Executive Function Theft
November 1, 2023 10:27 PM Subscribe
Executive Function Theft. The concept of executive function theft, where one entity offloads things they consider unimportant onto some other entity they consider unimportant, freeing up their own time at the expense of loading someone else down with having to do more, and expend more of their own executive function to deal with the increased workload that has been thrust upon them.
This seems very much adjacent to previous discussions here about emotional labor.
The corporate EFT example is interesting. I've long suspected bureaucracies make it deliberately frustrating to interact with them as a cost-cutting measure. Some share of people (often myself included) will just give up in the face of seemingly unlimited layers of tedious bullshit.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:45 PM on November 1, 2023 [44 favorites]
The corporate EFT example is interesting. I've long suspected bureaucracies make it deliberately frustrating to interact with them as a cost-cutting measure. Some share of people (often myself included) will just give up in the face of seemingly unlimited layers of tedious bullshit.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 11:45 PM on November 1, 2023 [44 favorites]
I disapprove of the appropriation of the word "theft".
I recently heard of a person terminated by a corporation for taking an overly long break, and the grounds for dismissal on their official record is "time theft". I disapprove of its use here as well. While literally accurate, it is bending the meaning of the word in a perilous direction.
posted by fairmettle at 12:17 AM on November 2, 2023 [16 favorites]
I recently heard of a person terminated by a corporation for taking an overly long break, and the grounds for dismissal on their official record is "time theft". I disapprove of its use here as well. While literally accurate, it is bending the meaning of the word in a perilous direction.
posted by fairmettle at 12:17 AM on November 2, 2023 [16 favorites]
Theft is exactly what this is.
I've had this so hard across my life - career, community, creative, so on and so forth. Constant firefighting even when it's not your job - and for what? I'm glad someone has named this.
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:16 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
I've had this so hard across my life - career, community, creative, so on and so forth. Constant firefighting even when it's not your job - and for what? I'm glad someone has named this.
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:16 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
When I was at uni my job was a stocktaker, and we'd go into lots of warehouses and shops and count, sometimes because an accountant said they needed an independent count (to track capital T Theft and fraud), but mostly because the job is just inherently really boring and repetitive. Retail workers hate it, and warehouse managers hate doing it, because it's not actively 'productive', it's just annoying shitty organisation and solving tiny little problems. I cannot describe the state of peoples' stock databases.
My boss there once described his theory of business, which was find some unavoidable thing in life that people hate doing, that they hate so much that they'll pay good money for someone else to do it, and then do that thing. He was a weird guy, but he did make a profit.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:05 AM on November 2, 2023 [36 favorites]
My boss there once described his theory of business, which was find some unavoidable thing in life that people hate doing, that they hate so much that they'll pay good money for someone else to do it, and then do that thing. He was a weird guy, but he did make a profit.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:05 AM on November 2, 2023 [36 favorites]
what does the term 'executive function theft' actually add to our understanding that some people are lazy and prefer that others do difficult/tedious tasks for them? i really dislike it when people identify a fairly common phenomenon, slap on a science-y label, and act like they just discovered a new continent.
i call it 'epistemological torquing' and you can read 1500 words about it in the new yorker next week.
posted by logicpunk at 5:04 AM on November 2, 2023 [82 favorites]
i call it 'epistemological torquing' and you can read 1500 words about it in the new yorker next week.
posted by logicpunk at 5:04 AM on November 2, 2023 [82 favorites]
As I was reading the intro, I realized this idea sounded very familiar—and that's because Executive Function Theft is very similar, if not identical, to "administrative burden", a term coined in the 2018 book of the same title by Georgetown professors Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan.
EFT seems a little broader, referring not just to government programs but to the administrative burdens of advocating for yourself with uncaring corporate systems, too, whether it's a huge, faceless company where you're a customer, or a smaller firm that employs you.
An example: Last week, I returned home from a trip abroad to discover that my car's rims and tires had been stolen, rendering my car functionally shoeless and up on blocks. I submitted a claim to my insurance company, and then had to pull teeth for four or five days to get someone to send a tow truck. Towing a car with no wheels is difficult, but it was impossible to get the automated tickets submitted by the insurance company to actually reach their preferred tow-truck provider. I had to push everything along with phone calls—and when their tow truck operator finally arrived, he looked at my car and said, "I can't do this. Nobody told me your car had no rims or tires."
The only way to get my car towed was to stop relying on the services that purported to provide those services for me, and get AAA to insert itself as a towing freelancer (resulting in another charge that I had to submit to the insurer). It was basically all I could think about for the last several days.
EFT in the home resonates, too—but speaking as the Executive Function Partner, I'm uncomfortable calling that balance of responsibilities "theft".
posted by IcarusFloats at 5:19 AM on November 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
EFT seems a little broader, referring not just to government programs but to the administrative burdens of advocating for yourself with uncaring corporate systems, too, whether it's a huge, faceless company where you're a customer, or a smaller firm that employs you.
An example: Last week, I returned home from a trip abroad to discover that my car's rims and tires had been stolen, rendering my car functionally shoeless and up on blocks. I submitted a claim to my insurance company, and then had to pull teeth for four or five days to get someone to send a tow truck. Towing a car with no wheels is difficult, but it was impossible to get the automated tickets submitted by the insurance company to actually reach their preferred tow-truck provider. I had to push everything along with phone calls—and when their tow truck operator finally arrived, he looked at my car and said, "I can't do this. Nobody told me your car had no rims or tires."
The only way to get my car towed was to stop relying on the services that purported to provide those services for me, and get AAA to insert itself as a towing freelancer (resulting in another charge that I had to submit to the insurer). It was basically all I could think about for the last several days.
EFT in the home resonates, too—but speaking as the Executive Function Partner, I'm uncomfortable calling that balance of responsibilities "theft".
posted by IcarusFloats at 5:19 AM on November 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
This does read exactly like the definition of emotional labor, maybe slightly different if the labor involved includes no personal or tender relationship. Still seems frivolous to have to name this.
Sounds like an asshole coworker or boss who doesn't want menial tasks, and they farm them out.
The "unimportant" part of being considered an "unimportant person" seems the hurtful part here. But that is also job hierarchy for you.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:32 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sounds like an asshole coworker or boss who doesn't want menial tasks, and they farm them out.
The "unimportant" part of being considered an "unimportant person" seems the hurtful part here. But that is also job hierarchy for you.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:32 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Three points:
See also the concept of Entrophic Labour vs. Heroic Labour. Entrophic Labour is the stuff that always is undone unless you keep doing it, such as cooking and washing dishes. So long as there are people they will be eating and there will be dirty dishes. To deal with the discouragement that Entrophic Labour causes it is helpful to think of it as a cycle rather than something that ever can be completed. If the dishes are all clean you are not done, because the next step is to make a meal and dirty them. But if you want your Entrophic Labour to be Heroic Labour you will always be frustrated at the never ending stacks of dirty dishes.
Buddhism works with this, getting people to rake the sand that will be blown into a state of disorder again. The idea is that leaning in to the unending and "futile" nature of the task will help you stop trying to turn it into Heroic Labour and you'll become mindful and do it for its own sake and the peace it brings. Of course if someone else is making the mess and disrespecting you, getting all zen about it may not be a good idea, but it can be helpful for doing your own recurring tasks.
Heroic Labour - those one time tasks that you can consider done, and which make a difference gives a dopamine rush. This is part of why so many people refuse to do Entrophic Labour and will only do Heroic Labour. If you are unclear on the concept, consider the classic sexist situation where the husband does a house repair that takes three hours and the wife does the dishes and the laundry AND cleans up the mess of putty and plaster and tools left by the husband which takes four hours but the husband gets to feel like he saved the day, and coasts on that for the next few weeks.
Second Point: There really are an enormous number of people with crap executive functioning skills that basically incompetent and helpless. They can often motivate themselves to do Heroic Labour because of the Dopamine hit they get as a reward when they do it, and the fact that they don't have to put in sustained effort, but if nobody rescues them they they end up wallowing in filth and ill health. The may look quite functional but that is only because there are other people doing the Executive Functioning for them. What goes on behind closed doors and all that... These people naturally will hide any signs of their inability. What is often taken to be depression is actually poor executive functioning, and the misery is the result of living in a mess and not doing self maintenance, rather than the other way around. They don't get depressed until they realise that they are buried in dirty dishes and can't get enough room in the kitchen to feed themself. The lack of motivation is really lack of ability to do it without executive help, and the trope of "He got so depressed after his wife left him..." is accepted as the situation when in reality if he had simply substituted a new care taker and executive assistant for the wife who left he would never have gotten depressed at all.
Third Point: People who end up doing the Executive Function are often not a whole lot better at doing it, especially initially, but they are anxious and undone basic executive stuff worries and scares them enough to keep attempting it. They handle their overall level of anxiety by constantly running into the kitchen or scheduling doctors appointments for the family. Instead of being paralyzed by mess and disorder they scramble to do something to make it all go away. Anxious people are therefore particularly prone to being victimized by Executive Functioning Theft. If they see a mess or something undone, it upsets them and they make themselves feel better by doing it. The mess gets cleaned by the person who is more upset by it, which means that very often the person off loading the Executive Functioning is able to assume that the people they are taking advantage of really are doing completely unnecessary work, and that they are not benefiting from the work that is being done. Since they don't feel any distress during the early stages of a situation moving toward a disaster they can easily assume the work doesn't really need to be done at all.
