker is a wearable device that operates on the principles of classic condition (think Pavlov) to promote behavior change. You may have seen it on Shark Tank a few seasons ago. It’s a science-based tool to deliver a gentle physical reminder or “snap” to help shape behaviors like waking up on time and practicing mindfulness.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Attentional Control, Emotional Control, Self-Monitoring
8. Tile Trackers
Does your learner constantly lose important things like keys, wallets, backpacks, and lunchboxes? Keep track of your items with Tile, tiny trackers that attach to important objects to track their location with a smartphone app. It saves time so your learner can focus on other EF skills.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Organization
9. DYMO Label Maker
Start the new year off with “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” Help your learner with time management, planning, and organization by designating and labeling space for essential items.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Organization, Planning, Time Management.
10. Mindfulness Game
Research shows that children, teens, and young adults who practice mindfulness and meditation have better emotional and impulse control. So make this new year all about helping your learner be more mindful and hone their skills at paying attention to the present.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: Impulse Control, Emotional Control, Attentional Control
BONUS: Check out the Real-Life Executive Functioning Workbook!
I might have a slight bias about this one because our name is on it, but this is the one tool on this list that tackles all areas of EF. It’s a must-have for parents & educators! The Real-Life Executive Functioning Workbook (coupon code LSA20 for 20% off at checkout) helps you target and address the specific REAL-WORLD executive functioning challenges at their CORE that are getting in the way of your learners’ confidence, capacity to acquire new life skills, motivation, relationships, academic performance, and overall quality of life.
Jumpstarts EF Skills: 12 chapters of content covering planning, organization, time management, task initiation, working memory, flexibility, problem-solving, emotional control, attentional control, impulse control, and self-monitoring.