It also happens that someone who has been over functioning and doing the executive labour reverts to living in squalor after the kids leave home and everyone calls it depression, but what happened is when the kids left they stopped being anxious about providing for them and thus lost the motivation to overcome their struggle with Executive Function. How did it become so hard? When they lost the spur of anxiety that they are a bad parent and their kids will suffer if they don't live in a clean house. "I need someone to do for!" is a real issue for some people. O
If you are neither spurred on by anxiety or by the dopamine rush of getting something done then you can end up failing to do critical executive functioning work - but motivating yourself to do it requires a different approach depending on which neurotransmitter you can use more easily.
It has been observed that when picking someone to live with, one of the most important factors to consider is if the two people share the same level of tolerance for mess. If they don't the one doing more work will consider their partner to be a lazy slob who takes advantage of them, and the one not doing the work will consider their partner to be a picky over controlling nag. Many people have observed that housemates can deal with differing religions and political views and schedules and having no interests in common, but seldom can be happy living with someone whose level of tolerance for mess is strongly divergent from their own.
Also, as a species we are wired to fall into the trap of doing Executive Functioning for others and then resenting it - because this is the natural cycle of raising kids. You deal with their excreta for a few years and then you start to demand they take on that task themselves. You deal with everything until you reach a point where you demand they move out because while they might happily continue to depend on you, there is an instinct telling you that you really shouldn't be washing your seventeen-year-old's dishes so they can spend their time gaming, even though you might still do them so they can study and get the marks to get into a good university.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:37 AM on November 2, 2023 [130 favorites]
See also the concept of Entrophic Labour vs. Heroic Labour. Entrophic Labour is the stuff that always is undone unless you keep doing it, such as cooking and washing dishes. So long as there are people they will be eating and there will be dirty dishes. To deal with the discouragement that Entrophic Labour causes it is helpful to think of it as a cycle rather than something that ever can be completed. If the dishes are all clean you are not done, because the next step is to make a meal and dirty them. But if you want your Entrophic Labour to be Heroic Labour you will always be frustrated at the never ending stacks of dirty dishes.
Buddhism works with this, getting people to rake the sand that will be blown into a state of disorder again. The idea is that leaning in to the unending and "futile" nature of the task will help you stop trying to turn it into Heroic Labour and you'll become mindful and do it for its own sake and the peace it brings. Of course if someone else is making the mess and disrespecting you, getting all zen about it may not be a good idea, but it can be helpful for doing your own recurring tasks.
Heroic Labour - those one time tasks that you can consider done, and which make a difference gives a dopamine rush. This is part of why so many people refuse to do Entrophic Labour and will only do Heroic Labour. If you are unclear on the concept, consider the classic sexist situation where the husband does a house repair that takes three hours and the wife does the dishes and the laundry AND cleans up the mess of putty and plaster and tools left by the husband which takes four hours but the husband gets to feel like he saved the day, and coasts on that for the next few weeks.
Second Point: There really are an enormous number of people with crap executive functioning skills that basically incompetent and helpless. They can often motivate themselves to do Heroic Labour because of the Dopamine hit they get as a reward when they do it, and the fact that they don't have to put in sustained effort, but if nobody rescues them they they end up wallowing in filth and ill health. The may look quite functional but that is only because there are other people doing the Executive Functioning for them. What goes on behind closed doors and all that... These people naturally will hide any signs of their inability. What is often taken to be depression is actually poor executive functioning, and the misery is the result of living in a mess and not doing self maintenance, rather than the other way around. They don't get depressed until they realise that they are buried in dirty dishes and can't get enough room in the kitchen to feed themself. The lack of motivation is really lack of ability to do it without executive help, and the trope of "He got so depressed after his wife left him..." is accepted as the situation when in reality if he had simply substituted a new care taker and executive assistant for the wife who left he would never have gotten depressed at all.
Third Point: People who end up doing the Executive Function are often not a whole lot better at doing it, especially initially, but they are anxious and undone basic executive stuff worries and scares them enough to keep attempting it. They handle their overall level of anxiety by constantly running into the kitchen or scheduling doctors appointments for the family. Instead of being paralyzed by mess and disorder they scramble to do something to make it all go away. Anxious people are therefore particularly prone to being victimized by Executive Functioning Theft. If they see a mess or something undone, it upsets them and they make themselves feel better by doing it. The mess gets cleaned by the person who is more upset by it, which means that very often the person off loading the Executive Functioning is able to assume that the people they are taking advantage of really are doing completely unnecessary work, and that they are not benefiting from the work that is being done. Since they don't feel any distress during the early stages of a situation moving toward a disaster they can easily assume the work doesn't really need to be done at all.
It also happens that someone who has been over functioning and doing the executive labour reverts to living in squalor after the kids leave home and everyone calls it depression, but what happened is when the kids left they stopped being anxious about providing for them and thus lost the motivation to overcome their struggle with Executive Function. How did it become so hard? When they lost the spur of anxiety that they are a bad parent and their kids will suffer if they don't live in a clean house. "I need someone to do for!" is a real issue for some people. O
If you are neither spurred on by anxiety or by the dopamine rush of getting something done then you can end up failing to do critical executive functioning work - but motivating yourself to do it requires a different approach depending on which neurotransmitter you can use more easily.
It has been observed that when picking someone to live with, one of the most important factors to consider is if the two people share the same level of tolerance for mess. If they don't the one doing more work will consider their partner to be a lazy slob who takes advantage of them, and the one not doing the work will consider their partner to be a picky over controlling nag. Many people have observed that housemates can deal with differing religions and political views and schedules and having no interests in common, but seldom can be happy living with someone whose level of tolerance for mess is strongly divergent from their own.
Also, as a species we are wired to fall into the trap of doing Executive Functioning for others and then resenting it - because this is the natural cycle of raising kids. You deal with their excreta for a few years and then you start to demand they take on that task themselves. You deal with everything until you reach a point where you demand they move out because while they might happily continue to depend on you, there is an instinct telling you that you really shouldn't be washing your seventeen-year-old's dishes so they can spend their time gaming, even though you might still do them so they can study and get the marks to get into a good university.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:37 AM on November 2, 2023 [130 favorites]
what does the term 'executive function theft' actually add to our understanding that some people are lazy and prefer that others do difficult/tedious tasks for them?
I don't want to defend the coining of a new term necessarily, but I do think it's interesting that the examples given are not all about people being lazy--but about administrative and support work being gendered and devalued, and in the healthcare example, that devalued work then gets outsourced to other (understaffed) vendors, phone trees, software that doesn't work. The company in the example has decided that staffing to do the tedious work itself is not cost-effective. It's almost never the really interesting rewarding work that gets outsourced.
The insourced support/admin person does tedious work but knows the system well enough that the work doesn't have to be a terrible, inescapable burden. But the person on the other side of the phone doesn't know the system, doesn't have any inside help, and has all that tedium dumped in their lap.
posted by mittens at 5:42 AM on November 2, 2023 [14 favorites]
I don't want to defend the coining of a new term necessarily, but I do think it's interesting that the examples given are not all about people being lazy--but about administrative and support work being gendered and devalued, and in the healthcare example, that devalued work then gets outsourced to other (understaffed) vendors, phone trees, software that doesn't work. The company in the example has decided that staffing to do the tedious work itself is not cost-effective. It's almost never the really interesting rewarding work that gets outsourced.
The insourced support/admin person does tedious work but knows the system well enough that the work doesn't have to be a terrible, inescapable burden. But the person on the other side of the phone doesn't know the system, doesn't have any inside help, and has all that tedium dumped in their lap.
posted by mittens at 5:42 AM on November 2, 2023 [14 favorites]
what does the term 'executive function theft' actually add to our understanding that some people are lazy and prefer that others do difficult/tedious tasks for them?
There are people that have gotten opportunities and advancement off the back of work that they were supposed to be responsible for, but which was actually the result of me going above and beyond to ensure that things didn't end up A Disaster, without as much of a recognition. I was deemed to have "not enough experience" for the same sort of roles those people that kicked the can down got handed to them for a silver platter.
Not only did they steal my executive function, they also stole the rewards that I could have gotten if people knew who was really behind the work.
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:53 AM on November 2, 2023 [29 favorites]
There are people that have gotten opportunities and advancement off the back of work that they were supposed to be responsible for, but which was actually the result of me going above and beyond to ensure that things didn't end up A Disaster, without as much of a recognition. I was deemed to have "not enough experience" for the same sort of roles those people that kicked the can down got handed to them for a silver platter.
Not only did they steal my executive function, they also stole the rewards that I could have gotten if people knew who was really behind the work.
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:53 AM on November 2, 2023 [29 favorites]
I agree that the word "theft" is doing a lot of work here. The FSA example:
I think one can make an argument that the whole system is rigged to be ineffecient, but in that case everyone involved is really being stolen from. There is no nefarious plot to steal anyone's executive function, it's an organic result of exploiting other people's labor. From Marx:
posted by swift at 5:54 AM on November 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
Here are multiple examples of theft from me. I have to maintain and track all of the paperwork and information; I have to spend an indefinite quantity of time with each of these parts and pieces.What is being stolen here? Presumably it's time, in which case someone else is saving time when the author is forced to waste it. But who is saving time by dealing with all this bureaucratic adulting? It's the author, because if they didn't deal with all of this, their healthcare would cease to work for them.
I think one can make an argument that the whole system is rigged to be ineffecient, but in that case everyone involved is really being stolen from. There is no nefarious plot to steal anyone's executive function, it's an organic result of exploiting other people's labor. From Marx:
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihoodWhen time is a commodity, the natural result is that normal human relationships become relationships based on power and oppression. Everyone involved is a thief, and everyone involved is getting robbed.
posted by swift at 5:54 AM on November 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
(I'm autistic+ADHD and being hyper competent at times has become a form of masking. I burn out HARD after having to channel all my executive function for whatever gets kicked down to me - but I end up failing in taking care of stuff that's solely within my control. When I got assessed with autism the assessor initially put me in Level 1, but then I told her that all my energy goes towards work/creative projects/etc and that leaves me with no energy or executives left for things like keeping my apartment clean and tidy on my own or being fed properly. She put me down as Level 2.)
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:57 AM on November 2, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:57 AM on November 2, 2023 [23 favorites]
As I recall from the emotional labor thread, two types of examples emerged and there was some discussion if both qualified as emotional labor.
The type of activities that seemed to fall squarely under the emotional labor label were things that supported relationship — indeed, were acts involving emotion. For example, noticing the feelings of one's partner or child and attending to them or building the cohesiveness of a work team.
The other category (again, as I recall these many years later) included tasks like planning, shopping for, cooking, serving, and cleaning up meals.
I'd suggest that Executive Function Theft is a good term for that second category and having it helps us better understand, describe and perhaps address these phenomena.
posted by mcduff at 6:07 AM on November 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
The type of activities that seemed to fall squarely under the emotional labor label were things that supported relationship — indeed, were acts involving emotion. For example, noticing the feelings of one's partner or child and attending to them or building the cohesiveness of a work team.
The other category (again, as I recall these many years later) included tasks like planning, shopping for, cooking, serving, and cleaning up meals.
I'd suggest that Executive Function Theft is a good term for that second category and having it helps us better understand, describe and perhaps address these phenomena.
posted by mcduff at 6:07 AM on November 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
I've long suspected bureaucracies make it deliberately frustrating to interact with them as a cost-cutting measure. Some share of people (often myself included) will just give up in the face of seemingly unlimited layers of tedious bullshit.
Living with someone who had to rely on state Medicaid and other state medical financial assistance in a red state you see this all the time there - the default is to deny and make you go through the appeals process, deadlines are extremely short, you're expected to run all over to appointments at different agencies without any reasonably reliable transportation.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:15 AM on November 2, 2023 [23 favorites]
Living with someone who had to rely on state Medicaid and other state medical financial assistance in a red state you see this all the time there - the default is to deny and make you go through the appeals process, deadlines are extremely short, you're expected to run all over to appointments at different agencies without any reasonably reliable transportation.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:15 AM on November 2, 2023 [23 favorites]
I worry about offloading anything to others. Even at my job I oversee people but I try to do the menial tasks so they can focus on what's important. But sometimes I can't do basic things for myself. Like yesterday a friend, and I didn't ask her to do this, but she recognized I was having trouble and did my grocery shopping for me even planning what I'd eat because she knew I couldn't do it myself. And I don't want to be a burden on anyone. But she took it on herself and helped. I think there's labor and then there's just wanting to help someone and she genuinely wanted to help someone who is struggling.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not only did they steal my executive function, they also stole the rewards that I could have gotten if people knew who was really behind the work.
Or, possibly, their "theft" of your work was known and they got credit as someone "who knows how to delegate" and "can leverage the work of a team" and "has leadership potential." There are a lot of work settings where being the person who can get others to do this work (whether you call it theft or some other term) is going to be rewarded and promoted; it can be a valuable skill.
Equally, in personal relationships, there are rewards for being the person who is at the receiving end of the emotional labor, most of all if you can create a structure that provides it without unpleasant direct coercion. (Like, being part of a religious community that defines women's work in that way, so it is reinforced from all sides and doesn't need to be extracted within the household.)
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 AM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Or, possibly, their "theft" of your work was known and they got credit as someone "who knows how to delegate" and "can leverage the work of a team" and "has leadership potential." There are a lot of work settings where being the person who can get others to do this work (whether you call it theft or some other term) is going to be rewarded and promoted; it can be a valuable skill.
Equally, in personal relationships, there are rewards for being the person who is at the receiving end of the emotional labor, most of all if you can create a structure that provides it without unpleasant direct coercion. (Like, being part of a religious community that defines women's work in that way, so it is reinforced from all sides and doesn't need to be extracted within the household.)
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 AM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
My boss there once described his theory of business, which was find some unavoidable thing in life that people hate doing, that they hate so much that they'll pay good money for someone else to do it, and then do that thing. He was a weird guy, but he did make a profit.
Emergency plumbing and cleaning up crime scenes are two other examples.
There are limits, though. For example, I will not do Microsoft network administration.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:44 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
Emergency plumbing and cleaning up crime scenes are two other examples.
There are limits, though. For example, I will not do Microsoft network administration.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:44 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
I like the word theft involved because it is theft. Making a system easy requires additional effort for a company - buying things is one-click easy! returning defective products? HARD. Those are deliberate corporate decisions. Making healthcare requests difficult is deliberate. You steal time and work from your users so that you don't have to pay for additional support staff. Think of self checkouts - fewer people to pay after the infrastructure is built, and you pass the effort on to your customers. It can be personal - a colleague trying to pass their work off to you, a housemate refusing to do their share of chores, and it can be systematic.
Saying it's theft implies that a) there's value to this work - in time and effort cost, and b) that this needs to be shared or compensated.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:44 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
Saying it's theft implies that a) there's value to this work - in time and effort cost, and b) that this needs to be shared or compensated.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:44 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
The FSA example .... What is being stolen here?
I had the same reaction, when thinking about this from the emotional labor viewpoint; I'm in agreement with the ideas expressed here that it's hard to call this a distinct phenomenon.
But in the economic sense, this is absolutely theft, and health insurance companies are one of the worst at this. They throw "administrative" barriers like FSA headaches and prior authorization up, and the burden is on the patient to solve them, in order to get the insurance company to uphold their end of the contract. What's being stolen is literally money, and much more importantly, health and ultimately life.
There are many examples of this in the economy -- legislated, rule-obeying theft.
posted by Dashy at 7:10 AM on November 2, 2023 [16 favorites]
I had the same reaction, when thinking about this from the emotional labor viewpoint; I'm in agreement with the ideas expressed here that it's hard to call this a distinct phenomenon.
But in the economic sense, this is absolutely theft, and health insurance companies are one of the worst at this. They throw "administrative" barriers like FSA headaches and prior authorization up, and the burden is on the patient to solve them, in order to get the insurance company to uphold their end of the contract. What's being stolen is literally money, and much more importantly, health and ultimately life.
There are many examples of this in the economy -- legislated, rule-obeying theft.
posted by Dashy at 7:10 AM on November 2, 2023 [16 favorites]
In some countries the Government does your taxes with the T4's and such that they collect on you, and sends them to you and you check them and adjust if they missed anything. In other countries you do your own taxes and then send them in to the Government and they check them against the T4's and such that they collected on you.
I am told that the first situation does not cost more or result in less taxes being collected than the second arrangement.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:11 AM on November 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
I am told that the first situation does not cost more or result in less taxes being collected than the second arrangement.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:11 AM on November 2, 2023 [10 favorites]
I worked at one company where to save money they swapped our no-deductible insurance for a cheaper, high deductible policy, but added a co-insurance that completely covered the deductible because the combination of the two policies was way cheaper.
We had a training session to go over how it worked. Providers would bill the insurance. The insurance would send a rejection to the provider while simultaneously passing it on to the co-insurance. The co-insurance would then approve/reject the claim and pay the provider.
During the training we were told to ignore all bills from providers unless the envelopes said "second notice" or greater or said anything about being sent to collections. Individual providers never know about the co-insurance claim, they just get the rejection from the health insurance. It was up to us to keep track of what bills we've received from our providers and the status of the corresponding claims at the co-insurance. And if the co-insurance made a mistake or was slow to pay out and the provider sent the bill to collections......that was our responsibility.
So yeah. It's a pretty clear where the cost savings between the plans came from....the health insurer outsourced all that administrative work onto us individuals and could thus offer a cheaper plan with (presumably) the same level of benefits.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:40 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
We had a training session to go over how it worked. Providers would bill the insurance. The insurance would send a rejection to the provider while simultaneously passing it on to the co-insurance. The co-insurance would then approve/reject the claim and pay the provider.
During the training we were told to ignore all bills from providers unless the envelopes said "second notice" or greater or said anything about being sent to collections. Individual providers never know about the co-insurance claim, they just get the rejection from the health insurance. It was up to us to keep track of what bills we've received from our providers and the status of the corresponding claims at the co-insurance. And if the co-insurance made a mistake or was slow to pay out and the provider sent the bill to collections......that was our responsibility.
So yeah. It's a pretty clear where the cost savings between the plans came from....the health insurer outsourced all that administrative work onto us individuals and could thus offer a cheaper plan with (presumably) the same level of benefits.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:40 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
Second Point: There really are an enormous number of people with crap executive functioning skills that basically incompetent and helpless. They can often motivate themselves to do Heroic Labour because of the Dopamine hit they get as a reward when they do it, and the fact that they don't have to put in sustained effort, but if nobody rescues them they they end up wallowing in filth and ill health.
This wording seems hyperbolic and and well, mean. I know nothing of psychology outside of what I’ve gleaned through therapy, so I’m not equipped to suggest a possible edit, unfortunately; but I think some nuance would help and be more accurate. One may have clean laundry on the floor for days, or have a messy kitchen for weeks, without falling inexorably into “filth and ill health”.
Perhaps the trajectory is sometimes a hilly roller coaster rather than a plunge into the Mariana Trench.
posted by queseyo at 7:42 AM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
This wording seems hyperbolic and and well, mean. I know nothing of psychology outside of what I’ve gleaned through therapy, so I’m not equipped to suggest a possible edit, unfortunately; but I think some nuance would help and be more accurate. One may have clean laundry on the floor for days, or have a messy kitchen for weeks, without falling inexorably into “filth and ill health”.
Perhaps the trajectory is sometimes a hilly roller coaster rather than a plunge into the Mariana Trench.
posted by queseyo at 7:42 AM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
But in the economic sense, this is absolutely theft, and health insurance companies are one of the worst at this.
Thank you, this makes total sense and I agree. I think my negative reaction to the word "theft" mostly stems from an inability to see where to draw the line. Some kinds of exploitation clearly are theft, but I feel unsatisfied just saying "I'll know it when I see it."
The way the author defines EFT makes it sound like basically any arrangement where one party is delegating tasks to a second party who has no personal stake in the result of those tasks' completion.
I think there are extremes that are easy to spot -- healthcare companies clearly are stealing, as are monopolies, etc., and the hungry are not really stealing from people who work in a soup kitchen. But I feel like there's a gray area in the middle.
I guess I'm accustomed to the word "theft" being used in contexts where I can say "yes this thing was stolen from this person," but tying it to basically any relationship where unpleasant things are delegated seems to ignore a whole set of situations where that kind of relationship is possibly a good thing.
I still think EFT is a useful term, but because it's a bit morally and semantically slippery, I can see a situation where it's easily abused if it catches on.
posted by swift at 8:02 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thank you, this makes total sense and I agree. I think my negative reaction to the word "theft" mostly stems from an inability to see where to draw the line. Some kinds of exploitation clearly are theft, but I feel unsatisfied just saying "I'll know it when I see it."
The way the author defines EFT makes it sound like basically any arrangement where one party is delegating tasks to a second party who has no personal stake in the result of those tasks' completion.
Executive Function Theft (EFT) is the deliberate abdication of decision-making, tasks, and responsibilities that are perceived as administrative or repetitive, of lesser importance, or aren’t pleasant or shiny, to another person, with the result that the receiving person’s executive function becomes so exhausted that they are unable to participate in, contribute to, or enjoy higher level efforts.At what point does a system work so well that it stops stealing from those who complete the tasks it requires? For interpersonal relationships, at what point does completing chores, etc. for another person turn from "theft" into "help?"
I think there are extremes that are easy to spot -- healthcare companies clearly are stealing, as are monopolies, etc., and the hungry are not really stealing from people who work in a soup kitchen. But I feel like there's a gray area in the middle.
I guess I'm accustomed to the word "theft" being used in contexts where I can say "yes this thing was stolen from this person," but tying it to basically any relationship where unpleasant things are delegated seems to ignore a whole set of situations where that kind of relationship is possibly a good thing.
I still think EFT is a useful term, but because it's a bit morally and semantically slippery, I can see a situation where it's easily abused if it catches on.
posted by swift at 8:02 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a lot of executive function theft that gets passed on to he consumer as supposed cost savings.
Any time you're buying car or home insurance direct instead of through an insurance agent it's a form of executive function theft and it's so patently absurd how these companies market that theft. So what if you have an app that makes it easy to file a claim or compare rates....that's literally the value-add of going through an independent agent! And they have the necessary experience and knowledge to do it efficiently!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:05 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Any time you're buying car or home insurance direct instead of through an insurance agent it's a form of executive function theft and it's so patently absurd how these companies market that theft. So what if you have an app that makes it easy to file a claim or compare rates....that's literally the value-add of going through an independent agent! And they have the necessary experience and knowledge to do it efficiently!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:05 AM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Self-checkout is an interesting example. On one hand, I just want to dump my purchases on a counter and have a person ring them up while I zone out and am then told to pay. On the other hand, I can just scan the shit myself and not have to interact with a person at all. A lot of it comes down to whether the self-check system is going to nanny me every step of the way or just let me whip things across the scanner at my own speed. IKEA is pretty great for this, Dollarama not too bad.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:21 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:21 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think one can make an argument that the whole system is rigged to be ineffecient, but in that case everyone involved is really being stolen from.
The whole system of 'getting insurance to pay for services' is inefficient. The system of 'getting customers to pay for insurance' is significantly less "inefficient" (on the insurers side, at least) because the entire optimal business model for insurance companies is 'collect money from customers and provide nothing in return'.
Those weird rare moments where the insurance company actually has to provide the service of covering health costs are seen as deviations from the norm that should be minimized wherever possible. Ergo, making that part of the process as high-friction as they can is a benefit to them to the detriment of the policy-holder.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:24 AM on November 2, 2023 [7 favorites]
The whole system of 'getting insurance to pay for services' is inefficient. The system of 'getting customers to pay for insurance' is significantly less "inefficient" (on the insurers side, at least) because the entire optimal business model for insurance companies is 'collect money from customers and provide nothing in return'.
Those weird rare moments where the insurance company actually has to provide the service of covering health costs are seen as deviations from the norm that should be minimized wherever possible. Ergo, making that part of the process as high-friction as they can is a benefit to them to the detriment of the policy-holder.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:24 AM on November 2, 2023 [7 favorites]
I agree that theft is not quite right - but the discussion is important. I would call it ‘load transfer’ and then determine when that transfer is voluntary or taken without consideration. Sometimes a person can be very well paid and happy to shoulder that load, sometimes very much not. When the supply of EF in a group is more scarce than the demand, and some gain more happiness and compensation by shifting that load (edit: without agreement) - maybe the EF is not stolen but the output surely has been
Part of the problem is that the world around us places a lot of meaning on ‘executive’ and ‘labor’, but there is a bond between emotional labor and exec function that differs wildly for various people, and that is important to observe.
I offload certain tasks like vacation planning because the layers of EF to get that right is both impacted and fed by the emotional labor processed to move that forward. I have a limited supply of EF that is better suited to other tasks that keep the household more satisfied with living here day to day and less suited to making something successful in a different location six months out. To take stock in this makes me more appreciative and a better partner.
posted by drowsy at 8:25 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Part of the problem is that the world around us places a lot of meaning on ‘executive’ and ‘labor’, but there is a bond between emotional labor and exec function that differs wildly for various people, and that is important to observe.
I offload certain tasks like vacation planning because the layers of EF to get that right is both impacted and fed by the emotional labor processed to move that forward. I have a limited supply of EF that is better suited to other tasks that keep the household more satisfied with living here day to day and less suited to making something successful in a different location six months out. To take stock in this makes me more appreciative and a better partner.
posted by drowsy at 8:25 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Drowsy, that's why it's theft. If I pass a bunch of admin tasks to an admin assistant who's well-paid for their time doing those tasks, that's me delegating appropriately. If I go to a restaurant and buy a meal, I'm paying for not having to think about dishes, what groceries to buy, which recipe to use - I just point in a menu. But people are being paid for their work making that ease for me.
When I pass my admin tasks to a colleague through emotional manipulation and/or social pressure, I'm stealing. When I expect a proper meal to appear on the dinner table from my partner who also works full-time, that's theft too.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:55 AM on November 2, 2023 [20 favorites]
When I pass my admin tasks to a colleague through emotional manipulation and/or social pressure, I'm stealing. When I expect a proper meal to appear on the dinner table from my partner who also works full-time, that's theft too.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:55 AM on November 2, 2023 [20 favorites]
There really are an enormous number of people with crap executive functioning skills that basically incompetent and helpless.
As someone who probably falls into this, as a result of ADHD (undiagnosed for 35+ years, so was constantly depressed and beating myself up for being "lazy") this feels like a pretty cruel description of what is, often, an actual disability and mental health issue.
Sure, some people are genuinely just lazy, shitty people who have crap executive functioning because they've always been able to outsource it (stereotypically, it's often a man who outsourced everything to his mom and then later to a partner or spouse). These people need to step up and do better.
But for those of us who literally cannot (even with the help of medication, I still struggle regularly because treatment ≠ a cure), it is a constant source of stress and anxiety to know how much extra executive functioning/emotional labour our partners have to do on our behalf because, even though we want to be equal partners and do not want to burden the people we love, we almost inevitably end up doing so due to something that is largely out of our control.
The notion that people like me just sort of collapse into filth and ill health if someone else doesn't take care of us is, also, pretty over-the-top and insulting. If left on my own, my home may never be as clean or tidy as a neurotypical person's and there are genuine negative health outcomes associated with ADHD, but you make it sound like anyone with poor executive functioning is basically indistinguishable from a depressed hoarder which, again, is pretty insulting to people with a whole range of mental health challenges.
posted by asnider at 9:15 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
As someone who probably falls into this, as a result of ADHD (undiagnosed for 35+ years, so was constantly depressed and beating myself up for being "lazy") this feels like a pretty cruel description of what is, often, an actual disability and mental health issue.
Sure, some people are genuinely just lazy, shitty people who have crap executive functioning because they've always been able to outsource it (stereotypically, it's often a man who outsourced everything to his mom and then later to a partner or spouse). These people need to step up and do better.
But for those of us who literally cannot (even with the help of medication, I still struggle regularly because treatment ≠ a cure), it is a constant source of stress and anxiety to know how much extra executive functioning/emotional labour our partners have to do on our behalf because, even though we want to be equal partners and do not want to burden the people we love, we almost inevitably end up doing so due to something that is largely out of our control.
The notion that people like me just sort of collapse into filth and ill health if someone else doesn't take care of us is, also, pretty over-the-top and insulting. If left on my own, my home may never be as clean or tidy as a neurotypical person's and there are genuine negative health outcomes associated with ADHD, but you make it sound like anyone with poor executive functioning is basically indistinguishable from a depressed hoarder which, again, is pretty insulting to people with a whole range of mental health challenges.
posted by asnider at 9:15 AM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]
Jane the Brown: It also happens that someone who has been over functioning and doing the executive labour reverts to living in squalor after the kids leave home and everyone calls it depression, but what happened is when the kids left they stopped being anxious about providing for them and thus lost the motivation to overcome their struggle with Executive Function. How did it become so hard? When they lost the spur of anxiety that they are a bad parent and their kids will suffer if they don't live in a clean house. "I need someone to do for!" is a real issue for some people.
I've never felt more seen. I've worked and run IT Help Desks. Doing the heroic is the jam. Doing the paperwork and documentation is awful.
Home life is nothing but repetitive. I'm occasionally a hero, but not enough to avoid entropy, especially after my family left me alone.
The discussion in the article of EFT in the Home also really hit too close for comfort. May be repetitive information for some, but a good read for me.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 9:21 AM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've never felt more seen. I've worked and run IT Help Desks. Doing the heroic is the jam. Doing the paperwork and documentation is awful.
Home life is nothing but repetitive. I'm occasionally a hero, but not enough to avoid entropy, especially after my family left me alone.
The discussion in the article of EFT in the Home also really hit too close for comfort. May be repetitive information for some, but a good read for me.
posted by bacalao_y_betun at 9:21 AM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
When reading the article, I immediately thought of a situation at my previous job, in which someone in another department asked me to burn some CD-ROMs for him. (That gives you an idea of how long ago that was.) The material to be burned wasn't ready yet, so I asked him to let me know when it was, so that I could do the task. Time passed, and he asked where the CD-ROMs were... and was furious when I said, "You never let me know when to start." In his mind, he had completely abrogated any responsibility for the task, and it ended up as a negative on my annual evaluation.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [7 favorites]
hat does the term 'executive function theft' actually add to our understanding
perhaps decoupling the idea of labor under capitalism from moralistic value judgements such as that of the protestant work ethic where doing the most = good, not doing a whole lot = evil is a healthier, less toxic framework that minimizes capital's ability to utilize it as a cliche to further exploitation but who knows
posted by paimapi at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
perhaps decoupling the idea of labor under capitalism from moralistic value judgements such as that of the protestant work ethic where doing the most = good, not doing a whole lot = evil is a healthier, less toxic framework that minimizes capital's ability to utilize it as a cliche to further exploitation but who knows
posted by paimapi at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think one can make an argument that the whole system is rigged to be ineffecient, but in that case everyone involved is really being stolen from.
In other words, capitalism.
posted by JohnFromGR at 9:32 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
In other words, capitalism.
posted by JohnFromGR at 9:32 AM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not being neurotypical - let's not jump to "incompetent and helpless."
in·com·pe·tent
/inˈkämpətnt,iNGˈkämpətnt/
adjective
not having or showing the necessary skills to do something successfully.
I'd add in this instance "the skills to do something successfully up to your standard."
Each to their own ability. We're not all the same, and acting as if people who are below your standards are all headed for depression or squalor or relying soley on others is...not reality. That's making a lot of assumptions based on what sounds like a specific person you may have dealt with, honestly.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:35 AM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
in·com·pe·tent
/inˈkämpətnt,iNGˈkämpətnt/
adjective
not having or showing the necessary skills to do something successfully.
I'd add in this instance "the skills to do something successfully up to your standard."
Each to their own ability. We're not all the same, and acting as if people who are below your standards are all headed for depression or squalor or relying soley on others is...not reality. That's making a lot of assumptions based on what sounds like a specific person you may have dealt with, honestly.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:35 AM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
There are at least 3 concepts that often end up under the name "emotional labor" and I think it is helpful to separate them out:
1. emotional labor (Arlie Hochild's original concept) is the mismatch of a person's emotional state with the one they perform as part of their job. Classic example is a barista or flight attendant smiling and appearing happy to see you, despite feeling tired, unhappy, etc.
2. administrative function/mental load - keeping track of the household tasks or administrative tasks that must be done. One example is a female parent who knows the details of her children's doctor appointments and school schedules, while her male partner doesn't know or monitor these things. Women being expected to take and share notes during meetings, which of course makes it more difficult to contribute well in the meeting.
3. relationship maintenance - things like remembering people's life events and preferences, setting up social events for the family. Facilitating relationships and basically keeping in touch with people.
I find Executive Function Theft to be mostly relevant for #2 in the workplace. When my company officially transitioned to a project management model, I had hope that the administrative/organizing work done by mostly female employees (me) would have a more official sounding framework to convince my male coworkers that my work was actually a business necessity and not just some nosy quirk I had of hassling them to communicate about their project status. Anyway that place was too misogynist to be saved but having the language and some processes did help people understand that my job was not just "do my unglamorous work and expect to be insulted for your efforts."
Her comment about the women in the No Club reporting that a task they said no to was just passed on to another woman - I feel that. That was one reason I gave up on the misogynist workplace. I tried really hard to advocate for women in our workplace generally, and I found that I was branded difficult and other women who were more committed to institutional advancement decided it was better to eat shit so they could make progress. So by that measure, I was difficult when compared to these other women.
The first example in the piece, calling about insurance, is a good way to bring out specificity for one of the many ways capitalism is screwing us. It's not a brand new idea that companies share a goal of getting rid of as many employees as possibly regardless of the effect on consumer experience, but I hadn't really thought of it in terms of administrative/executive function cost to the consumer.
Generally I like to read new framing concepts for some of the shit we deal with. Some are illuminating and some are not. Thanks for posting.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:28 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
1. emotional labor (Arlie Hochild's original concept) is the mismatch of a person's emotional state with the one they perform as part of their job. Classic example is a barista or flight attendant smiling and appearing happy to see you, despite feeling tired, unhappy, etc.
2. administrative function/mental load - keeping track of the household tasks or administrative tasks that must be done. One example is a female parent who knows the details of her children's doctor appointments and school schedules, while her male partner doesn't know or monitor these things. Women being expected to take and share notes during meetings, which of course makes it more difficult to contribute well in the meeting.
3. relationship maintenance - things like remembering people's life events and preferences, setting up social events for the family. Facilitating relationships and basically keeping in touch with people.
I find Executive Function Theft to be mostly relevant for #2 in the workplace. When my company officially transitioned to a project management model, I had hope that the administrative/organizing work done by mostly female employees (me) would have a more official sounding framework to convince my male coworkers that my work was actually a business necessity and not just some nosy quirk I had of hassling them to communicate about their project status. Anyway that place was too misogynist to be saved but having the language and some processes did help people understand that my job was not just "do my unglamorous work and expect to be insulted for your efforts."
Her comment about the women in the No Club reporting that a task they said no to was just passed on to another woman - I feel that. That was one reason I gave up on the misogynist workplace. I tried really hard to advocate for women in our workplace generally, and I found that I was branded difficult and other women who were more committed to institutional advancement decided it was better to eat shit so they could make progress. So by that measure, I was difficult when compared to these other women.
The first example in the piece, calling about insurance, is a good way to bring out specificity for one of the many ways capitalism is screwing us. It's not a brand new idea that companies share a goal of getting rid of as many employees as possibly regardless of the effect on consumer experience, but I hadn't really thought of it in terms of administrative/executive function cost to the consumer.
Generally I like to read new framing concepts for some of the shit we deal with. Some are illuminating and some are not. Thanks for posting.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:28 AM on November 2, 2023 [12 favorites]
Or, possibly, their "theft" of your work was known and they got credit as someone "who knows how to delegate" and "can leverage the work of a team" and "has leadership potential." There are a lot of work settings where being the person who can get others to do this work (whether you call it theft or some other term) is going to be rewarded and promoted; it can be a valuable skill.
I think we can trust the poster to know if someone was tasked with delegating work to them or was simply coasting off of the work they did.
I personally had the man responsible for coordinating a project take credit for specific tasks that I had done without him present or offering any guidance beyond "make sure the IT team working this weekend has what they need" - later in a meeting which included his own manager, this person made statements like "I helped the IT team do X." Dude wasn't even there! He only knew about task X because I reported it back to him after I worked with IT all weekend.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:39 AM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
I think we can trust the poster to know if someone was tasked with delegating work to them or was simply coasting off of the work they did.
I personally had the man responsible for coordinating a project take credit for specific tasks that I had done without him present or offering any guidance beyond "make sure the IT team working this weekend has what they need" - later in a meeting which included his own manager, this person made statements like "I helped the IT team do X." Dude wasn't even there! He only knew about task X because I reported it back to him after I worked with IT all weekend.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:39 AM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
Theft is exactly what this is.
"Nobody can steal your executive function without your consent" -- Eleanor Roosevelt, probably.
posted by pwnguin at 10:43 AM on November 2, 2023
"Nobody can steal your executive function without your consent" -- Eleanor Roosevelt, probably.
posted by pwnguin at 10:43 AM on November 2, 2023
Drowsy, that's why it's theft. If I pass a bunch of admin tasks to an admin assistant who's well-paid for their time doing those tasks, that's me delegating appropriately. .... But people are being paid for their work making that ease for me.
Where I work, there are a few people who have been there for 40+ years. One of the interesting things talking to them is how much more administrative support there used to be. People who would type, and file papers, schedule meetings, etc. It was (of course) primarily women doing the admin work as support for the men in "professional" roles, but it was paid work with defined responsibilities and a high level of job security. I can remember seeing this when I was a kid visiting my father at work, too.
Now, for an entire office, there might be one or at most two admin staff. So, if you are a person who wants to push off what this article is calling "executive function" tasks, you don't have people who are being paid to do that work, you would have to find coworkers who you can make do that on top of their regular duties. So calling it "theft" has some logic.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:56 AM on November 2, 2023 [13 favorites]
Where I work, there are a few people who have been there for 40+ years. One of the interesting things talking to them is how much more administrative support there used to be. People who would type, and file papers, schedule meetings, etc. It was (of course) primarily women doing the admin work as support for the men in "professional" roles, but it was paid work with defined responsibilities and a high level of job security. I can remember seeing this when I was a kid visiting my father at work, too.
Now, for an entire office, there might be one or at most two admin staff. So, if you are a person who wants to push off what this article is calling "executive function" tasks, you don't have people who are being paid to do that work, you would have to find coworkers who you can make do that on top of their regular duties. So calling it "theft" has some logic.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:56 AM on November 2, 2023 [13 favorites]
Still, I think the nomenclature can be improved, if for no other reason than that "theft" implies a nefarious individual to a lot of people rather than a structural failure.
What about conceptualizing the executive function load of a given structure, institution, or workplace? If the executive function load is high, then the structure needs to distribute more workers to take it on or compensate the workers adequately to handle the structure's poor organization. If the executive function is low, work is easier to perform.
So much of this extra load comes from things like streamlining out admin staff and asking workers to do more with less. I think Emmy Rae's taxonomy of what we're discussing hits the nail on the head--and I also think that framing this as a problem of structures helps us think about how to deal with it in a way that is less prone to winding up pitting individual people against one another for "stealing" one's time and cognitive resources. The system--the workplace, the bureaucracy, the lack of wages and support to compensate for needed labor--is the problem.
I think we can trust the poster to know if someone was tasked with delegating work to them or was simply coasting off of the work they did.
This. I... don't see any reason to assume that creatrixtiara's summary of the situation and claiming of work is inaccurate or unfair. I have also had people claim that my work was their "delegating" and in fact described an unsuccessful attempt to "delegate" to me work that was not within my original responsibilities in the original emotional labor thread here on MeFi! Unless you have inside information about the workplace as a coworker or something, feels weird to just assert that this isn't a thing that happens all the time--because it very, very much is.
posted by sciatrix at 12:05 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
What about conceptualizing the executive function load of a given structure, institution, or workplace? If the executive function load is high, then the structure needs to distribute more workers to take it on or compensate the workers adequately to handle the structure's poor organization. If the executive function is low, work is easier to perform.
So much of this extra load comes from things like streamlining out admin staff and asking workers to do more with less. I think Emmy Rae's taxonomy of what we're discussing hits the nail on the head--and I also think that framing this as a problem of structures helps us think about how to deal with it in a way that is less prone to winding up pitting individual people against one another for "stealing" one's time and cognitive resources. The system--the workplace, the bureaucracy, the lack of wages and support to compensate for needed labor--is the problem.
I think we can trust the poster to know if someone was tasked with delegating work to them or was simply coasting off of the work they did.
This. I... don't see any reason to assume that creatrixtiara's summary of the situation and claiming of work is inaccurate or unfair. I have also had people claim that my work was their "delegating" and in fact described an unsuccessful attempt to "delegate" to me work that was not within my original responsibilities in the original emotional labor thread here on MeFi! Unless you have inside information about the workplace as a coworker or something, feels weird to just assert that this isn't a thing that happens all the time--because it very, very much is.
posted by sciatrix at 12:05 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have really limited (really limited) executive function, and I use up almost all my capacity for, y'know, functioning, on my job.
I rely on automated stuff so much. I paid a financial advisor to sit down with me for three hours, discuss my income and financial obligations, and help me finesse the best way to set up bank accounts (like nine last count?) and autopays and write a checklist of things that need to be done to maintain that system once or twice a year. And now as long as I keep doing what I'm doing and run the checklist every February and August, I literally never need to think about money. But that's not 'stealing' the advisor's executive function, I paid him for it. (It's not 'stealing' the executive function of the multi-layered system of alerts for nearly every load-bearing life task I have set up in Outlook either, that's a computer program.)
I live with my partner who has similar brain worms, and we get hit with the 'tism tax a lot. I was supposed to email two different real estate agents on Monday. Still haven't. House prices are rising here after a brief period of stagnation, and we're probably going to miss out on buying the dip because we have the same paralysis around life stuff, because work chews up all the executive function we've got.
I live in a country where the tax department files your taxes for you. You need to tell them about charitable donations, but you have seven years to do that, and you need to tell them about income you get when you're self-employed, but for nearly all employees, 'tax time' means 'I will get a letter telling me my taxes are being done and a couple weeks later I will get either a small bill or a medium-sized direct bank deposit, depending on how many Mondays were in the year'. The tax department does not actually need to use hardly any of your personal executive function to... function. I don't know why the American one does it.
I've worked with good project managers and terrible project managers. The main difference to me was that with the good ones, I had enough EF points left at the end of the day to clean the bathroom on a weekday. It was amazing.
Am I rambling? probably. Anyway, I kind of automatically bristled at calling it 'theft' because man, I offload as much of my executive functioning as humanly possible (mostly onto automated systems, unsure if that's better or worse), but thinking about it, at least when I get another human to do it for me, I pay them with money. Unlike the fucking rigmarole the bank's been putting me through lately. (You have a branch in country A! You have a branch in country B! They use the same currency! This should not be a multi-step drama with three different paper forms for me to send euros from my Irish bank account to a friend's French bank account!)
posted by ngaiotonga at 12:16 PM on November 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
I rely on automated stuff so much. I paid a financial advisor to sit down with me for three hours, discuss my income and financial obligations, and help me finesse the best way to set up bank accounts (like nine last count?) and autopays and write a checklist of things that need to be done to maintain that system once or twice a year. And now as long as I keep doing what I'm doing and run the checklist every February and August, I literally never need to think about money. But that's not 'stealing' the advisor's executive function, I paid him for it. (It's not 'stealing' the executive function of the multi-layered system of alerts for nearly every load-bearing life task I have set up in Outlook either, that's a computer program.)
I live with my partner who has similar brain worms, and we get hit with the 'tism tax a lot. I was supposed to email two different real estate agents on Monday. Still haven't. House prices are rising here after a brief period of stagnation, and we're probably going to miss out on buying the dip because we have the same paralysis around life stuff, because work chews up all the executive function we've got.
I live in a country where the tax department files your taxes for you. You need to tell them about charitable donations, but you have seven years to do that, and you need to tell them about income you get when you're self-employed, but for nearly all employees, 'tax time' means 'I will get a letter telling me my taxes are being done and a couple weeks later I will get either a small bill or a medium-sized direct bank deposit, depending on how many Mondays were in the year'. The tax department does not actually need to use hardly any of your personal executive function to... function. I don't know why the American one does it.
I've worked with good project managers and terrible project managers. The main difference to me was that with the good ones, I had enough EF points left at the end of the day to clean the bathroom on a weekday. It was amazing.
Am I rambling? probably. Anyway, I kind of automatically bristled at calling it 'theft' because man, I offload as much of my executive functioning as humanly possible (mostly onto automated systems, unsure if that's better or worse), but thinking about it, at least when I get another human to do it for me, I pay them with money. Unlike the fucking rigmarole the bank's been putting me through lately. (You have a branch in country A! You have a branch in country B! They use the same currency! This should not be a multi-step drama with three different paper forms for me to send euros from my Irish bank account to a friend's French bank account!)
posted by ngaiotonga at 12:16 PM on November 2, 2023 [9 favorites]
Or, possibly, their "theft" of your work was known and they got credit as someone "who knows how to delegate" and "can leverage the work of a team" and "has leadership potential."
Oh I can assure you that people didn't know it was me that kept things from collapsing because it wasn't explicitly in my job description - other people got accolades for doing fuck all
posted by creatrixtiara at 12:47 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh I can assure you that people didn't know it was me that kept things from collapsing because it wasn't explicitly in my job description - other people got accolades for doing fuck all
posted by creatrixtiara at 12:47 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Nobody can steal your executive function without your consent" -- Eleanor Roosevelt, probably.
lol sure ok I can totally tell Big Bureaucratic Structure That Determines My Life to fuck off when they give me the paperwork rigamarole and not worry about my livelihood or even my residency status being revoked, sure
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:04 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
lol sure ok I can totally tell Big Bureaucratic Structure That Determines My Life to fuck off when they give me the paperwork rigamarole and not worry about my livelihood or even my residency status being revoked, sure
posted by creatrixtiara at 1:04 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, this is our dean's office, which decided a couple of years ago to get rid of like 80% of the experienced staff and then devolve most of the HR and financial issues onto departments. Sure, sixteen people trained as literary scholars are going to do just fucking great at that. I can do it, because I actually used to be in training to be a CPA, but then all but two of the others act helpless and try to get me to do it for them, and it's a tossup whether it's more of a theft of my executive function to try to shame them into pulling their weight or just to say fuck it and get it done. I'm so far behind on writing my next book.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 2:27 PM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 2:27 PM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]
what does the term 'executive function theft' actually add to our understanding that some people are lazy and prefer that others do difficult/tedious tasks for them?
Because it's useful for describing a deliberate behavior. A lot of fucked up nonsense (especially from men, let's be real, but also from other people with a lot of social capital) gets passed off as haplessness. But it frequently isn't. And it definitely isn't when it's coming from the corporate sector, whether it's making employees manage themselves at grunt pay (but still paying managers manager pay to do... what exactly?) or making customers do the things employees are supposed to do.
I once mentioned to a (now-ex) boyfriend that I wished I could afford to pay someone a living wage to clean my house once every few weeks. I'm chronically ill and mildly disabled, and it would really, really improve my quality of life and ability to concentrate on other things actually, and notice in this fantasy I'd still be paying this cleaner like $25 an hour. He snootily informed me that he "didn't dream of having people do labor" for him. I reminded him that I did labor for him for free all the fucking time. Whereas he was constantly doing things like leaving a plugged-in hair dryer sitting in the only bathroom sink in the house, as if I did not also have to wash my hands or brush my teeth. I guess there's The Noble Proletariat and then there's your girlfriend, amirite?
posted by Nibbly Fang at 4:48 PM on November 2, 2023 [22 favorites]
Because it's useful for describing a deliberate behavior. A lot of fucked up nonsense (especially from men, let's be real, but also from other people with a lot of social capital) gets passed off as haplessness. But it frequently isn't. And it definitely isn't when it's coming from the corporate sector, whether it's making employees manage themselves at grunt pay (but still paying managers manager pay to do... what exactly?) or making customers do the things employees are supposed to do.
I once mentioned to a (now-ex) boyfriend that I wished I could afford to pay someone a living wage to clean my house once every few weeks. I'm chronically ill and mildly disabled, and it would really, really improve my quality of life and ability to concentrate on other things actually, and notice in this fantasy I'd still be paying this cleaner like $25 an hour. He snootily informed me that he "didn't dream of having people do labor" for him. I reminded him that I did labor for him for free all the fucking time. Whereas he was constantly doing things like leaving a plugged-in hair dryer sitting in the only bathroom sink in the house, as if I did not also have to wash my hands or brush my teeth. I guess there's The Noble Proletariat and then there's your girlfriend, amirite?
posted by Nibbly Fang at 4:48 PM on November 2, 2023 [22 favorites]
Cf. “dark patterns” for the terrible computer interfaces of the administrative burden.
In person, I particularly dislike the bit where I have the responsibility but no authority — being expected to come up with fully worked out options, all of which can be rejected for reasons previously ungiven, which is my fault.
posted by clew at 7:42 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
In person, I particularly dislike the bit where I have the responsibility but no authority — being expected to come up with fully worked out options, all of which can be rejected for reasons previously ungiven, which is my fault.
posted by clew at 7:42 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]
very similar, if not identical, to "administrative burden",
Cf. “dark patterns”
I'll throw in "red tape," a term which predates capitalism and the modern corporation, and seems oddly correlated with wartime in the US. Apparently it started life as the original urgent SMTP flag of bureaucracy and well, we all know how those stories turn out.
posted by pwnguin at 11:12 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Cf. “dark patterns”
I'll throw in "red tape," a term which predates capitalism and the modern corporation, and seems oddly correlated with wartime in the US. Apparently it started life as the original urgent SMTP flag of bureaucracy and well, we all know how those stories turn out.
posted by pwnguin at 11:12 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
+1 that executive function theft (or simply executive function load, as @drowsy and @sciatrix suggested) illuminates some invisible labour distinct from emotional labour.
i work in a group environment without any direct management structure, and there are plenty of ways that executive function work gets shifted around. this is within academia, where autonomy is a core value, and this plays out with some colleagues who work more cooperatively (i.e., thinking about the impact of my work on those around me) and those colleagues who “let the chips fall where they may”. it’s tough to come up with a pithy example— which is the same problem that makes it difficult to address with those whose way of working sloughs off daily EF work to others in their orbit.
this feels very much like an interpersonal time theft (to repurpose the phrase HR departments threaten employees with). by indirectly assigning work that takes my time and EF capacity, i have less of these resources to assign to other work. i absolutely see a link from this to career development: with more time for my own focused work, i am more likely to produce the outcomes that lead to advancement and recognition. @creatrixtiara’s example reads to me as more directly taking credit for the product; my experience is more about how others may be thieving from my personal bandwidth by opting out of EF work which then falls to their colleagues. can i simply name this “being a jerk colleague”? no, not really. this is a discrete way that someone is shifting work, and it is insidious in that it is without any direct negative behaviour that i can label.
i also agree with @jane the brown’s point that anxiety may play a role here, as individuals have differing tolerances for work-not-done. however, i don’t see this issue as being simply solved by raising tolerance and letting the work go not-done; there are many instances where the fall out negatively affects me directly. this is also the junction where i see emotional labour make an appearance : the turning of the issue from work-focused (e.g., “other person has sloughed work to me”) to personal trait focused (e.g., “i need to work on my own tolerance and anxiety”). metaphorically, it is like a colleague leaves dirty dishes in a shared sink, and I need those dishes to eat my own lunch. there is no way forward that doesn’t put some burden on me: i have inevitably lost time out of my day dealing with it and spent EF tokens deciding how to handle the situation.
posted by tamarack at 8:30 AM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
i work in a group environment without any direct management structure, and there are plenty of ways that executive function work gets shifted around. this is within academia, where autonomy is a core value, and this plays out with some colleagues who work more cooperatively (i.e., thinking about the impact of my work on those around me) and those colleagues who “let the chips fall where they may”. it’s tough to come up with a pithy example— which is the same problem that makes it difficult to address with those whose way of working sloughs off daily EF work to others in their orbit.
this feels very much like an interpersonal time theft (to repurpose the phrase HR departments threaten employees with). by indirectly assigning work that takes my time and EF capacity, i have less of these resources to assign to other work. i absolutely see a link from this to career development: with more time for my own focused work, i am more likely to produce the outcomes that lead to advancement and recognition. @creatrixtiara’s example reads to me as more directly taking credit for the product; my experience is more about how others may be thieving from my personal bandwidth by opting out of EF work which then falls to their colleagues. can i simply name this “being a jerk colleague”? no, not really. this is a discrete way that someone is shifting work, and it is insidious in that it is without any direct negative behaviour that i can label.
i also agree with @jane the brown’s point that anxiety may play a role here, as individuals have differing tolerances for work-not-done. however, i don’t see this issue as being simply solved by raising tolerance and letting the work go not-done; there are many instances where the fall out negatively affects me directly. this is also the junction where i see emotional labour make an appearance : the turning of the issue from work-focused (e.g., “other person has sloughed work to me”) to personal trait focused (e.g., “i need to work on my own tolerance and anxiety”). metaphorically, it is like a colleague leaves dirty dishes in a shared sink, and I need those dishes to eat my own lunch. there is no way forward that doesn’t put some burden on me: i have inevitably lost time out of my day dealing with it and spent EF tokens deciding how to handle the situation.
posted by tamarack at 8:30 AM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I think a lot of people are reading pretty deeply and personally into Jane the Brown's comment, especially the second point, and inserting a lot of intent into what they said, while somehow missing the overall point.
The point was not that people with low executive function are slobs, it was that slobs with low executive function are often propped up by someone else, and when they lose that, spiral into what looks like poor mental health. A spiral that they're suggesting has little to do with actual brain chemistry and more that their circumstances have gotten less comfortable.
posted by jellywerker at 9:36 AM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
The point was not that people with low executive function are slobs, it was that slobs with low executive function are often propped up by someone else, and when they lose that, spiral into what looks like poor mental health. A spiral that they're suggesting has little to do with actual brain chemistry and more that their circumstances have gotten less comfortable.
posted by jellywerker at 9:36 AM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'd add in this instance "the skills to do something successfully up to your standard."
Each to their own ability. We're not all the same, and acting as if people who are below your standards are all headed for depression or squalor or relying soley on others is...not reality.
Many people with executive function issues do not perform certain tasks up to their own standards.
Many people I can think of who had, for example, filthy houses (ah, one’s youth), explicitly did not live in filth because they had executive function issues. They just didn’t care and were maintaining their living space to their own standards.
The one person I can think of who clearly DID have executive function issues and ended up eit( a dorm room knee-high with junk was very aware of his problem and was mortified by the state of his space.
I would not say executive function skills have much to do with personal standards on such tasks.
posted by bq at 12:22 PM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
Each to their own ability. We're not all the same, and acting as if people who are below your standards are all headed for depression or squalor or relying soley on others is...not reality.
Many people with executive function issues do not perform certain tasks up to their own standards.
Many people I can think of who had, for example, filthy houses (ah, one’s youth), explicitly did not live in filth because they had executive function issues. They just didn’t care and were maintaining their living space to their own standards.
The one person I can think of who clearly DID have executive function issues and ended up eit( a dorm room knee-high with junk was very aware of his problem and was mortified by the state of his space.
I would not say executive function skills have much to do with personal standards on such tasks.
posted by bq at 12:22 PM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was just thinking about this today as I attempted to fill out the form to return the phone bill to autopay after the phone company cancelled autopay because the credit card stopped working either because the credit card company didn't send the bill last month (highly unlikely) or USPS lost it (highly unlikely) or it got hidden somewhere in the dizzying mess that is our house by me or by my fellow no-executive-function-having traveler because neither of us can remember to put incoming mail in the spot we have designated for it (extremely likely). I could not fill out the form because they wanted me to copy over my account number from my phone bill but I couldn't find a bill because people with intact executive function tell you not to file bills but to shred them, so I have shredded them all. A noxious storm of whining phone calls/e-mails ensues every time the credit card company stops paying subscriptions, and I could solve all these problems if I'd just put the credit card itself on autopay, but I actually want to get one of the whining calls. I need the newspaper subscription to get cancelled every six to nine months so that I can avoid paying the ruinous regular rate when the introductory rate period runs out, and I cannot--CAN NOT--find the resolve to keep a careful watch on the newspaper's behavior to make sure they're not suddenly charging me seventy dollars a month or whatever it is for the tragically slim and clearly moribund newspaper that now only comes six days a week. I'm incompetent enough at keeping up with basic adult responsibilities that I've at least twice saved myself hundreds and hundreds of dollars this way. You just let the subscription lapse for a few weeks and then re-up at some random moment and make a telemarketer's day. Of course, I'm paying the credit card company's late fees every month or two when I mess up. I wish to opt out of adulthood. Only the enormously rich can do this by hiring somebody to manage all this stupid shit. Probably that somebody rips them off. But it's still worth it, I'd say. I'd love to get ripped off by just one person instead of by every company I deal with. That would be fantastic!
posted by Don Pepino at 3:18 PM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Don Pepino at 3:18 PM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
@creatrixtiara’s example reads to me as more directly taking credit for the product; my experience is more about how others may be thieving from my personal bandwidth by opting out of EF work which then falls to their colleagues.
I don't know why people keep trying to dispute my experience on here but it was definitely the latter.
Event was supposed to be managed by Person X.
Person X slacked off on their responsibilities to Event and Event almost ends up being a disaster.
I'm first at the scene at Event and even though it was not my job at all, I end up having to make key decisions on Event.
Asking Person X for how to manage Event (because again, This Specific Event Management is THEIR job) gets me hardly anything at best and a "but how do you This Component of Event?!?" for something super common sense.
I end up being the only person fully working at Event - including, again, duties not within my original job description on top of duties that actually was my job, because someone has to and it certainly wasn't Person X.
Many years later I hear Person X getting all the damn credit for Event not being a disaster even though he did fuck all.
And that's just one example out of many.
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:13 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't know why people keep trying to dispute my experience on here but it was definitely the latter.
Event was supposed to be managed by Person X.
Person X slacked off on their responsibilities to Event and Event almost ends up being a disaster.
I'm first at the scene at Event and even though it was not my job at all, I end up having to make key decisions on Event.
Asking Person X for how to manage Event (because again, This Specific Event Management is THEIR job) gets me hardly anything at best and a "but how do you This Component of Event?!?" for something super common sense.
I end up being the only person fully working at Event - including, again, duties not within my original job description on top of duties that actually was my job, because someone has to and it certainly wasn't Person X.
Many years later I hear Person X getting all the damn credit for Event not being a disaster even though he did fuck all.
And that's just one example out of many.
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:13 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
@creatrixtiara - with apologies, it was absolutely not my intention to dispute your experience. i was offering my experience, and included a reference to your comment as a similar but different way things sometimes play out. apologies if i mischaracterized your comment or poorly communicated in my comment above.
posted by tamarack at 6:43 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tamarack at 6:43 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm a little late to this discussion but wanted to comment on this:
What is being stolen here? Presumably it's time
The time stolen isn't the point -- in my view, it could even be considered a side effect. What's being stolen is capacity. All those tiny decisions, prioritizations, keeping track of things, etc, that the author describes in navigating the payroll bureaucracy take effort. Maybe each one takes just a small amount of effort, but it adds up. And that's effort that could have been put toward other things. It's lost capacity. And the capacity doesn't just magically bounce back when the need arises.
I have a friend who, as part of his dissertation, researched decision fatigue in voting. According to his research, It's quite real. He found that the further down a measure is on a long ballot, the more likely it is to get a "no" vote. Because people get tired of making decision after decision and are finally like "fuck it, I don't really get what's being proposed here, so let's just keep things the way they are".
That's the sort of capacity that's being stolen.
posted by treepour at 10:22 AM on November 4, 2023 [9 favorites]
What is being stolen here? Presumably it's time
The time stolen isn't the point -- in my view, it could even be considered a side effect. What's being stolen is capacity. All those tiny decisions, prioritizations, keeping track of things, etc, that the author describes in navigating the payroll bureaucracy take effort. Maybe each one takes just a small amount of effort, but it adds up. And that's effort that could have been put toward other things. It's lost capacity. And the capacity doesn't just magically bounce back when the need arises.
I have a friend who, as part of his dissertation, researched decision fatigue in voting. According to his research, It's quite real. He found that the further down a measure is on a long ballot, the more likely it is to get a "no" vote. Because people get tired of making decision after decision and are finally like "fuck it, I don't really get what's being proposed here, so let's just keep things the way they are".
That's the sort of capacity that's being stolen.
posted by treepour at 10:22 AM on November 4, 2023 [9 favorites]
ngaiotonga wrote,
Also, I just ran across this handy explanation of "The components of executive functioning".
posted by brainwane at 11:22 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've worked with good project managers and terrible project managers. The main difference to me was that with the good ones, I had enough EF points left at the end of the day to clean the bathroom on a weekday. It was amazing.Thank you. I'm a project manager and I find what you've written motivating -- if I do my job well I can concretely reduce needless fatigue that otherwise lands on other people!
Also, I just ran across this handy explanation of "The components of executive functioning".
posted by brainwane at 11:22 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
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posted by jenfullmoon at 11:43 PM on November 1, 2023 [12 favorites]